How to COLOUR Your Art (Beginner Friendly)

all right you sit right there good boy all right what's up guys if your reaction to having to color your drawings is anything similar to that you need help and I am here to help please excuse my appearance I just finished this tattoo yesterday and I'm trying not to have anything touch it I'm sorry now in today's video I'd like to teach you a little bit about how to color your art we'll be using some of my favorite methods working in a semi-realistic style and just so you guys know I have a tiny brain it's

very small it's very smooth so I like to break down my processes and make them as simple as possible so that absolutely anybody can follow along even you yes you sitting on the toilet right now taking a dump don't think I can't smell you that is disgusting back so with that being said let's Dive Right In I've even got notes for today's video look at that actually don't look at it it's very messy as always before you start any drawing make sure you have a reference for what you want to draw in today's case Sam

does man first identify the style that you want do you want to do flat colors do you want to do cell shading do you want something semi-realistic or do you want to do something hyper realistic in that case I'm sorry but you've lost your mind and that's coming from someone who already has no sanity so the first thing I try to do is I break it down all right I start from the big to the small I want you to take a look at this beautiful man here and ask yourself what is the main color

that you see in this composition aside from the Blue Sky well for me you see the first color I would start with is the color of his skin the skin in light this color right here so once you've identified your main color go through your Hues find that color that orangish color now I know a lot of you guys might have a hard time finding the right colors just like how you have a hard time finding grass to touch don't you worry I've got a little trick for that so you click on this icon here

and bring up this ey dropper tool I want you to take this ey dropper tool and run it over some of the areas where you see that main color now go and visit your Color Picker couple things to pay attention to here where does this color sit on the Hue Spectrum which is this slider down here where does it sit on the saturation Spectrum which is this slider right here and where does that color sit on the value Spectrum which means how light or how dark that color is so going back to the eye dropper

tool with the color on the arm we can observe that it is an orange color medium saturation and very light in terms of value which makes sense cuz he's in sunlight now when you're working try not to use that color directly from the reference from the eyedropper tool try to find that color yourself play around with your colors see if it looks right this will be a great Challenge and a really good learning opportunity just to make my life a little bit easier I am selecting the overall shape of this character and I'm going to

just fill the whole thing in with my base color now if you're wondering where are all the Shadows where are all the soft transitions patience my son this is Step number one remember that we are working from Big to small so now we're going to get a little bit smaller we're going to try to look for the other smaller flat colors that are here which will be the hair the black hair and the white shirt I'm going to go with a very dark desaturated brown color all right so the next step is we got to

look for the color of that shirt I think we could go a little bit more towards the Reds and bring it all the way up in brightness now you might be asking is it time to start adding some shadows and you would be wrong it is time now to start adding some Shadows so I want you to go back and observe your reference try to find a general color for the Shadows one single flat color now when you zoom in you're going to see a lot of different Hues right going to see Blues you're going

to see oranges but don't worry about that and try to find one unifying color so for me I think from the light value we should go a little bit more towards the Reds we should change this color bring it down a little bit more and maybe we can get something like that now again if you're not sure how to do this process I was once upon a time in the same boat as you everybody has to start somewhere so take your ey dropper tool go back into the Shadows see if you can find that shadow

color right try to observe where it is on the Hue Spectrum try to observe where it is on the saturation Spectrum but when you actually go to apply that color don't use the ey dropper now in this part of the process once we've escaped from the flat colors we're starting to add shadows and depth to our drawing you want to identify where the light source is coming from this is very important to anything that you're going to render in this reference he is being lit by the sunlight coming in this direction how do I know

this because if you look at surfaces like his shoulder for example the Light reaches this surface and the shadow falls on this this surface so that means the light since it travels in a straight line is going to be coming from here and there's going to be a fall off of light here as we venture into the Shadows so I'm going to start a new layer create a clipping mask and in this layer we're going to be adding some Shadows just use a simple hard Edge brush I'm using a round brush here okay don't be

afraid of contrast don't be afraid to push the darks and pull the lights see I'm just applying these very simple shapes to the areas where I see Shadow just try to make it as simple as possible almost like a 2d animation right only one light value and one dark value so we're taking this Shadow color bringing it down to the arm just doing the same thing that we did on the face and just like that now you have a super simplified graphic man now you can adjust the colors here based on your personal preferences I

