this time, a sketch of myself, albeit a much more bamf-like version. since i can’t draw bodies/clothes right yet, i’m gonna get some practice first and then probs color a version of this.

enjoy.

a) the wordpress layout kinda changed, and

b) i’m probably doing a daily sketch or something every day O___o.

yes it’s a boy and it’s also one of my better sketches (though i do admit, the hand is questionable). i honestly tried to go for less girly eyes, but failed miserably. OTL so i stuck with what i knew, and here is the result.

another thing i noticed – can’t nail the face shape and then fill in the rest. my most successful sketches come from pinning down the eyes first, then the nose and mouth, and then framing it. probably comes from my inability to draw a great face shape in the first place, and also during practicing i tend to draw the eyes first, and everything else comes later.

and here is what i did with the mature-kagura-not pic:

this came from watching TV in the dark and watching the blue glow bounce off the surroundings. NOW EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT GOES ON IN MY STRANGE, MESSED-UP MIND. >.<

enjoy?

so now for some stuff – you can go to loki on the moon for my “acceptable” works, haha, and i’ll post what i did today and some sketches. i’m still not very good at drawing either, but i’m practicing. >.< my method of “practicing” is just copying line for line my favorite manga pages, so hopefully we’ll see some results. O: already i’ve changed my “drawing style” from whatever crap it was before to something…well, better. ANYWAY, before i distract myself with another tangent, here we go:

suigetsu

here you go, suigetsu from naruto. he’s my favorite from team hebi (or whatever they’re called now ) and i wouldn’t say no to some suigetsu x sasuke this took me a few hours to do, but it’s still kinda horrible. i’m no good at coloring hair at all, and like i said, my painting skillz haven’t improved all that much OTL

sketches:

gora

my OC, gora named so because he kinda reminds me of an air-gear-lavi type character, so it was a shameless mushing of the words “gear” and “rabi.” >.< and i will not lie, i used a ref pic of histugaya to get the angle right, so if it looks like hitsugaya…well, that’s why. xD

mature kagura??

so here’s the start of an idea i had. i originally drew the image on the left, but had nowhere to go after that, so i randomly just drew kagura there. xD don’t think i’m going to go through with the “grown-up kagura” idea though, because as much as i love kagura, i don’t like pictures of her as an adult

alright, that’s all for now. keep your eyes peeled for another post, maybe. enjoy.

was bored the other day, dug out some paper textures and did some really easy photoshops:

don’t know why the black came out so pixelly…i thing it’s cuz i re-adjusted image afterwards. oh well. too lazy to change it.

enjoy.

vexel start tutorial

vexel hair tutorial

vexel eyes tutorial 1 2

have fun and enjoy. even though i failed, i still found it fun, so please try it!

if you hadn’t noticed, all my blogs are space-theme-related, so my portfolio is aptly named loki on the moon. you can go through the pictures two ways – click on the “more” at the bottom right of each snapshot and read (very) brief notes on the picture, or click on the snapshot and and if you mouse over somewhere near the sides, there will be “next” and “previous” buttons with which you can toggle through the pictures on the page. if you want to go to the next page’s contents, you’ll have scroll to the bottom, click “next,” and start all over again. well, you’ll get the drift when you go there.

you can also see my previous attempt at coloring manga pages – the 07 ghost one, in which i figured out using multiply was a quick and dirty way to color.

enjoy!

so this is a tutorial in which we turn this:

hibari, b&w

into this:

hibari, colored

we will not do this with a tablet, but instead with our very own index fingers. it is easier to do if you’re using a laptop touchpad (especially one that doesn’t freak out at the slightest touch) but with enough practice you’ll be pretty proficient with a mouse as well.

interested?

the lazy man’s guide to manga coloring.

1. step one – whip out your favorite manga page and your version of photoshop – in my case, photoshop 7 and a picture of hibari kyouya from katekyo hitman reborn! (good manga, btw.). the face should big enough to work on, but if you’re extra skilled, you are of course open to using the picture of your choice.

2. the method we’re going to do this shindig with is layering with layer mode “multiply.” in case you didn’t know what this means, this mode darkens the layer beneath it. not a great explanation, but if you still don’t know what i’m talking about, you’ll see what i mean in a bit. the reason for this is because it’s easier than erasing all the white and we’ll be keeping the line art pretty faithfully. and again, this is a lazy man’s guide. but this also means we’ll have to work backward a bit – the base skin layer will be the highlight on his face, and the eraser tool will be your main arsenal.

so, in other words, choose a respectable, light skin color. it should be a little lighter than what you think to be the regular skin color, of course, and it should lie in the top left corner of the color picker with a yellow to yellow-orange tinge. for hibari i chose #FFFFF4. create a new layer on top your image, name it “base” or whatever you want, set the layer mode to “multiply” (in the upper left corner of the layers window), and take your brush tool and color in all the areas in which his skin will be. i usually zoom in 300-400% just to be accurate.

3. now duplicate the layer and rename it something like “1″ so you can keep the layers in order. then choose your eraser tool, change it to a 5px soft round brush, and set the flow to 60%. now we will be choosing the primary highlights – the lighest areas of the face where the light will hit it first. in this case, it would be the cheekbones, the bridge of the nose, the tip of the nose, the little area right above the upper lip, and near the bottom of the chin. here are the areas where you want to keep out of – the very edges of the face and anywhere the hair might make a shadow, up to your discretion.

change your brush to a 20 or 30 px brush for the larger areas, such as cheekbones. you can use the bracket keys on your keyboard to change the size of the brush. zoom in 300-400% and follow where the cheekbones would be, then change your brush to a smaller size, anything below 8px, to do the other areas. see the picture below if you don’t know what the shape should look like. it’s hard to see what you’re doing but as the layers add on you’ll really see the work progress.

