Digital Art

Sketching digitally is a very important part of my process because it allows me get more comfortable with the software and the tools I use! I always recommend sketching exercises to those who are starting out with digital art, because it is the best way to familiarize yourself with the tools. When sketching, I try to put more emphasis on flow and expression than on anatomical precision – it’s important that the sketches have energy and movement. If you want to learn more about my digital sketching process, check out Loish’s Digital Art School – there you can find a free video tutorial demonstrating my digital sketching process from beginning to end!

Me and linework have a conflicted relationship! I used to spend a lot of time making detailed and clean lineart, but I found it tedious and boring. At some point I started skipping that stage and going from the rough sketch straight into the painting phase – and that worked out really well! This is the workflow I continue to use today. If you want to learn more about how I go from sketch to color, check out Loish’s Digital Art School – it has free tutorials that explain this aspect of my workflow in more detail.

This is the aspect of my process that I get the most questions about! Choosing colors, for me, is largely an intuitive process. I use color editing tools to adjust and modify the colors until I like what I see. I use my intuition to judge whether I like the colors or not – which is easy to explore if you’re using digital tools, because you can endlessly modify them! If you want to learn more about how I choose colors, check out Loish’s Digital Art School – one of the free video tutorials is specifically about how I choose color.

When making digital paintings, I like to start out with a messy, rough version of the drawing. In this rough version, the overall composition and colors are there, but I just need to ‘clean it up’ to bring it to a finished level. For this, I use a technique that I call “sculpting with color.” Basically, that involves alternating the eyedropper shortcut and brush tool to smooth out and clean up the painting! It feels very intuitive and easy because I’m only using a few very simple tools to do it. If you want to know more about this workflow, I have a tutorial about this subject over on my Patreon!

I use layers in kind of an odd way. I try to work on a minimal number of layers, because I easily get lost in them. Searching for the right one to draw on can really interrupt my workflow. Because of this, I usually start with 2-3 layers for lines, color, and shadows – and as soon as I’ve landed on a rough version that I can finalize, I merge everything together. When I create a detailed painting, I’m usually just working on one layer after I’ve merged everything together at an early stage. For more information about how and when I do this, check out Loish’s Digital Art School, which has a few step-by-step PDFs that elaborate more on this aspect of my workflow.

On the other hand, my artwork usually has a huge amount of layers in the file. This is because I use layers as a timeline. Whenever I make significant changes to my drawing, I’ll start on a new layer, which I can click on and off to see if the drawing is improving. I feel it’s really important to take a step back in your process if you need to, and using layers as a timeline is a big part of being able to do that! So what it comes down to is this: I am usually working on a minimal number of layers, but my file contains a large number of layers. Hopefully that makes sense!