Just a note: this is the longest blog post I've written to date. It'll be a long read, so strap yourself in. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it!
I was talking to some friends the other day about how I have no clue what I'm doing whenever I make things, and how it's been really frustrating. Like I mentioned previously, I really lack fundamentals and don't know when I'll ever get to working on them. It does hurt my self esteem a lot when I fail to realise something I wanted to make, and imposter syndrome gets me bad to boot.
So after talking to a few friends about this situation, they basically all suggested that I should analyse my own process more. Perhaps it would help, they said, if I paid close attention to what I was doing and wanted the end result to look like instead of just auto-piloting and doing whatever felt right. I've had a lot of issues with style in the past because of this exact habit: I tend to do what feels natural instead of trying to direct my work towards something that pleases me. But now that my style is getting closer and closer to what I've wanted it to look like, along with the advice I received from my friends, I thought it might be a cool idea to do a breakdown kind of guide for how I work. This could serve as not just something fun for people to read if they're curious, but also a set of instructions for myself when I start to feel confused about how to create again (admittedly, a part of me also wanted to make this guide because as a learning artist, I was and still am frequently frustrated by how secretive a lot of artists are about things like using references or how they achieve specific effects, and I wanted to be transparent too). So here it is! A general guide on what I do when I draw and how I make things look the way they do. I'm gonna be using this casual portrait I did of Dmitri (my designated teacher/academia OC haha) to explain things.
My art program of choice at the moment is Clip Studio Paint (CSP). I have recently started using bigger canvases, so for a portrait like this, around 3000x3000 px. I find that bigger canvases make everything a hell of a lot easier. As for what brushes and etc. I use, here's a list! This changes often, so this is just at the time of writing. I don't have anything custom because my brain is puny when it comes to that stuff.
So before I put anything on paper, I try to decide on what I want the content or theme of the work to be. Sometimes for more complicated drawings, like this one of Layla and Eleanor in the gardens, I look up many references on both Pinterest and Google to help me form some foundations for the drawing. It actually gets really complicated and arduous...But for this Dmitri portrait, my goal was just to make something that conveyed his personality while being simple enough to finish in a few hours. I settled with the idea of him being somewhat turned away from the camera while having a pose that conveyed thought or reflection, because he's a very contemplative, lost deep in thoughts kinda guy. I then found images that helped me figure out a pose that worked.
With the decision-making out of the way, I do a very, very vague doodle. No features most of the time unless the eyes are looking in a specific, unusual way and I want to gauge how it'd look at this stage. I almost always draw the base here with poor proportions, mainly because I'm not going to be using it much other than to provide a basic map of where I'm going to place features. This sketch-doodle is meant to be very rough, I don't really sweat it if it's nearly incomprehensible or the next phase begins to deviate a lot. After I get the idea down, I change layer colour to a light blue and lower the opacity to anywhere between 15-40% and get ready for the rough sketch.
For the rough sketch, I usually start with the face. I have heard it's not good practise to start with the face, but I haven't really been able to figure out how to start with the body at large or anything like that, so I stick to the face. For this specific angle, I started with the nose and the mouth, the outline of the face. This is to help figure out eye placement, which comes next. I try to colour in my eyes a bit with black and white sketchy lines, as I like to be able to see where they're directed early on.
After the face, including the ear, I start to do the hair. Hair is definitely my favourite part. I start with the bangs, then the side hair, and finally lump the rest of the back and the details together. I try to get a nice shape with the details early on, despite the fact I end up changing and adding a lot down the line.
The rest of the body is worked on after. If it's a fullbody, the torso and arms come first and I work my way down to the feet. I don't draw in many folds on clothes usually, but I sometimes do if I remember or want to. The hand can be vague too, as long as the proportions are somewhat sensical. But for this example, I fleshed out the hand a decent amount. Because I use a low opacity brush to do the rough sketch, I sometimes will then go over specific areas with a higher opacity brush to make them more defined or stick out more. This takes place at the end of this stage.
Once again, this step doesn't really need to stress the details. A middling amount of halfhearted details will suffice. The purpose of this step feels more as a way to ground my ideas in a basic, but unlike the last step, recognisable form. At the very end, when everything is good to me, I fill the lines in with a lighter gray to gauge the overall shape more and make a few more adjustments, usually with the Liquify tool.
So once the rough is out of the way, I apply flat colours. Using the grey fill from earlier, I clip a folder on top and separate the layers as different colours. Usually, I colour pick from my messy ref sheets I've stashed away somewhere. I bring the face layer(s) (consisting of eyes and mouth and nose) above the rough sketch layer, keeping it separate from the rest of the drawing. I also place the colours for it below the lines for the face layer, but above the lines for the rest of the body. This is important for me later. Moving on, if the shape of the drawing looks bad after flat colours have been applied, I usually shape out the form more on the colour layer, ignoring the sketch on top of it. I don't want to solidify the form completely here, I just try to steer it in a direction that's closer to what I want.
