Introduction

In this tutorial, you will learn about screentones, how it works, how to use it and some simple ways to make your artworks go from a simple black-and-white piece to a more finished look and gain that little bit of spice, giving it a manga aspect.

It’s way easier than you may think and, at the end of this simple tutorial, you will feel more confident to make your own works using this amazing technique.

First, let’s talk about what is screentones and how it works:

Screentones is a technique often used in manga and comics to give shadow or texture to parts of a drawing, a group of tiny little dots, which together, creates the illusion of a unique tone.

 

In this example, we can see it better, on the left side is how the dots look if we see it from very very close, and on the right side, with the dots way smaller and from a far distance, giving the look of a gray tone.

 

STEP ONE: Finding Layer Property.

Meet your new friend, the Layer Property window, this is where you are going to find the screentone configuration, along with some other configurations that can help you as well.

 

You can find this window clicking in “Window” on the up left side of your screen, and then clicking on “Layer Property” (be sure it has a “checked” symbol on the side, it means the window is already on your work space).

 

STEP TWO: How the “Tone” configuration works.

Once you find the Layer Property window you will be able to see “Tone” on the “Effect” topic, this is the tool you will use to add screentones and configure it as well.

By clicking on the “Tone” icon, the options are going to show right below it, here you can change the Frequency (referring to the size and amount of dots). And below Density, you can find “Dot settings”, where you can change your dots to other shapes, like squares, stars, hearts and much more, along with other options such as angle and position of dots.

Changing the frequency to a higher number will give you a more “dense” and “homogeneous” look to your tone, in the other case, with a lower frequency number, you will have more visible dots on your tone, which can be really useful for backgrounds, patterns, etc (give it a try, you can find your own ways to create new combinations and styles).

STEP THREE: Start creating!

Now that you are familiarized with all that good stuff (Layer property, frequency, dots and tones), let's get to work and create some cool things.

 

Let’s use this piece for example, just a base so we can work on.

 

Once you got your line art done and are ready to add screentones to it, create a new layer with a low opacity, something around 30 should be good to go. Now, with a full opacity and density brush, use black to make your shadows and other details you want to add.

Something like this, take your time and add just the important shadows and details for now. Once you are satisfied with it, click on “Tones” and adjust the frequency to your taste.

And there it is, you did it! You can stop here if you like, but we can add some more to it and give it a bit of spice. You just need to choose which parts of your character are darker or lighter, so add a bit of gray-scale and do the same thing as previously, adjusting the opacity of the layer and the frequency of dots to get the result you like the most.

And that is the result:

 

BONUS: Tips n’ tricks.

You can create some gradient effects with screentones, all you have to do is grab your Lasso tool and Airbrush, select the area that you want to make the effect and use the airbrush to give it a smooth transition, like in the image below:

You can also use screentones to make a “printed comic” effect, all you have to do is add two layers on top of your piece and add the screentone on the layer on top (I’m going to use a different piece for this example).

Now you want to add color to your screentone, you can simply make that by clicking on “Layer color” on the right side of “Tones”.

Scroll down the Layer property configuration window and you will be able to see the “Layer color” topic, change the colors to your taste and then merge the screentone layer to the empty layer below it.

The only thing left to do is change the layer mode and opacity to your taste. Multiply, overlay and saturation are the modes that work better with this effect but you can also try other combinations.

1- Multiply, 2 - Overlay and 3 - Saturation (all with 100 opacity).

And that’s it, thank you so much for reading this tutorial and hope you got excited to try it in your next artwork! Keep drawing and exploring new techniques and different ways to make amazing art.