- 1). Draw your line art. Make the lines noticeable, but not too dark; you'll be going over them later.
- 2). Locate the light source in your artwork. Outside scenes typically will have the Sun or Moon as light sources and therefore above the subject. This means that shadows will be cast below. The part of the image closest to the light source will be illuminated and the part facing away will be in shadow.
- 3). Choose the predominant colors of your piece. For a project, such as character design, this will depend on the character's costume. For the background, you need to take factors, such as mood, into account. Conveying a positive, exciting or uplifting mood is done with bright, warm colors, such as red, orange and yellow. Cool colors, such as green, blue and purple, create the opposite effect.
- 4). Use warm colors for elements that you want to stand out in your drawing and use cool colors for those you want to recede into the background.
- 5). Color your image in its base colors. The base colors are the colors your image elements are without highlights or shading. The saturation, or purity, of the color also has an effect on the viewer; high saturation produces bright and, sometimes garish, tones that are intended to provoke strong emotional reactions. Low saturation produces soothing, pastel-like tones and lessens the contrast the viewer's eyes have to handle.
- 6). Create your shaded areas by blending complementary colors over the base color. For example, putting orange over blue will create a shade of blue. Using black for this purpose drowns out the base color..
- 7). Mix your base color with white or a tint -- lighter color -- of your base color to produce highlights, or lighted areas. The degree of white will depend on the intensity and closeness of the light source. Also, more-intense light produces darker shadows and this can be used for dramatic effect.
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