If you Ctrl+Click on the little box that shows what is on the layer, it will create a selection the same shape as everything on that layer. This works in Photoshop, too.
I don’t know how I lived life before knowing this.
Here’s a quick look at what my process looks like nowadays! I really only use the default pen settings in sai and the air brush for most of my coloring. Once everything’s merged, I use this brush:
to fix up some shapes which I definitely see better once all the colors are laid out. As for color palettes/theory, that’s still something I’m figuring out for myself, but don’t be afraid to rely on photos/pre-existing color palettes to test the waters!
I’ve been getting a lot of asks lately about the brushes and textures I use in my work, so here’s a BIG FAT REFERENCE POST for those of you who were curious! Bear in mind that I’m really lazy and don’t know what half the settings do, so don’t be afraid to experiment to figure out what works best for you :>
BRUSHES
Pencil
I use the pencil tool with SAI’s native paper texture both for sketching and for applying opaque color with no blending. Lower opacities give it the feel of different pencil hardnesses, while full opacity makes it more like a palette knife, laying down hard-edged, heavy color for detail work or eventual blending with other brushes.
Ink Pen
Mostly made this because I’m lazy and I didn’t want to have to keep turning my textures off/opacity up when I wanted to ink something (even though I don’t do it very often), or lay down flat colors. I find the line quality to be much more crisp than Photoshop, and you can manually adjust in-program stabilization to help smooth out hand wobbles.
Round Brush
The plain ol’ brush tool acts as sort of an in-between for me in terms of brush flow. It’s heavier than my usual workhorse brush, for faster color application and rough blending, but not as heavy as the pencil tool, which has no blending at all. I like to use the canvas texture on this brush to help break up the unnatural smoothness that usually accompanies digital brushes, but it works just fine without.
Flat Brush
A brush tool set to flat bristle is by far my favorite to paint with. I don’t use any textures with it because I think the shape of the brush provides enough of that by itself. I use it for everything from rough washes to more refined shaping and polish. It’s just GREAT.
Watercolor
Best used for smooth blending, washes, gradients, and smoky atmospheric effects.
Cloud
Basically a grittier version of the watercolor tool, because too much smoothness weird me out. Good for clouds and fog, as the name suggests, or just less boring gradient fills.
TEXTURE OVERLAY
To further stave off the artificially smooth look of digital painting, I almost always overlay some sort of paper texture, and it’s almost always this one, which I scanned and edited myself. You’re all welcome to use it, no permission required!
Using overlays in SAI is just as easy as using them in Photoshop. Just paste the texture into its own layer above everything you want it to apply to, and change the layer mode to Overlay. That’s it!
Want a more prominent texture? Up the contrast. Something more subtle? Lower the contrast or reduce the layer opacity. You can also use a tinted overlay to adjust the overall palette and bring a little more color unity to an otherwise disparate piece! Just be aware that too much texture can hurt the readability of the work beneath it, so I’d err on the side of subtlety.
Sorry for the lack of WIPs on this pic. Here are jpg’s of all the steps (with not-so-very-clear notes).
All the work was done in GIMP.
Wait what? A grayscale shade layer??? What layer option do you use though, let alone change the color successfully?
This is a really effective way to color, actually. I do it all the time. When you make shade layer, make sure you’re ONLY shading SHADOWS and basic diffusion — NOT object/material color values (like, just because the socks should be a dark color, you’re going to completely ignore that in the shading layer.) There are two ways to mix the shading afterward. You can place the shading layer over the flats layer then set the shading to Multiply, OR put the flats over the shading and set the flats to “Color” blending. Then, you just paint some small variances in hue to whichever layer you’ve set blending mode to.
This is a great way to color because it eliminates the need to mix new colors as you pass from one flat to another. It gets less of a painterly look, but in this type of art you’re not going for that anyway. Excellent for comics.
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SO THAT’S HOW YOU DO IT
This is very similar to how I go about coloring as well. 🙂
using this when i get home
Holy flippin’ crap I have to try this now.
This is sad to admit but I’m learning more technique from tumblr than I am from art school
lanablack 