Hello, I'm Hoshi01. This time, I'd like to show you a simple trick to easily improve the quality of your illustrations.

This is my first post, so there might be some strange parts, but I hope you'll bear with me!

 

① Prepare your drawing

First, draw the base illustration.

 

 

 

② Prepare a layer for effects

With the background image transparent, click [Layer] menu → [Merge visible layers to new layer].

Lock the transparent pixels of the layer created by [Merge visible layers to new layer].

Once locked, change the color without altering the layer mode.

 

There are various patterns, but this time we'll use blue as a shadow color, and red/yellow as light. To create depth, first fill with blue, the shadow color. You can increase the saturation here, but in this example, we'll use a muted blue.

After filling, next add red as light.

Keep the saturation low here too, and this time apply the color to the same layer with the [Soft] airbrush.

 

Finally, add yellow.

We just added red for light, but you can think of yellow as a highlight.

Apply this in a slightly muted color as well. This makes the effect more natural.

Once this is done, change the layer's blending mode to [Overlay].

 

This completes the process.

Now, feel free to adjust the colors and opacity to your liking.

 

This concludes the explanation. I know there might have been some unclear points, but I hope this was helpful in some way.

Bonus

When working with a full body, it might be a good idea to roughly consider where the light hits (in this case, head, chest, thighs) and add color accordingly.