4. duplicate your current layer, rename it to your desire, and now erase just a tad around you just erased. certain highlights of the face will expand downwards or upwards. for example, expanding downwards means you will erase more at the bottom of the area and just barely around the top. cheekbones and the bridge expand downwards, the rest expand upwards. the chin also expands sideways.

as you go along each layer doing this, you also want to add new highlights. on this layer or the one right after this, i like to add a little sheen towards the bottom of the lower lip. a few more layers in, and add a small triangle on the neck where there won’t be many shadows. a few more, add highlight between the eyebrow and eyelid crease. and after few more, add those small triangles between hair strands. this sounds very gradual but it goes by pretty quickly. from experience, most of my faces have 11-12 layers. of course, you can always add in appropriate highlights afterwards if you see the need, but i like to add the appropriate highlights while coloring.

it may get a little confusing to keep track of what areas you’ve done after a while since they keep adding up, so i always like to work from the topmost areas to the bottom. and if the layers start to look a little yellow or orange, just use a very light grey for the next layer, but don’t worry about this too much. we’ll talk about it later.

here is the finished product at 200% magnification:

5. as you can see, it’s a little dark since i used a light grey starting from layer #5. no need to worry, though. you can darken or lighten to your preference by changing the opacity of the shade layers. in this particular finished version, i used 55% opacity for layers 2-11.

if the neck seems a little light to you, you can always create a new layer set to “multiply” and fill in in, then ease down the opacity to around 60%.

6. skin is done. if you missed a few spots (like i did around the eyes), don’t worry about it. create a new layer, take the eyedropper tool and pick somewhere around the white spot, then take the brush tool at 2 or 3px and carefully fill it in. since there is no hair to color, we won’t be doing that, and i’m not very good at hair anyway, so you shouldn’t trust me. however, should your subject have hair to be colored, create a new layer, name it “hair” or something to that affect, and set it to “multiply”, and color it in. then create a new layer, “hair shadow,” take a small hard round brush, and add shadow around the hair strands. creater another new layer, “hair highlight,” choose a lighter color, set the layer to “lighten” or “screen” and add in appropriate highlights. here is an example:

like i said, i’m not very good.

7. moving onto eyes. the eyes are one of my favorite parts, and i keep it to one layer. create a new layer, “eyes,” and again set it to multiply. we’ll be using a light purple for his eyes, i’m using #BE82DD. zoom in around 400-500%, or to a point you can comfortably tinker with the eyes. fill in the eyes with the color. then, choose a visibly darker shade (i chose #9454B5) and color in just inside the edges of the iris. and then, for the finishing touch – a little bit of glint or sheen. choose a visibly lighter color (i chose #D5ADEA) , and using a 1 or 2px soft round brush, curve a line right below the pupil.

now for the fleshy inside – i use a dark grey pink, in this case #AA8C8C, for the outer part, and a nice light-ish pink for the inner part. i used #F2D6D6. then i shade the inner part a little at the border of the eye and the skin. i used a darker pink, #E2B9B9. and the eyes are done!

8. the clothes are the next part. since he’s wearing a suit, it’s not very hard. in fact, clothes in general aren’t very hard. if you’re dealing with a shirt of color, fill in a layer on “multiply” with your desired color, and then just use a darker color to shade along folds and ruffles. here, hibari is wearing a white shirt, so we’ll be using a light grey, i’m using #D5D4D4. by now i think you know the deal – create a new layer, name it “clothes,” then set to multiply. color the area inside his collar (i actually used black in this picture, it looked a little awkward with the grey), along its edges, then under it. also shade in where the suit hits the shirt and where his hair is overhanging. and you’re done!

9. we’re moving towards the homestretch now. all there is left to do is the background. now there are many types of backgrounds, obviously, and it is up to your discretion, really, on how to do them. for actions lines, choose and color and then just play around with layer modes. i prefer soft light, overlay, or screen, or try linear light on 50% opacity for something really funky. i haven’t done many buildings, but i take some artistic licensing with it. whatever. here are some previous examples:

here, in this particular picture, we’ll use soft light and linear burn for the sky and overlay for the trees.

trees: overlay colors the black areas, so don’t worry about being neat. create a new layer, “trees,” and set it to overlay. use a dark sort of forest green, in my case #1C6A1A, and color it in. then duplicate it and set the duplicate layer to 50% opacity.

sky: use a light sky blue (i used #DEF2FB), and create a new layer, “sky 1″, and set it to soft light. color the sky part with this color, even between the trees, with a large soft round brush. then duplicate the layer, set it to linear burn, then change the opacity to 50%.

and voila! there you go.

the finished product:

hope you enjoyed the ride, and good luck!

my name is miraa, and i’ve been photoshopping for several years. i’m at an intermediate level (though that covers a wide range) and i’m nothing special at photoshop, but i do enjoy it very much and am always trying to find new things to photoshop. this blog will not only contain my work, which is also being documented at loki on the moon (tumblr), some tutorials that i’ve made up, and useful resources i find around the web. i’m also a budding amateur writer, find me at the cat from mars (lj) or le chat du mars (wordpress). other than that, hope you enjoy your stay at my blog. feel free to drop by to browse or even leave comments, that would make me a very happy extraterristrial cat.