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The basically walks you through everything up to and through bases, meow. It doesn't deal with shading because, well, that could be a whole other tutorial and I jsut don't feel like doing one. If you want to know about shading, PM me and bug me to death OR make one yourself.

It was done on Photoshop CS2

I know it probably isn't useful, but you can look through it and marvel at how insane I am, since when working with bases I don't use the tablet AT ALL. Yes. Go me dramallama

And, although it was done in Adobe, I used virtually the same technique while I was using Jasc PSP (aka the square root of evil), so I bet the ideas may be able to be applied to other programs, meow.


And, another note, if you really want to see all the other *crappy* ways of doing lineart, you can Go HERE and S_O will tell you what's what heart

Now we're going to start splashing color! Make a new layer in between the First and Second and make sure it's set to "Normal"

Now, I'm going to start with the skin since that's always one of the harder colors for me. Open up the color picker and choose a base color, meow!

Now, usually for men I pick a more yellower peach, women a more redder but. . . it's all up to taste.

About 90% of the time, I can't decide on a color emo So I have this nifty trick to help me out, meow!



Basically, we want to take the color we want and. . . 3X!? NO! YOU'RE WRONG! IT'S PI. . . *cough cough* I'm jumping ahead of myself, sorry, too much coffee.

Basically, we want to take our color and draw a dot on the layer (making a smudge big enough that you can go back later and pick up the color easily with the eyedropper tool), and draw a few more dots of varying degrees or dark and light. If these seem to blend to your fancy, you've got your palette!

*Note: The PI^x thing is an inside joke. . . basically, the best line for this color would be the exponential line y=-Pi^x. Put it into your calculator. I'm not lying. Many colors form the best palettes along exponential lines towards the corners of the pick box.

*DOUBLE NOTE: If this post doesn't make sense to you, tell me and I'll put up more pictures, meow.

Now, all this seems like a lot of work, and it is, which is why this tutorial is long. . . I usually spend about 4-6 hours on the base alone of a piece that I want to be especially good. Then again, it isn't just straight working - I'm usually writing or on the forums here.

But, I digress. . .

At some point you'll get to a point where you just can't find the right colors which blend with your base, even if you follow the line rule above. You'll doodle and scribble for a while and waste a lot of time for what looks like nothing. emo Like So:



Well, I'm going to introduce you to your new best friend: Especially if you're in a pinch for doing quick shading.


His name is the Custom Color's Menu: also known as the lazy person's pick box. I don't know if he resides in any other program other then Photoshop, though, so. . . ninja

Now, if you have your base color set as the brush color when you open this magical present from God. . .



Your Palette will be given to you. ALL HAIL! . . . <3

I swear, this has helped me out on almost every art project I have ever done. OF course, sometimes it doesn't work, and you're back to square one, but hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

. . . now, come back. I need to explain a few things.

First is why we locked the transparency of all those layers. Seemed pretty stupid, especially if you wanted to go back, right? WRONG.



Let's use Morel's Heart tattoo as an example, okay?

Say we color it a pretty pink, like this:



But, now that we look at it, we think "EW! PINK IS SO UNMANLY! We need red."

The solution? Our trusty Paint bucket!

Now, we don't believe in locking transparency, so we go use the paintbucket tool and. . .



OH NO! Look at that! We went outside the lines! NUU!

If we had locked the transparency. . .



. . . we'd have been all good.

I know this may seem stupid as well, but when you keep me, the obsessive flip-flopper in mind, it makes sense. . . since the splotch outside the lines will get bigger and bigger, with each color change.

If we lock the transparency of our colors, we can swiftly change colors and see how different combinations play out heart For example, evil elves can give Morel orange prison pants, then swiftly change to a khaki or maybe a firey red. . . and then when I come back from my coffee break, change the pants back to blue. I WOULD NEVER KNOW.

((Reserved))