personally want the shadow to be a little bit brighter maybe a little bit more saturated just like so again personal style now we're going to move on to the shirt and the hair we're going to repeat the exact same process we're going to take this hair color I'm going to try to find an even darker more saturated color and add that into the areas where I see more Shadow so I don't know if you guys can see that but now the hair feels a lot more three-dimensional and I've only followed where the shadows and lights

fall on the hair not trying to create that texture of hair just yet I'm just trying to apply the right colors to the right places don't overwhelm yourself all right don't do too much at once it's just like starting a new drawing if you have one drawing going on make sure you try to finish that drawing before you start another one right now I'm going to take a bluish color here um maybe a little bit lighter than that and I will apply that into the shadow for the t-shirt and there you go if you've been

following along with me you should have something similar to this and now you know how to color your drawings for the rest of this video check out my patreon and I'll see you guys on the I'm just kidding guys I won't abandon you like that I'll go to the grocery store I'll get my milk but I'll always come back so this is how I like to work all right now that we have two colors in each section I like to start adding more colors so two colors is going to turn into four and that four

might turn into more oh my God bars Jesus call me Kendrick Sam does wrap I want you to look at your reference where are the glowing highlights on this beautiful man's face so I'm seeing a little bit right here on the cheekbone that's pretty bright I'm seeing a little bit here on the neck there's certain areas here on the nose on the mouth area that also seems a little bit brighter than the rest maybe a little bit of highlights on the shoulder a little bit on the back of the arm so we're going to take

this color all right we're going to shift the Hue a little bit more towards the yellow make sure you're Shifting the Hue according to how you see it in your reference photo okay don't always go towards the yellows in some cases you might be going towards the blues I'm going to start a new layer and I'm going to apply this highlight color this third color onto the areas where I see it in the reference so for example on the cheek on parts of the nose it's very subtle but you might also find yourself in situations

where this highlight color is a lot more apparent a little bit on the jaw a little bit on the chin there you go that's that's beautiful now we're getting so much more depth in the light section of his face coming down here now let's add a streak of highlight onto his neck now we're going to select the shadow color and we're going to push it just one stop lower maybe move it a little bit more towards the Reds and now we're going to bring this darker color into the areas where you see more Shadow just

like so right now look at that look at that jawline it's got so much depth it's almost as much depth as the traumatic backstories of literally every single one of your OCS got start a petition for you guys to stop abusing your OC's man I'm going to add a little bit more Darkness there onto the shoulder so now you see there's a lot of depth right there's depth in the light there's depth in the dark but it kind of looks like a paint by numbers painting right now where the edges are all very sharp it

looks very artificial so we're going to change that now I want you to take a blending brush doesn't matter what it is just make sure it's nice and smooth this is my personal favorite it's available on my patreon but it doesn't have to be this brush as long as it's smooth it works now we're going to soften the edges that are soft and maintain the edges that are hard so for example here it's soft here it's hard so just very gently blend out that soft Edge and preserve that hard Edge just like so now we

can come down here to the jaw area again looking at the reference right there's a soft Edge there's a hard Edge so we're going to blend that out but maintain some of the hard edges that you see on the jaw same thing with the neck right you're going to see this hard edge here we're not going to blend that but this Edge is going to be soft gently blending that out gently blending this Edge out and maintaining one hard Edge that's a beautiful neck that looks delicious so delicious that maybe Urgo Josh would like to

eat it that's right Josh you filthy man I'm going to do the exact same thing here right we're going to blend out the soft edge here on the shoulder we're going to blend out the edge here on the bicep and while you have your blending brush I want you to also soften up some of these highlights here just soften up the edges blend out that edge right there so you see they almost become invisible but you do see that Hue shift throughout the arm still now you might be asking well why do you use a

hard Edge and blend it out instead of using an airbrush well number one you would be wrong number two the airbrush is completely soft it's very easy for beginners especially to over rely on the airbrush and end up with drawings and renderings that are way too mushy don't rely on the airbrush okay preserve your hard edges stay hard so you guys see that was a very simple process we've just gone from two colors the four colors we Blended the edges we have hard and soft edges now you can go wild you can apply this process