Once the shape and flat colours are defined, I create a folder to put all the lines and colours, including the face parts, and clip on a Multiply layer. I mess with the hue and opacity, filling the entire Multiply layer with the same colour.
I then make an Add layer, clipping it on top of the Multiply, and mess with the colour and opacity of it as well. I use Add to try to carve out a specific lighting I want and define the location of the primary shadow, while the Multiply is moreso for uniting the colour scheme and being said shadow's base.
I then add a second Multiply layer using a similar or the same colour as the first, to get some vague secondary shadows. I also use a very low opacity extra Add layer to add some highlights to areas in the primary shadow.
Finally, I will use a Tone Curve and or a HSL layer, maybe a Gradient Map too, clipped on top of all that to adjust contrast and saturation, trying to get the colours to look striking.
Once these colours have been decided, I copy the adjustment layers and apply one set of them to a folder containing the face lines and colours, and one set of them to a folder containing the rest of the drawing. At the end of all this, I group everything from this step into a folder and duplicate it. I hide this copy as a backup. I then merge the folder with the face lines and colours into one layer, and the folder with the rest of the drawing in another layer. At the end of this step, I have one backup folder on the bottom, one layer, one layer with the facial features on the top, and a layer with everything else in the body in between.
Now for the actual painting to begin. Keep in mind, I adjust parts of the drawing and come back to certain areas back and forth from here on out. If I notice something I don't like the look of, I will edit it right then and there. This step is hard to take pictures of because a lot of it comes down to feeling, and I do large chunks at a time. I tried my best though!
With that out of the way, I start with getting the shape of the eye down, mainly the pupil and the outlining shape. I do this all on the same layer as the base to keep it simple for my brain. I pick a colour to do the darks of the iris, and then another darker colour to be the lashes/outlined shape. Near the middle of the outlined shape, where the top of the pupil meets the lashes, I use the darks of the iris, which would be slightly lighter and more saturated than the darks of the outlined shape, to add a slight bit of blending. Then, I use the outlined shape's dark to draw in a little more definition for the pupil. Add some highly saturated and bright or very light (near white) highlights throughout. I edit the eyebrows a bit too.
Shape it a bit more! Eyelid gaming! Add the primary highlight on top of a brightly saturated, colourful highlight. I like doing this a lot because it feels fun haha. I am not sure how much impact this has on the drawing but it's a neat detail I enjoy nonetheless. Adding this here, one of the best pieces of advice I've ever come across for eyes is that if they're looking lopsided or incorrect, create a new layer and add a big fat solid colour splotch over one eye so you can't see it. Then assess the remaining eye individually and make sure it alone is looking in the right direction and in a style you like. It should be able to stand completely on its own. Once you fix that eye, repeat for the second eye. At the end, adjust the eyes' sizes if they've deviated, along with maybe some inconsistency in style. But they should at least both be looking more presentable now.
Finally, below the current layer, I create a new one to put the indents below the eyes, sometimes also eyeshadow on the eyelids. I find this helps the eyes pop a little more from a distance.
Here's how it looks at this stage from afar!
Now that the eyes are done, I shape the face and ears. Get the chin and nose looking right. Usually, the nose and mouth are included in the previous step along with the eyes, but for this case, it's easier to group them here. This part is usually quick. I also do this on the existing "body" layer.
So first things first, I clean up how messy the rough and applied colours are with the hair. The important thing right now is the silhouette of the hair, not its particulars. Shape is important as always, I refine the form of it and add strands that stick out where it makes appeals to me. I reinforce some of the existing secondary shading from the Base Colours step that used the Add or Multiply layers. Unlike the previous steps in rendering, I make a new layer for this above the base layer that contains the rest of the body. I switch my eraser tool to the one that erases multiple layers at this point, and keep it this way for the rest of the drawing, using a transparent colour on my flat colours pen (G-Pen) to erase things on the new layers specifically.
Next, using the Lasso Tool and a regular Airbrush with a colour that's more saturated but less dark than the existing secondary shadows, I draw vaguely pointed (usually triangular in shape) formations that help define the shape of the hair clusters directly under the light. I honestly don't really think about lighting or anything here. I just do what looks good to me and what feels natural. It takes some experimenting to see where I wanna place the formations to give off a 3D detail kind of vibe. I think upon reflection that “what looks good” usually takes place on or near the part of the hair cluster that is most curved. So if you imagine a bell curve (Hair clusters are more like semicircles to me usually, but a bell curve is easier to imagine), you would place the pointed formation so that it covers the highest point of the bell curve, but not neatly on top. It can be on either side of the bell curve's tip, either on the side where it's a peak, or the sied where it's a valley. But it should lean a little more to the left or right of the highest point. I am uneducated art-wise and don't know why I do this, but it works for me and gives me a look I enjoy. You can also add some Airbrushed triangle formations with the secondary shadow's direct colour too, like i did near the top of the head.
