What Does The Prince Look Like?

blend brush is MAKING ME GO CRAZY

what do you mean rendering is ten times easier and I can finally render without it looking weirdly smooth and untextured??

Hi hi um you helped me with one of my drawings on the criticism club, tysmmmmmm for that, I've fixed it a lot but I'm not done colouring so I won't be posting it yet :) your advice was insanely helpful, because I realised the arm wouldn't be there,and a BUNCH of other things

I was just exploring your posts and OMG HOW YOU RENDER SKIN AND HAIR IS SOO PRETTY AND GORGEOUS OMG!!! AND I LOVE THAT ONE DRAWING OF AN EYE U MADE AHH!

Sooo while i was looking at my fav post of yours, I was reading the description and you were talking about the new blend brush in magma! So, I'm assuming you use magma? I've been using it for like, half a year, but im not a pro at digital art so I don't really know what all the layer settings and whatever are. I did watch a video but it was a bit confusing. I know about like opacity and whatnot but I'm still a bit confused on mainly the layer settings. Also, I can't find any tutorials on magma apart from blending :(

I was wondering if U could maybe explain a bit, just the basics like multiply and add and most of the layer settings a begginer would use :) I'm sort of stepping out of my comfort zone because I don't usually bother with colouring and stuff. Any tips U recommend for magma would also help tons! Omg I just realised that this is kind of a stupid request because you probably have to explain a lot... Sorry!

idk how to end this ┐⁠(⁠ ⁠∵⁠ ⁠)⁠┌

ok ok this will be a long post!!

i made this graphic a long time ago for my friend @mythology-lover, this is using all layer blend modes with the colour bright orange, so you can see what each one does. most of them are self explanatory, I hope. there is no "add" in magma, but colour dodge is similar. I'll go over how to use the blend modes below!

not sure if you want to know how to use the blend modes to render stuff but i'll show you anyway lol

this was a drawing i posted, and i actually detailed my step by step process for my friend again, but I use multiply or darken for shading, its the best way to shade and personally I use dark red for shading but this can change based on lighting. obv I also lower the opacity cuz I don't want bright red. my tip for using multiply is to use a colour more saturated/brighter than you think you would use, cuz multiply ends up darkening the colour anyway.

i recommend using blend modes for shading because they have some "transparency" to them, if you put on shading in a block colour with no blend mode it'll just cover up things you already drew like blush or makeup. i also just create more multiply layers to build up darker and darker shadows.

also, when it comes to more dramatic lighting, ill just put a multiply layer over the WHOLE drawing since in real life in a dark scene there will be a shadow over everything including darker shadows for the actual details. after I add the multiply layer (this one is blue because its supposed to be a nighttime scene and the sky is dark blue) I just erase parts where light is hitting the object

(this isnt well done because im making this quickly)

and when it comes to lighting i like to use overlay, it creates this really nice saturated glowy effect. you can use colour dodge too but it creates these weird artifacts of pixels that are a completely different colour, at least for me

with overlay

also maybe you already know this, but the little square icon next to the opacity bar is alpha lock its useful if you don't wanna have to make a whole layer and clip it to the layer underneath

also... my BEST advice for magma has got to be to use filters, they save my life, and I frequently use them when my colours arent looking too good. and I specifically LOVE using the "curves" option when you click filters.

they let you control how bright the drawing is, and specifically the amount of each colour (red, green, and blue) in your drawing

here i reduced blue, increased red, and reduced yellow, plus reduced contrast and increased saturation plus made it a bit brighter. looks a lot better in my opinion, filters can really save a drawing lol

random tips: use lasso selection its basically necessary! if the paint bucket/fill tool isn't working that great, increase tolerance and turn on anti-alias, you can also try using the smart option. although I gotta say generally I don't use fill tool as it only really works if you have very clean, sharp, and connected lines. usually what I'll do instead to save time on colouring is make a layer below the lineart, and then make the target layer "above," and then fill it, then fill in the gaps manually. i also recommend using the full mode layout option, unless you have a small screen then it's most optimal, because then you can see all the tools and options.

i also use this layout thing, idk what its called, and have each one be a different brush with different settings (for me, one will be a soft brush with hardness and density lowered, another a hard round (default) brush, another a textured lineart brush, a brush for stars, freckles, or other scattered dots where I just turn up spacing, scattering and jitter for size variation)

also... make sure you flip your canvas to catch your mistakes, you wont notice them until you see it from a different perspective, and the flip canvas button is up top

its this one

this is for colouring, but periodically go to "view" and click "show in greyscale" so you can see the contrast between your colours. if everything's the same shade or similar shade of grey, you need to make some parts darker or lighter to make them stand out

ngl i think that's it, unless there's something else you need to know. just realised I've been using magma for like 4 years at this point, time really flies by. hope I helped!

