Hi, I’m Lisa! Today I will teach you how to color and shade quickly with a unrealistic, but super cute style

Step 1. Flats

 

First we will separate our drawing in shapes with flat colors.

Each color should have its own layer and have transparent pixels locked. Like this:

This will keep us from shading outside the right shape.

 

 

Step 2. Blushing

 

My personal rule is: if it sticks out, it blushes. We will add a darker, warmer and more saturated color to the skin and bits that point out, like her bow and collar.

 

We will see shadows in the next step, but I’ll add a little blush to warm up the places I know I’ll want a bit more definition, like the sides of her face.

 

For this step we will keep our edges soft. I’m using a custom brush for a little bit of texture and Clip Studio’s default transparent watercolor brush for blending.

Step 3. Purples

 

For a quick work with lights and shadows we will consider our light coming from the front, slightly from above, so we can shade in a almost symmetrical form.

 

Since yellow is working as a accent color in this work, I’ll use it’s opposite - purple - as my shade.

 

Purple is a great color for shading, as it can be warm or cool.

 

I’ll work my purples in different layers this time, so I can experiment with layer opacity.

Since I’m working on new layers, I’ll end up coloring outside my inicial shapes. To clean up, we can make a selection from the shape’s layer and then invert the selection. Like this:

Then invert selected area

Then we can go back to our shading layer and clean away ^^

Now I’ll add my background and paint the eyes.

 

Try saving pure white highlights in the eyes only. It really brings life to the work.

We’re almost done!

 

Step 4. Color the lineart

 

If your lineart is only black lines on a transparent background you can lock the transparent pixels and color your lines. It brings a bit of softness to the drawing.

Now our painting is done. But we need something to bring the colors together.

 

Step 5. Texture

 

Noise and texture create imperfections that can make a work more interesting.

 

A single layer of color with the right blending mode can add a element in common to all colors in the work, bringing them together.

 

So let’s add some of both.

I will use this texture that I made myself with the Linear Burn blending mode at a very low opacity. I’ll do the same with an all pink layer.

Now there’s only one more step

 

Step 6. The White Gel Pen

 

Take a pencil brush for a bit of tooth and a very pale color (I used pale peach) and add cute highlights and details.

 

Tip: contrast is your friend, add highlights very close to shadows to make them pop

And we’re done!

 

Thank you very much for reading.

 

Here’s the lineart if you guys would like to give it a try ^^