My art process

I have changed the way I have drawn quite often throughout the years. At one point I drew always with lineart, trying to keep my art as clean as possible. Sometimes I completely skip the lineart stage and just color. Finding the right process that allows you to create your work the most efficiently and effectively is always a challenge. For me, I have gone through years of testing out different ways to draw until one of them works out the way I like it to. Over the last year, I have managed to cut down my drawing time from anywhere from two to seven hours to just under one hour. Obviously, this isn’t always the case as it depends on the complexity of the piece.

First of all, I would just like to quickly outline my previous drawing process. I used to start with a sketch using many different colors as follows:

• Red: Base, usually just used for the general pose

• Blue: Hair and clothing

• Purple: Eyes, I had to separate eyes because it was genuinely a hassle to draw

• Others: Extra details, if needed

This was not an efficient process at all since all the lines kept overlapping and I couldn’t even tell what I was drawing sometimes. Then I would create my lineart, this step was the most tedious and usually took me anywhere from thirty minutes to one hour to do. I would then fill in the base color, separating layers by color. Afterward, I would create clipping layers on top with different blend modes and work from there.

This step usually involved the layer modes: multiply and subtract. Multiply is to add shadows and subtract was basically just lighter colors, either way usually I had to stack multiple on top of each other. As a result, it took longer as I had to separate almost all my layers and sometimes I would also decide to add other layer effects over the whole drawing which made it even more tedious. 

This process honestly worked quite well for about 4 years but now that I barely have time to even finish my homework, I needed to find a more efficient way to do everything while also not having my art quality drop.

I believe the main change in the process actually had to do with me switching programs from Medibang to Procreate. I noticed that in Procreate it was quite a lot harder to create drawings with lineart and color it properly (since I didn’t know about the reference feature at the time) so I decided to completely change up the way I drew things. 

—As you can see here, the line art does not quite work with the general feeling of the piece—

It was a gradual process, I started by trying to use the lasso tool to color in lines but honestly, it just took me too much time. It worked but because of the brushes I used, I did end up creating drawings with softer shading anyways, so the lineart just started to not make sense after a while. In 2022, I kept with the lineart most of the time, the main changes ended up being my coloring being softer until I decided that lineart was unnecessary.

Currently, my process is much simpler and takes a lot less time to do. I still start with a quick sketch, only using red, and once I am happy with it I change the color to brown or blue depending on the mood of the drawing. 

I then create a multiply layer over it and just roughly paint all the colors in, using my sketch like the so-called lineart layer. At this stage, I also try to block in my shadows and highlights and general lighting source. 

Eventually, once I am relatively satisfied with the result, I merge the two layers together and just start painting over it. This step usually takes longer, especially if I decide that I want to hide most of the sketch lines. At the moment though, I think that the sketch lines add a bit more texture and fun to the drawing so I don’t work too hard trying to cover it all up. 

After I decide that I like the way the drawing turned out, I would create a lot of other layers over it, just to add more fun effects. My current favorite ones are overlay (and general lighting) layers and layers where I just add a bit more textures. This step shows up with the most layers on my file but honestly, it takes the shortest time. Once I'm done with that, I sign my name somewhere and call it a day. 

By simply erasing the lineart step of my drawing process I was able to cut down my average drawing time by 2 hours. Honestly, this process works quite well for me at the moment but maybe in the future that might change. Until then, if you ever wonder about my drawing process, you have the general information here. 

If there are any specific questions, feel free to email me at contactunikornz@gmail.com or leave a comment on this post.