Ever played around in digital art and found this terrifying thing? What is that even for, who uses that? I just want to make some art. Well! It’s something that you won’t be able to give up once you see how it works. Have you wanted shortcuts to making shadows? To bright lights? To cool color changes? Here we go.
Hello! Today we’re exploring digital art with some art app features that sound advanced, but can be easy ways to bring our drawings to life. This is part of a series called Digital Dabbles, and you can find the rest in the description, totally free. If you’ve not seen me before, I also make videos about creativity and motivation, and I’d love if you checked them out.
I know the feeling. What is this crazy list of things? That must be for… photographers or game developers or designers or something. Well… it is useful for those people, but it’s so incredibly useful for us as artists too. So, so useful. We can use a bunch of these modes to take care of light and shadow for us, and get some special effects and artistic conveniences. Don’t panic, you don’t have to memorize them all. Learning just one or two is enough for most people.
Blending modes are ways to mix two colors together. Think of it like how different kinds of paint mix: watercolors might mix together differently from oil paints, or pencils, or even crayons. In digital art, every pixel gets mixed with the ones below it. When you make a new layer, you’re already using a blending mode called “Normal”. This just replaces the color below it if you have a solid brush. If you lower the opacity, your art app starts to do a very basic blend between the two. It’s useful, but there’s so much more we can do.
We’re going to get right into it, and I’ll paint this scene as I talk. (What a blessing it is to pre-record my scripts and art.) Let’s pick a sky color, finally. I’m going to make a new layer above the fill like last time. In fact, that previous video was really to get you ready for this. I’m going to eyedrop the sky color for my brush and start painting some shadows. You got a preview of this before, but now it’s for real: with this color, it does kinda mix in, but… looks a bit weird. Let’s change the blending mode from Normal to Multiply. There we go: we get a deeper coloring effect.
This is best used with a light color with only a little saturation. This is because Multiply only makes things darker: it’s multiplying the percentages of color, which always makes smaller numbers, which mean darker colors. Don’t need to study the math here though, thankfully; think of it this way instead: When there’s shadow, it’s because we blocked out some light, right? In a scene like this, there’s still some light hitting our character, and that’s primarily coming from the brightness of the sky.
This isn’t literally how light works. Nature isn’t doing math either to make shadows. But it can be useful to work through to understand when to pick certain colors. Video games and visual effects often use Multiply to make shadows, too! Here’s a couple examples on the extreme end.
If I paint with black on a multiply layer, it always makes black, no matter what. Can’t get darker than that. If I paint with white, it’s like nothing happened. That’s because we’re mixing full brightness with a mode that can only darken, so they cancel out. Every color in between is going to be some amount between those extremes. I’m going to carry along here and use some lighter colors for this shadow on the grass. Pro tip: Unless you are sure you know better, never shade with black or gray. Always use a little bit of color, and that will liven up your artwork so much.
Multiply shadows things… what makes them brighter then? Divide, right? …Nooooope. Divide mode does exist, but that math actually does crazy things. Artistically, what we’re looking for is Screen. Screen can only brighten colors, and its name isn’t from the math that happens, but its origins in photo and film development. Yeah, the names are all over the place.
So like we did with Multiply, let’s pick a faded color, but this time a dark one, so that we don’t over-do the effect. I’m also not going to paint on nearly as much, as I only want some small gentle highlights here and there. We’ll add a bit to the eyes, though, that makes them stand out a bit.
I find myself using Multiply way more than Screen. Multiply is a solid choice for most kinds of shadows, and that really gives things form. But highlights and lights have many different kinds of modes we can pick from for a nice effect, and sometimes they’re not needed much at all in a drawing. If you only learn one blending mode ever, make it Multiply. Also, no need to memorize colors that you should use for Multiply or Screen or any mode, you’ll know pretty quickly if you picked something too dark or too bright. We’ve got Undo.
There we go! Coming together. You know the drill by now: try this out yourself. Don’t be afraid to get it wrong. You have layers and can try as many times as you want, and it takes a lot of practice to really get light and shadow looking nice. Loads of art theory in it.
Next up, we’re going to work on the background and look at a couple more blending modes. We’re close to finishing up this piece! Towards the end we’ll look at refining the drawing as a whole. