Hello, everyone! Hana-chan speaking! In this tutorial, I will be showing you the overall steps of how I color and shade characters to give them a soft gradient look, featuring the Youtube cover artist, Froggie, in honor of her birthday! So let's begin!

0.0 Brief Review On Lineart

Draw the lineart on a vector layer. This will allow you to have an easier time cleaning up your final lineart with a vector eraser, and even readjust your lines to save time. After you are done, make sure that you set your lineart as your reference layer.

1.0 Coloring Skin

Create a new layer beneath your lineart and use the reference wand to color in the skin. It is important to NOT turn off the wand until you are done shading. This way, you can minimize the number of layer (which is especially useful when you're coloring something complicated) and your coloring will still look tidy and clean.

Create a linear burn layer and bring down the opacity to about 80%. I usually clip the shading layers to the base color layer so that I can spy them easily. Technically, you do not have to do this as long as you continue to utilize the reference wand.

Since Froggie has light skin, I used a coral pink color (Make sure that it's not too saturated!). If you're coloring a darker skin color, just darken this hue and unsaturate it a bit. Use the edge of the soft brush to go over the areas that are likely to have a shadow like near the bangs, under the neck, and the sides of the face.

Next, use either a pen or mechanical pencil (depending on how strong you want the actual shadow to be) and go over the actual shadow lines as shown below.

To give the shading more depth, go to the soft brush and change it to black burn.

Go over the most concentrated areas of the shaded areas. Because you changed the mode of the brush, the black burn will only affect whatever is drawn on the current layer.

Be careful not to overdo the black burn. Remember, to create depth, you must make the shading look gradient, as shown in the picture below.

After you're finished shading the skin, use either a pen or pencil to remove the shading around the body edges, like the chin (as shown below), fingers, and limbs.

If you wish to add some blush to your character, select a more saturated coral pink. Use a soft brush to lightly touch on the cheeks. You can color the blush on either the linear or base color layer. However, if you do add the blush on the linear layer, be sure not to make the blush too dark or you will end up coloring over the shadow beneath it.

2.0 Eyes

On a separate layer, use a a turnip pen to color the sclera (the whiteness of the eye).

Lock the layer and select a dark dull blue color and color the shadow of the eye.

Use a soft brush and lightly go over the edge of the shadow to give it a more gradient look.

Unlock the layer and use the reference wand to select the eye's iris.

To add the foundation of the eye's highlight, take the turnip pen, change the mode to White Burn and decrease the opacity. Depending on how light and saturated the base color of the eye is, you may have to decrease the opacity to as low as 50%.

Color over the eyes as shown.

Reset the turnip pen back to its normal mode and opacity and select black to color in the pupil.

To add the shade, we will again take the soft brush and set the mode to black burn. (Because the sclera and iris is on the same layer, do not turn off the reference wand selection!) Brush over the upper half of the eye and coninue to brush while working your way up to the top of the iris.

Finally to add extra highlight, use a regular white pen or pencil.

3.0 Hair

Using the reference wand, select the hair section and color the base. Make the hair color a little lighter than you want it to be since the shading will darken most of the hair.

3.1 Selecting the shading color

Use a soft brush and stroke over the top, tips of the bangs, and sides of the head to form the overall shadow area on the linear layer. Since I'm coloring green hair, I used an unsaturated orange color.

The color of your shading color can make a big difference in coloring, especially for the hair. As you can see below, you can use this unsaturated orange color for most hair colors.

However, colors like blonde can be tricky. If the blonde hair color is more orange than yellow, simply saturate your shading color a bit.

In some cases, you may have to even redden the shading color a bit, or the shading will look muddy as shown below.

3.2 Shading Details

Now that you've created the overall shading, it's time to emphasis on the layers and locks of the hair. Take a pen or a pencil and with the same color you used to shade, start drawing out the hair lines.

Make sure the that the hair lines like the ones on the bangs narrow down as shown below by turning the pencil or pen into an eraser.

Once you are done drawing the hair lines, start erasing the edges of the hair as shown below. This part takes practice.

Lastly, set the soft brush to Black Burn and lightly go over the top and sides to create more depth in the hair shading.

3.3 Hightlight

To make the hair's hightlight, create a screen layer and select the same color as the base. Then with a pencil or pen, create a broad brush stroke across the bangs, and hair locks as shown below.

You will then take the soft brush and erase the edge of the bottom part of the highlight.

If you wish to be detailed, use a pen or pencil to draw extra highlights, and erase the areas where the highlight will not be visible, like behind the ear, and hair as shown.

4.0 Clothes

Coloring clothes is very similar to coloring the hair. Use the reference wand to color in the base.

Next, use a soft brush and go over the general shaded areas on the linear layer. As you can see, I chose a coral pink color to give the sweater a honey-gold look.

Use the same shading color and with a pen or pencil, go over the creases and folds of the attire. This also takes practice.

After you are done, go over the edges of the attire and erase them as shown below.

Lastly, use a soft brush set to Black Burn and color over the concentrated shaded areas, like the armpits and neck.

5.0 Mouth

The mouth is probably the easiest part to do. Use the reference wand to select the mouth and use an unsaturated light red for the base.

On the linear layer, use a dark grey color to create the shadow.

Then, use a soft eraser to soften the edge of the shadow.

Not all mouths have teeth, but if you're like me, and think that your character would look better with a pair of chompers, go back to the base layer and draw two white lines for the rows of teeth.

As you can see, the top row is shaded in, so use an eraser and erase the center area of the teeth. The ends of the teeth rows should be darker than the center.

6.0 The finishing touches

Once you are done coloring in your character, put all the character's layers in a folder.

Create and clip a multiply layer. Then, with a soft brush, go over the sides and edges of the picture. I do this in order to create an overall focus of where the light source is coming from. However, the shading should be subtle, so make sure you use a light grey hue.

To make the colors harmonize with each other better, create and clip an Overlay layer, and choose a general color for your character. For this drawing, I chose a teal green color to help the non-green colors harmonize better with Froggie's green look.

7.0 Final Art

If you went through the entire tutorial, you can see that my methods of coloring is generally the same in each part. I hope you found this tutorial helpful! Happy drawings!