to almost any part of the drawing you can apply this to the lips right the lips are a little bit more red but you can use this same method to color the lips and once you get really comfortable with this you know you can start adding even more variation after the four colors that you've applied right so for example I think I see a little bit of Bounce light a little bit of um subsurface gathering on the nose so I can select a more saturated color I can bring that color in here like so and

we're just going to gently blend that in and you can see now the nose starts taking out a more fleshy transparent appearance if you want more of a flesh tone look you can even use a redder Hue and apply that to the cheeks now your character looks like he's blushing what could he be blushing for I don't know maybe he just saw you on the toilet so you see these very subtle Hue shifts become available to you as you start adding more complexity and that's how you color your drawings or at least that's how I

do it that's it's always worked for me all right might not work for you can even start to find some of the ambient light like for example on his forehead there's a lot of blue light because the sky is casting a blue light down on you so we're going to take a bluish color here all right and we're going to just glaze that over the forehead very lightly and you can get that blue on any surface that's facing upwards Towards the Sky because of that ambient lighting see now we have 1 2 3 4 5

6 maybe seven colors here now and they're all blending into each other there's soft transition the variation of color really starts to pick up you know you can get some bounce light here just under the chin like that with a nice bright orange color again using a blending brush blend that out nice and smooth Jesus that's nice oh if only I look like that and just to wrap this up I'm going to show you guys that you can do this with any subject any lighting scenario doesn't have to be harsh sunlight okay here is my

chicken chicken just remember what we talked about okay we're going to start with one main color okay and then we're going to go on to the the secondary color which is the color of the Shadow so it's going to be a little bit more muted maybe a little bit warmer Alpha lock that layer then we're going to come down and apply that shadow color now even though it is a very soft Shadow what I'm doing here is I'm trying to identify the transition between light and Shadow if you squint your eyes and take a step

back you can kind of determine that the main transition occurs here so that's the break between the shadow side and the light side so there's the light there's the Shadow and just for good measure we're going to add in his little wings here as well we're going to take that light color and we're going to start adding an even lighter color in this case I'm going to start using an airbrush and just get that nice soft color in there in the reference I see the shadow mostly under the wing and the eye and maybe a

little bit down here towards the bottom of the chicken a little dark shadow under the wing a little bit of Darker Shadow under the chicken just like that that's a bit too dark now I'm going to take our blending brush gently work these colors in nice and soft like so okay you don't even have to blend them if you prefer a more rough looking style now coming back to this Edge between the light and the shadow we're just going to soften that now the wing smooth now the other Wing smooth and would you look at

that right we started with two colors added two more colors started blending the edges and look how three-dimensional that chicken looks I can practically eat it you're not safe here see after this stage you can start adding even more you can start adding some bounce light right you want to add some bounce light at the bottom bottom for the table you can add some ambient Lighting in the back you can do the exact same process with the eyeballs let's get a bluish color for the light section and a darker warmer bluish color for this Shadow

section okay and then we're going to Alpha loock this layer color in your shadows now I'm going to add an even lighter highlight just on this side I'm going to blend all of this out nice and smooth add in his little Iris you can add in a highlight just on top of that and would you look at that what a beautiful eyeball now we can move this eyeball here we can duplicate this eyeball oh my goodness so now let's take some of that yellow color let's add some beautiful bounce light to the bottom side of

these eyeballs just like that look at that get a nice Dark Shadow ambient occlusion under the eyeballs just like that blend this out soften it up and look at these stunning results simple process that took about what 5 minutes it's all about going from Big to small simple y that process for yourself treat your brain as though it is the size of a bean and has zero wrinkle of course practice is the only way you're going to get better so try this out for yourself okay go find yourself a chicken and hopefully after watching this

video you guys are no longer scared of adding color to your line art thank you so much for watching all the way to the end I hope this has been helpful to you if you want to get even more in-depth longer tutorials check on my patreon I upload every single month in fact just after this I'm going to be working on our tutorial for May which is is going to be on all the essential tools and tips that I use for my digital art process again a very beginner friendly video hopefully to get you guys

up off your feet so that if you're joining the patreon if you're a new member you're starting off with a very solid foundation for your digital art anyways that's pretty much it subscribe to my channel for more content like this I will be doing more tutorials in the future for you guys and um I love you guys and I'll see you on the next video did I forget anything I don't think I forgot anything was that it was that it hey buddy how you doing buddy look at him he's learning how to fly what amazing

athleticism what Grace such beauty