puma guy reference for my artfight i gotta draw more of these but they're kinda a pain but they help me figure out stuff about the character!! lock in their proportions and stuff so I draw them consistently and know what I'm doing

i hate drawing symmetry i mean im not aiming for it to be perfectly symmetrical cuz that's creepy af and unnatural and some elements of his design are purposefully asymmetrical (barely noticeable but his eyebrows for example I hate how I put small details no one will ever even see or think about)

but this took so long to correct i was constantly flipping my canvas… now I'm thinking about how I'll have to do like 9 more of these and probably have to redo them by july cuz I'll have improved and will hate my old art

crossing my fingers that i can just do small edits or liquify by the time artfight happens I don't wanna have to redo everything

my most masculine OC has unicorn toothpaste hair

lowkey cooked when i made his design I love purple he's literally just a flipped version of jayden though

i been so stupid, complaining about tumblr's horrible compression, but it turns out... it was cuz I was accidentally exporting all my drawings as jpeg 😭

obligatory repost of this image i cant believe the very first appearance of him and his OG design is a badly sewn cat plushy

rn i have THREE mangoes!!!!!!!!!!

now i have two mangoes....

sad update: no mangoes

Elysia, character by Alarming-Highway-584 on Reddit

more rendering lol... also a voltron OC!! i never see any Voltron fans it's so sad not one person has a CLUE how much I love voltron it's in my bones I've rewatched it like 10 times and if i had time i'd do it again

heads up, next post will be pretty raunchy (not my fault tbh the OC I'm drawing for an art trade has literally... like two strips of cloth for clothes)

OC by @xxcannot-do-mathxx (not sure the name)

erm i had a LOT of fun haha i kind of went over the top, I wanted to emphasise the expression and scariness lol

i'm really proud of the shading and colouring I think it looks great

I spent 4 hours on just this simple bust that's way too long but I think it was worth it I really like how fun this is

lowkey random but since i've been doing art trades recently (and you cant make regular posts on artfight), I should put out a reminder...

NEVER pls NEVER draw Jayden's eyes like this im BEGGING

not giving any names but this was from 2024 artfight and don't attack them cuz they a kid from texas or smth, they were super nice about fixing it but yikes

we dont talk about the eyebrows idk what happened there

what his eyes REALLY look like

found a bunch more OCs i made when I was 9 these are obv more fleshed out more detailed but still you can see the colours and patterns go crazy

slightly learned to blend markers so thats why there's so many gradients/stripes, finally at this point realised I can have an area that isn't one colour or just a pattern

some of these have... interesting fashion

i have ZERO clue whats going on with 4 arms lady actually crazy design I was just slapping all my gel pen colours on there

dog girl is cute tho

had to research sm for pronghorn cheetah girl I was such a nerd (still am tbh) I watched wild kratts and instantly became obsessed with pronghorns I wrote they were my favourite animal and everything

still cant draw animals but i tried

me when i see a like-minded artist who uses an insane amount of colours:

lowkey i follow artists based on just one post, so... don't judge me by who I follow I just think art is pretty

added a small thing...

anyone wanna do OC art trades?? (closed for now, will update when open again)

i got some time (no guarantee for how long it'll take but it'll prob be a week or less) since no one (on reddit or artfight at least jk but not really) can draw asian characters ima try my luck with puma guy since he's... well it depends on the person race isn't real anyways

refs are the images in this post, DM or comment with some refs and basic info of your character (can be long or short, but I just wanna know like the vibe of the character)

you do NOT have to draw all the details (I have super complex OCs feel free to simplify) or follow exact palettes and stuff just don't change it too much

dont really have that many rules for what you do I'm fine with pretty much anything I just love any art I receive (even the lewd art lmaoo ppl are simps for my other OC yilin, straight up got art of her in a bikini once and honestly the only thing stopping even that from being removed is artfight rules)

also i prefer less cartoony OCs (i mean... look at my art style its kinda hard to draw a stick figure in a realistic way since the more simplified a design is obv the less info you can get from it) but it doesn't have to be as realistic as mine just know I'm gonna end up matching the simplicity/style of the OC since I don't wanna just make stuff up, I like to stick to designs closely

i gotta DRAW my brain is making meee and i don't have any good ideas rn

photoshopped tf out of my old drawing of him you can tell the pixels get cut off/blurred I'm too lazy to redo it

btw check out my previous art pieces with the tag art trade on them for an example of what you'll get

my OC lore is genuinely incomprehensible, absolutely indecipherable to any average human

what is happening wrong answers only