Making sketches presentable (Patreon)

Hey so the other month I'd done a few sketches where I played around with some color stuff to make my rough sketches feel a bit more polished. Thought it might be nice to write up a small description regarding some of the phases and how I went about coloring them. 

Also to preface this let me start with saying that a lot of the knowledge I gleaned from this came from the amazing artist Loish (https://twitter.com/loishh) who has been a major inspiration of mine for many years. For those interested in color, sketches, and art in general should give her patreon a check out! https://www.patreon.com/loish/posts

Alright now onto the how to!!

Starting off was pretty traditional in terms of sketches. Did a sort of rough set of construction lines followed by a set of more detailed sketch/line work.

Following that came the flat colors! This tends to be one of my weaker areas when it comes to quick color stuff in general. As you can see the rough greylines aren't quite meshing with flats, and some of the colors in general just really don't read all that well. But it's always got to start somewhere, and with some tweaking can give off a much more vibrant or harmonious color scheme that really works well for a pic! So starting after this point, most of the new stuff I wanted to play with came into play. I'll focus these around 5 main points which usually are flaws in my sketches:

1. Flats feel boring or uninteresting

2. Lack of depth

3. Lack of polish or detail

4. No framing

5. Finishing touches

1. Flats feel boring/uninteresting

Flats can tend to be one of the most crucial ways of making a simple sketch read well. But it's all too easy to just sort of slap colors on there without too much thought. I know for me I tend to rush this phase a little too quickly, when a bit of color tweaking can really make the colors pop. To help with my process on adding flats, these were some of the main things I played with.

-Gradients: By adding subtle color shifts and gradients to some of the major areas, I was able to add just a little bit of variation to really help break up the monotony.

-Color tweaks: By playing with the color adjustment setting in my art program, I did some tweaks to the various colors so that they didn't feel so dull around each other.

-Line color tweaks: As mentioned above, the grey lines just weren't reading well. To fix this I started playing around with the over all line color on the body and clothes to see what felt more organic.

-Multiply wash: To sort of tie in all the colors with a bit of unity, I applied a very faint multiply layer over all of the colors so bring some harmony.

-Final color shifts: Lastly did a few last tweaks to some of the main color areas. Using a feathered lasso, I'd nudge up the saturation, tweak hues, and overall play around with some colors in important areas to give interesting tweaks.

2. Lack of Depth

Most times with sketches they don't have any semblance of value or lighting. Trying to go all out on it can be heavily time consuming, but at the same time just leaving it at flats can tend to leave a sketch feeling lackluster. To help this I played around with a few small additions to add depth.

-Multiply layers for shading: Adding some quick shadows and simple shading with a multiply layer really helped put focus on main parts while helping readabilit. Make sure to play with the color of the multiply layer to really sell the shadows.

-Rimlighting: To add some visual interest I had played out some quick and messy rimlighting across certain parts of the body. This is not meant to be an all inclusive lighting, but more of a way to help with some focal points and visual interest. A sketchier brush, and colored light really helped to sell this.

Lack of detail/polish

Now comes the part that I can tend to spend too much time on XD. Usually I'm a fiend when it comes to details, so for this I really wanted to just focus on some key areas and touches to help the pic.

-Merge layers and start detailing: By duplicating my layers and merging them all together, it allowed me to focus on the picture itself without worrying about other stuff. GOing across the sketch, I'd start cleaning up spots like the face, hands, hips, ect. Spots where a little bit more polish really helps the focal points read well.

-Screen highlights: One key aspect for detail work is to add some crucial highlights across the body. This allows you to sell a bit of lighting and material without going fully in depth shading wise.

-Color contours: This was a new one for me. By creating a duplicate of the current work and bumping up it's saturation, masks could be used to give certain areas vibrant color contrast. Although this had to be done very sparingly, as it was really easy to overdue the color work done up to this point.

4. No Framing

One of the easiest things to do with a sketch is to leave it as it is with the lines and flats and send it off that way. By adding a small background, even if it's simplistic allows the picture to have better readability and interest.

-Simple gradient: Usually adding a square with a simple gradient behind the character helped to start off the background or framing. Using gradients and some color shifts helped to make it also not feel too bland similar to the flats.

-Color tweaks: BY lassoing various areas and doing minor tweaks to the colors, it added a bit more variety to the pic. After changing the colors, I usually did a bit of rough brush work to blend the transitions or give interesting texture.

-Lastly for sketch I tended to do a minor tweak to colors so that it reads better against the background. With lighter backgrounds the colors may need to be shifted a tad bit darker, or for saturations to be moved around depending on what colors the background has.

5. Finishing touches

Now is when all the last little bits can be done to finish up the sketch. These usually tend to be final tweaks, little additions, and finishing up with a signature.

-Filters: Lots of different filters can be used to bring about some intrigue in the pic. FOr these I played around with some simple chromatic aberration on masks so that little areas could have the movement of the colors. Doing effects like blurs also can tend to help with bringing more focus to the important areas.

-The little things: Sometimes finding the little details to add can help really sell the picture. Can be as small as a bit of work on the eyes or adding a bit of scales to a key part. These are the little things where they feel genuine or intentional for the little thing to be added. These are the "statement" tweaks that add a lot of life with little work.

-Signature: Finally a signature is added to the pic to wrap it up. Although small, it gives it a little bit of professionalism. Can also really help folks to find you when the pic gets posted in other places.

Lastly I went through resizing and saving the file with intentions of posting it on social media/art sites. By sizing a pic per the specs of a website, you can make sure the horrendous compression doesn't happen haha.

I really hope you all can glean some good info off of this similar to how I did! It's been fun to play around with these little things on the sketches and can't wait to play with it some more in the future!! If you have any questions regarding certain parts let me know and I can see about fleshing it out a bit more :3!