james is always one motto away
wonder what they called for

james is always one motto away
wonder what they called for
How do you do your mood lighting? I know what it is and does but I’ve got no idea how to figure out how to do it. Do you have any tips? I’m trying to improve my art and yours is always so pretty. I really love all your Freed stuff!❤️
Hi there!! Thank you for your kind words! 💕 I apologize for a quite late reply, but here we go now! 😅
Also gosh, those days when I was drawing Freed literally all the time 💚. I’m gonna use my mdzs art as examples though, because currently they’re the only wip files that I have on my laptop (and I kinda changed my coloring methods at this point in comparison with my FT art)
So by mood lighting I call the way I add some extra lighting and coloring once I do the main shading of the characters, to kind of make them blend more into the scene and make things more cohesive.
This is how my layer tree usually looks like and the one I'm gonna describe here is the 3rd/general one - it's above both the character and background groups, so it affects everything.
One thing that I always like to do for mood lighting is to add a soft glow from where the light source is, since it makes things a bit more cinematic - I do it by using the Airbrush tool set to Luminosity/Addition with a bright color (name depends on the software you use, I use Paint Tool SAI) and lower the opacity until I get the result that I like. It's the same thing as I talked about here in this super old manga coloring tip.
You can do it just a little bit when you want the soft/tender mood or really intense for action stuff.
It's also nice to do this thing using the Overlay setting to kind of make the colors a bit more consistent. You airbrush the colors and adjust the layer settings to your liking.
A thing that I definitely recommend is to include bounce light in your art. It's essentially the light that gets reflected by the environment and falls back on the object opposite from the light source. Though in my case I often just turn it into a secondary light. I usually do warm main lighting, so I use cool colors for the shadows/bounce/second light.
And I do this by using a clipped layer to the folder with the characters and an Airbursh/Marker tool set to Luminosity or Overlay (it depends). [so technically this goes into my 2nd lighting category, since it only affects the characters]
I recommend watching some tutorials about how different types of lighting and shadows work, since personally I’m still learning all this and it’s still nice to hear what someone else also has to say. Here is a quite nice and simple one about the principles of shading + an example how to use it!
Alone these are quite subtle, but they quickly add up and if you mix and match these things you can get some nice results!
I'll be adding more hair and skin tone options in the future, let me know if you have any suggestions!
All links and art provided by @ itsajart on TikTok
Before you go “mY aRt sTyLe iS dIfFrEnT tHoUgH” you can moderate it and play around with your style to get it to fit.
i really like what gay people have done with batman
It's called projecting
Can I get one of these for hairstyles?
@master-duncan How about these?
(I had a lot of trouble finding women’s hairstyles :/ Also ymmv on hairstyle names…)
*takes a knee* hey gang
so you may or may not know this, but the tumblr metrics system works in a really interesting way where it literally does not count likes. only reblogs. that means if something gets 100 likes and 5 reblogs, that thing actually registers as having 5 notes.
i don’t know how everyone finds fic on tumblr, but i tend to go through the tags. what ends up happening is a lot of really great fic gets buried because it was posted, like, a day ago, so it doesn’t show up in “recent” and it doesn’t show up in “top” because of lack of interaction.
reblogging is vital to keeping this community alive, otherwise we stagnate
okay since this is in my notifs again: I don’t mean only reblogs show up as notes (the little number in the bottom corner of posts). I mean that tumblr has an algorithm, the same as YouTube or tiktok, and the algorithm only registers reblogs. That means that what shows up at the top of the tags and in recommendations all comes down to the number of reblogs.
Reblogging is not just important to show creators support— we as a community will literally not be able to find new content unless it circulates or ends up at a visible place in the tags.
For those of you that don’t know what 4c hair is, 4c hair is a hair texture type that contains coils to small and tight that the hair appears to be more puffy rather than curly ( like to photo below ) this is in NO WAY to be confused with curly hair. there is a drastic difference.
