Resource Coloring and Shading- A tutorial, kinda

This isn't a 'tutorial' or 'reference' so much as it is 'this is how I completed this specific piece', but if you'd like to view or use it as a resource, please feel free to.

Last night, I completed an art piece- a gift, I suppose- of my character Kokudo (right, on the phone) and a friend's, Akuma (left). It took about four hours to complete and, I counted, had 48 layers. Which is a bit much, so I'll condense it all as much as I can while still making it easy to follow.

If it helps, I'm using Clip Studio Paint Pro with a Huion 640p tablet.

Spoiler: The finished piece

I start off with the basic lineart and flat colors. The trees were made using a special brush that was downloaded from CSP.

Spoiler: Step 1

I began to work on the background before I did any sort of shading. This was to solidify where the light source was coming from so I knew where the shading should do, and to understand how the shadows were going to work. With the scenery being a sunset, I used the Gpen tool to color the sky purple, orange, and yellow, and used a mixture of the blur and blend tool to create a gradient that mimicked a setting sun.

I used a special brush to create the small circle effect sunlight creates.

I then went to work on creating clouds. Again using a special brush, I started with a base layer of clouds, coloring it orange, and then slightly blurred it so it would fit better in the background. I created a new layer and put it as the "lighten" setting, shaded it purple so that it would make a contrast. I made a new layer, colored it yellow, and duplicated that yellow layer to add depth. This creates a total of four layers for clouds.

Spoiler: Step 2

The sun came next. Creating a new layer above the cloud ones, I used the airbrush to draw a reddish-orange semicircle between the trees. I then lowered the opacity to 70% and set the layer to "Add (Glow)" to give it that bright effect, and created a new layer under the original sun. I used the airbrush again to create an outline, once again making the layer "Add (Glow)". I repeated this step once more, creating another new layer, except making this one "Glow Dodge". I used this image of the sun to help guide me with the shading.

Spoiler: Step 3

Now, the shading begins. Usually, you would shade the outer parts of the character's face darker, depending on the light source, but because they are facing the sun, their faces are shaded a lighter color.

I started off making a new layer and lowering the opacity to around 60%, then changing the layer to "Lighten" to create the base shade. I actually used two separate layers of shading for both characters to prevent clashing. I made sure to primarily keep to shading to the outside, since the inner parts of their face would be shadowed due to there being no light reflecting on that side. Use of triangles is a good way to add depth to the character's face and head.

Spoiler: Step 4a

However, this shading in of itself isn't enough. I'd want to layer it with a warmer color to further give the effect of the sun shining on the character's face, so I duplicated the layer underneath the base shading, lowered the opacity to 60%, changed the layer setting to "Screen", and used the bucket fill tool to quickly and easily color it a shade of red. I did the same with my character on the right.

Spoiler: Step 4b

I then went to work on shading the clothes. Again, I primarily kept the shading bright on the outside and dark on the inside, but because of Kokudo being on the inside, his coat was kept dark, with some spots of light to show stray sun rays reflecting on it. Again, shading using triangles adds a sort of depth to the subject.

To shade, I made the setting to "Linear Burn" and lowered opacity to about 40%. This was done for most of the dark shading. The bright shading was done with the layer on "Screen". These were all done on separate layers- for example, the coats, shirts, and scarf were all on different layers.

Spoiler: Step 5

I also made sure to shade the inside of Kokudo's palm and the tablet he is holding, again using Linear Burn and a low opacity layer. I also added Akuma's streak using "Add (Glow)". Other things, like the eye, were also shaded.

Now, the hill. This was relatively simple. I colored the grass green, and added a layer on top of it, shading some spots brown and yellow. I then blurred and blended it. I colored the sidewalk and used the airbrush tool with the layer on "Screen" to give the effect of the sun's rays reflecting against the pavement.

Spoiler: Step 6

The last step is to add subtle effects to bring the entire image together. I did this by using a special downloadable brush to add slight circles to random places on the piece. I put this layer over all others, including lineart, lowered the opacity to 70%, and changed the setting to "Overlay". I then added a filter, once again making the layer "Overlay", and making the opacity to 20% to give it a subtle effect. The subtitles were created and added in Photoshop.

This was very trial and error- I spent a lot of time messing with layer effects to see what would look best, reordering layers, shading and erasing a lot. I also messed around a lot with the opacity levels. I rounded the opacity levels mentioned in this post to the nearest tenth, so you may increase or decrease it slightly depending on the effect you would like to achieve. Thank you for reading, and I hope you found this helpful or at least interesting.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I will happily answer.

 

Apologies for the late response but thank you both!