# Digital Painting Coloring Process ## Metadata **Status**:: #x **Zettel**:: #zettel/fleeting **Created**:: [[2026-05-11]] ## YT Art School Process [Via YT Art School](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_1UE0yrnkI) summarized by Perplexity. - Step 1: Flat Colors - Use lasso or brush. - Break the single-color layer into separate color regions representing different materials. - Choose bright colors without considering lighting at this stage, and use tools like [Adobe Color Palette Generator](https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel) with complementary or split-complementary palettes for inspiration. - Step 2: Local Shading - For each color region, create a new shading layer filled with the same base color. - Lock the layer's alpha channel and paint shadows in areas where light gets trapped using a hard brush. - When selecting shadow colors, move down in value (darker), increase saturation (drag right), and shift the hue slightly toward blue—this prevents muddy colors. - Optionally blending hard edges for a softer, hybrid style. - Step 3: Gradient Shading - Create a single layer above all shading layers, **fill it with white**, and set the blend mode to **Multiply**. - Using a large soft brush, paint subtle shadows to add color gradients throughout the character, similar to anime-style shading. This layer also works well for adding blush, lip tones, and other subtle color shifts. - Step 4: Lighting - Add a new layer set to **Hard Light** or Overlay mode, filled with **50% gray** (the neutral color for these modes). Lock the alpha and paint with colors lighter than 50% gray to add lighting based on your chosen light direction. - Step 5: Reflections - Create another **Hard Light** layer below the line art to add material-specific shininess. Paint reflections on shiny surfaces like clothing, eye glints, lip gloss, and hair highlights to create material contrast. - Step 6: Line Art Colors - Lock your line art layer and color the lines by picking the darkest shadow color from each region and darkening it slightly. This makes lines blend naturally with the colors while remaining visible.