As a black artist that primarily draws characters with 4c hair, I’ve been asked many times to do a tutorial on 4c hair so here we go~
let’s take a look at this example of straight hair vs curly hair ( 1 type straight hair vs 3 type curly hair )
If you take a moment to compare the two you’ll notice straight hair is flat, it has no texture. Straight hair perfectly hangs down similar to liquid-like silk. It’s lack of curl pattern is the reason as to why it hangs perfectly flat.
curly hair on the other hand doesn’t lie down flat and silky like straight hair, It’s more thick. Curly hair in it’s raw and unstyled state has a trapezoid like shape this is because the sides of the hair spread more outward.
the answer to that question is a thing called piling up. When it comes to hair texture, the shape of the hair strands aren’t the only thing that matters, its how the strands coexist with each other, Curly hair strands coexist by piling up on top each other.
moisture also effects hair texture too, different hair types absorbs moisture differently, thus the thickness of each hair type is different.
Well let’s take a look at the drawing below. Notice how the arrows go outward more as the hair texture gets curlier. As we’ve already discussed, this is because hair piles up, The curlier the hair texture, the more it piles up on each other, the bigger it gets, the more outward the arrows go.
Out of any hair texture, 4C hair has the most curls. Because of this, the hair piles up on each other so much that it doesn’t lie down flat like straight hair, nor does it make a trapezoid like shape like curly hair, it instead becomes more cloud like.❤️
Think of it as piling up a bunch of cotton balls on each other. The most cotton on top of top to lead to a bigger patch of cotton. this is 4c hair.
Garnet fanart. Let’s talk about Garnet Fanart. I notice a trend that when artists draw Garnet from Steven universe, her hair texture is usually changed to 3 type curly like texture. This subtle form of White washing has confused me because this is inaccurate.
Garnet’s hair is in the shape of a cube. Though 3 type hair piles up on each other, it isn’t curly nor thick enough for their hair to stay in the shape of a cube. Curly hair lies down more than 4c hair. So garnet’s hair being in the shape of a cube is a dead giveaway that it is 4C. Why do you think hairstyles like flat tops are usually seen on black men with 4c hair? It’s because, the 4c hair texture is thick and strong enough to stay in whatever shape you put it in.
please, if you’re drawing a character with 4c hair, avoid drawing it like curly 3 type hair, this is very anti-black and texturist.
honestly, its the most easy thing in the world
i wanna clarify that blobby looking 4c drawings ( like the one on the top left ) can work depending on how cartoony your art style is.
Another thing that I want to greatly clarify when it comes to drawing 4C hair is, YOU. DONT. NEED. TO. DRAW. EVERY. HAIR. STRAND!…..like, seriously. I’ve gotten many messages about how 4C hair is hard to draw, and it’s always left me confused; but then I find out that the same people that have trouble drawing 4C hair, attempt to draw every single strand of hair. This is unnecessarily time consuming because it’s merely impossible to get every single detail down, especially when you have a simple cartoon style. 4C hair does not require much effort, all you’re doing is drawing lumps. It’s that simple, nothing more nor nothing less.
The reason why I greatly advise all of you to avoid drawing every single hair strand is because in real life, when you look at a 4C textured Afro, your eyes don’t pick up on each individual hair strand like straight or curly hair. 4C hair, appears to be more undefined and cloud like, so attempting to draw each and every individual strand is unnecessary and will most likely end up looking inaccurate.
Holy FUCK, this is an amazing tool.
Reblogging for my artist fellows.
Reblog this!
My collection of clothing references for writing.
Ya know what , I’m adding. Here are more useful references that I use;
Here’s a collection of tips I’ve learned and use for coloring darker skin tones. I hope this helps people out who want to diversify their art!
Note; I’m not an expert, and I’m mostly drawing from experiences and my cultural background.
The Cute Outfit Meme - Send me an outfit and a character!
ill do some asks for my >oh sees<
I read every tag and I love you all mwah
i learned things today on twitter dot com
the raw power emanating from this post is overwhelming
Small design update for Morgana, her hair is vv fun
I made a vtuber model to test myself, but I ran into a problem... I have no idea how to rig it on live 2d. if anyone can help it would be much appreciated
Three more Npcs from my motw campain. a colored sketch, a flat color, and a basic shading.
As for characters we have Ace, Elaine, and Jezabel