Introduction

When painting illustrations, being mindful of both shadows and highlights makes them look beautiful.

Here, I will explain how to apply shadows and highlights.

Since the method of painting differs for hair, clothes, and skin, I will explain each separately.

If you want to watch the video in a language other than Japanese, please turn on subtitles → automatic translation.

1. Hair

First, I will explain how to paint hair.

For everything, not just hair, I will be painting using "Clip to Layer Below."

Click the icon in the upper left of the Layer window.

If a red bar appears, it's OK.

 

Paint hair with an image of shadows & shine.

I will explain with a simple diagram.

① First, paint the tips of the hair, near the crown, and the back part. (Red part)

② Next, draw the shine. Paint only the back of the head.

I feel like painting around the middle of the hair creates a good balance. (Purple part)

③ Finally, add fine shadows. This creates a delicate impression. (Green part)

This completes the shadowing.

Next, paint the highlights.

(Shadows are hidden.)

① Draw lines around the upper part of the forehead.

② Partially erase with a transparent color or extend the color with a sharp watercolor blend.

③ Use "Lock Transparent Pixels" and apply a bright color with an airbrush on the light source side (right side).

When the shadows are displayed, it looks like this.

This concludes the highlights.

Finally, apply a gradient to the tips of the bangs with an airbrush.

This gives the impression that the hair is translucent.

Here is the layer structure.

(From top:

Highlight,

Translucency (overlay/wash),

Shadow,

Base color)

This concludes the hair painting for now.

2. Clothes

Paint clothes with a soft brush.

I think it's good to use a customized opaque watercolor brush.

(I'm using it with "Blend mode" unchecked and brush density set to 23.)

For clothes,

(From left)

"Paint as is",

"Paint and then shave with an eraser to create a curve",

"Paint and then erase the top or bottom with a transparent color",

"Apply a darker color at the boundary of light and dark",

I will paint by combining these four patterns.

Paint the shadows of the blazer.

Paint while changing the opacity of the brush.

Paint wider areas lighter, and narrower areas darker.

I feel that adding fine shadows near the seams makes it look more realistic.

Paint the cast shadows from the head and tie. Use a darker color.

Socks look like this. After painting,

erase. Also, paint some thin shadows along the contours.

This concludes the blazer and socks for now.

Paint the dress. The procedure is mostly the same, but here only a multiply layer is used for the light shadow areas.

Cast shadows are on a normal layer.

For the pleated parts, paint along the pleats with a light color. I think it's good to paint while leaving the edges.

Cast shadows with a darker color. Also paint the reverse side, the edges of the pleats, and so on.

For the tie, both light shadows and cast shadows are on a normal layer.

This concludes the dress and tie for now.

3. Skin

Paint the skin. Paint cast shadows with a slightly purplish color. Since I will add a gradient to the base color later, I use a darker color.

Paint the hands. I painted the entire far hand with a light purple, imagining aerial perspective.

I painted the near hand with a pinkish color.

This concludes the skin for now.

4. Eyes

Paint the eyes. I'll explain briefly.

First, paint the whites of the eyes and shadows. Making the whites of the eyes a slightly lower brightness white makes them look calmer.

Paint the edges of the eyelashes with an airbrush.

Paint the iris. Place a bright color towards the bottom.

Draw in pupils and other details.

Draw reflected light. The bottom part is slightly blurred.

Draw sparkles with an Add (Glow) layer. I used blue. This gives the eyes a moist impression.

Add highlights. Draw them with a slightly triangular shape.

This completes the eyes.

5. Processing

Finally, I will do some processing to make it a little more dramatic.

First, hair processing. Paint the entire hair on a new multiply layer.

At this time, place the multiply layer below the highlight layer.

Create a new normal layer and add strong highlights on the light source side.

(Place this layer at the very top.)

Here is the layer structure.

(From top:

Light source highlight,

Highlight,

Overall shadow [Multiply],

Translucency (overlay/wash),

Shadow,

Base color)

 

Hair processing is complete.

The procedure for clothes is mostly the same, but

here, I'm adding shadow colors to the boundaries of the highlights.

This makes the highlights stand out nicely.

For the dress, I impulsively added highlights around the areas encircled in red.

This concludes the clothes processing.

Only the skin is painted on a normal layer, not a multiply layer.

Paint using the gradient tool.

Select "Foreground to Transparent" and

① Drag from top-left to bottom-right

② Drag from bottom-left to top-right.

After adding the gradient, blush the cheeks,

and add highlights.

I think it's good to add facial highlights in a triangular shape.

Adding a lighter line along the contour on the shadow side makes it look three-dimensional.

Layer structure.

(From top:

Far hand,

Cast shadow,

Highlight,

Blush line,

Contour line,

Cheek blush,

Near hand,

Gradient,

Base color)

This concludes the skin processing.

The hairpin was roughly painted on two layers.

6. Completion

Completed!!

Version with blue overlay 10% on background + character, and light blue 36% on the light source side.

Thank you for reading this far!

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