A Digital Artist’s Guide To Digital Art Guides

Your art is amazing!!! I love the stunning use of colour! Do you have a process to pic colours or just mess with them until you get something you like? :)

Thank you, you’re so sweet!! When I draw my own characters I just pick colors I like but for fanart there’s a few things I do. I’ll share my process here in hopes it might help!

Comfort

When working with vibrant colors I like to soften them by warming them up, making them similar to each other, and avoiding pure colors altogether. Our eyes are sensitive so I never want my colors to be too bright or contrasting.

Unique

Tertiary colors are more unique and calming than primary colors so I use them a lot to punch up my art without making things too intense. It also puts a fun twist on designs when we use colors that are close but not exactly like the originals.

Balance

Balancing colors is so important! It’s my final step to completing every color palette I make. There has to be a variety, contrast, and a connection between colors. Adding a little of the same color to all of the others helps to accomplish this. Usually I take a shortcut by adding a color overlay in my painting programs. This is also another reason why I never use pure white or black---those colors will not be affected by color overlays.

There’s also my color post here if anyone wants to know more about color theory and things. Color is a huge deal but it’s really fun!

Egg Nebula

also known as RAFGL 2688 and CRL 2688, the Egg Nebula is located 3000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus.

The nebula is a bi-polar proto-planetary nebula, or essentially a star in the dying days of it's existence starting to throw out shells of atmosphere as it moves towards being a white dwarf.

The central star is concealed by an area of dust with the light poking out in areas where the dust is lightest, this is thought to be an accretion disk around the star.

HiPOD 22 Apr 2022: Layers to the West of Gale Crater

The objective of this observation is to examine thin layers in the Nepenthes Mensae region. Because this location is close to Gale Crater, these layers may one day be compared to those currently being studied by the Curiosity rover. This scene was also imaged by the Context Camera onboard MRO.

Nepenthes Mensae is a plateau, whose name derives from Greek for a drug that quells all sorrows with forgetfulness. “Nepenthe” literally means “without grief” (ne = not, penthos = grief) and was a potion given to Helen by an Egyptian queen in Homer’s “Odyssey.”

Enhanced color image is less than 1 km across; black and white is less than 5 km.

ID: ESP_055565_1750 date: 4 June 2018 altitude: 265 km

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Just some quick clothing folds, weight, and shape visuals.

Art Tips for Vibrant Lighting

Some tips and tricks for getting glowy, beautiful, vibrant lighting effects…especially in traditional art, with no ctrl+z! The example piece is a watercolor work in progress of mine and, if you’re familiar with watercolor, you know it’s super unforgiving. What you put down stays!

Tip 1: Create a thumbnail

Do a very loose, messy sketch of your illustration. This helps define the composition, but it can also help you pick where your light is coming from and what colors you’ll use for it. This way, you can reference the light source and colors while you’re painting!

Even if you’re working digitally, this creates a great color key you can turn back to. You can make a thumbnail digitally or traditionally. 

This thumbnail only took about 20 minutes…and it’s saved so many headaches during the painting process. 

When you have a thumbnail, the rest of your painting is just a translation of those colors with a better technique. 

Tips:

Feel free to make many thumbnails! This is the easiest step to revise and repeat.

Use a photo for inspiration for your color scheme. I used clouds in the evening as color references. 

Play around with layers and effects (like overlay, multiply). This can help you figure out new colors that you can then try to capture traditionally!

Tip 2: Don’t forget about your lines!

Line art is important for gradients! I did mine first, so I had to consider the glow effect too. It’s a bit blurry (as its a screenshot from a reel, lol), but you can see yellows to dark browns and blacks. This established the glow from the start!

Tips:

Consider using a media you can get gradients in. I used acryla gouache here, but ink, watercolor, and even markers can work well! 

If it’s hard to visualize highlights in line art, do the lines after with pen or paint! Adding shadows and highlights that way can be easier. 

Tip 3: Start with big gradients first

Once you have your sketch on paper finished, start with large gradients! This helps define your light source and keep your whole composition making sense. 

Here, I started with the background sky, then added in the shadow coming off the wing before doing anything else. Take note of how helpful the thumbnail was in helping me lay this all out, too!

Tip 4: Think warm to cool

See how both the hair and wings move from warm (yellow/browns) to cool colors (blues, payne’s grey)? This is a surefire way to keep the strong light source and make it look like the light is glowing!

Tips:

This is all about keeping the colors close to your light source, so if your light source is cool (like the moon), your highlights are cool and your shadows are warm tones. The key is just to keep it consistent! 

Lighting isn’t just light to dark gradients. It’s also warm to cool/cool to warm!

Think about all the spots the light catches (like that one front feather on the left top). It takes a lot of thinking through, but it’ll make a huge impact! (Remember, you can always revisit your thumbnail or add more details in there)

Don’t forget about reflected light, bouncing off another surface. It’ll be more subtle than the main light source, but still there!

Final Tips:

Love those gradients! Watercolor is meant for beautiful gradients, so use multiple colors for a glow. The feathers in the light go from yellow ochre to prussian blue to payne’s grey.

Start with the highlights first, then work into the shadows! Above, the skin isn’t even painted with shadows yet, because I wanted to get the lighting first.

This is just a WIP right now, but I hope these tips help! If you want to follow, I’ll be posting more progress pics (and the finished illustration soon too). :D

My: Instagram | Twitter

I knew that the eruption/explosion of Krakatoa was the loudest sound in recorded history, but I couldn’t quite grasp how loud until I got a couple details of perspective. This was in 1883.

The shock wave ruptured the eardrums of sailors 40 miles away.

The explosion was heard more than 3,000 miles away, and recorded all over the world.

It made tsunamis nearly 100 feet high.

Now picture this happening in modern times, with modern communications. Not only would there be uncountable videos and whatnot, but the timing is what really gets me. Imagine you’re going about your day, scrolling social media, and posts start pouring in about an apocalyptic volcano on the other side of the continent. The news are full of it. You spend ages glued to the screen; this isn’t remotely close to you, but it’s a big deal, and you know people who live closer to it.

Three hours later, something explodes outside. Propane tank? Car fire? Some jackass with illegal firecrackers?

Nope. That was the sound wave, finally reaching you.

Random Fact #3,062

The wind on Neptune can blow at speeds of 2,000 km/hour.

The winds causing the Great Dark Spot specifically have been measured to be around 1,127 km/hour.

i learned about Tim Wong who successfully and singlehandedly repopulated the rare California Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly in San Francisco. In the past few years, he’s cultivated more than 200 pipevine plants (their only food source) and gives thousands of caterpillars to his local Botanical Garden (x)