Once that is complete, I add the highlights, everyone's favourite part. I do this on a separate layer. I usually do most of the hair's shaping on one new layer, and then the hair's shading on another layer. But highlights get their own layer because it's hellish to adjust if you don't do that. Trust. So yeah, I usually use a colour that reflects the lighting's colour, but sometimes I just go with a colour that I think represents the character's vibe. Saturated colours that don't have too much Brightness feel best to me. I also tend not to add super big highlights, preferring it to look more like a small, tapered line. How high or low on the hair it goes is up to taste, I don't usually keep that too consistent and just feel for it. The part of the highlight that ends up outside of the direct light looks better to me if it's slightly less strong, mainly because that helps the eyes focus less on it. The part in light should catch the eyes more, so the highlights being brighter there makes sense. To dim the highlights on the darker side of the hair, I use the Lasso tool to grab the portion of the highlights in the darker side and cut and paste them onto a new layer. I then adjust the opacity of that layer to my liking.
Here is an example of what I meant by using the Lasso tool to create triangular shapes by the way. So you can see the shape of it with the Lasso outline.
With that in mind, I use a slightly lighter colour, usually from the low opacity Add layer from the Base Colours step, to give the darker side of the hair highlights using the aforementioned Lasso tool technique. I find that adding highlights looks better to me than trying to add dark shading. This may possibly be because the darker, more saturated colours of shading will make the darker side of the hair pop out more. Which I don't want, as I want the focus to be the side of the drawing that's in contact directly with the light. I don't add any much more shading beyond adjusting the secondary shadow Multiply layer from the Base Colours step. Once I feel like sufficient detail has been added, I now leave the hair be for the most part and move on.
I lump this all together because that's how my brain processes it. There's the head, and then there's the rest of the body haha. I don't imagine this is a good way to think of your drawings, but it's what I got so far. I personally like this because I usually want the head to be the area with the most detail and attention, and that's what it usually gets when I work on it first. From this point on, I generally move to work on area to area in descending order of how important I view them as to the drawing. For this one, and for most of my drawings, the next part becomes the hands.
Like with most things, I work on the general shape first. I get those fingers to have more definition and a more distinct look. The silhouette can help you figure out the shape more, and to aid with this, I often change the background colour to get a fresh look at what the shapes are.
And then I refine! Paying attention to where gets light and going off what amount of light feels good. I add some very minimal shading near the wrist and the thumb.
Here's how it looks zoomed out at this point.
Working on the collar and cleaning it up, I turn the background to grey to get a better sense of how the colours are coming together now that a lot of the drawing is complete. I also analyse the silhouette more to make sure it appeals to me.
I now define the torso and the shirt more. I make the clothing folds a little more clear, along with the lighting that is going on in regards to them.
I'll admit. I'm not good with clothing folds, far from it. So I tend to just make vague Lasso-Airbrush triangular and H/U shapes until I figure out what I want it to look like, vaguely trying to think of where the tension in the cloth would be and which parts would be lower or higher. This part is the hardest for me to explain because I'm still trying to figure it out. But I often think I can get a pretty presentable looking fascimile of clothing folds. Trial and error works! This part usually takes a long time for me, which would be cut down by a ton if I actually knew what I was doing.
And this is the last stretch! For the finishing touches, I usually add some Overlay with a saturated colour using an Airbrush around the edges of where the light meets the darkness. I also add some red or yellow tinted, light-coloured Overlay with an Airbrush to the Face and other areas I want to pop, so in this case, part of the hair and hands. I then use a darker, not too saturated Overlayed Airbrush to areas that are along the edges of the drawing, like on the top of the shoulder that's not in the light. I Liquify a little if there are parts that look off to me. In this instance, I also slightly darkened the secondary shadows in the lightened part of the hair because I wanted it to stick out just a little more. But with that, our drawing is complete! Congrats on sticking through it all!
At the end of writing this, thinking back on it, this is definitely not my best drawing. It's not bad by any means, but it's not spectacular or special. However, I enjoyed how it turned out and I think it could serve as a baseline for what I hope to do in the future. I hope this helped whoever is reading this to get some new ideas or maybe learn something new about my art process or their own. Thank you for being along for the ride. Have a great day, and I'll be signing out!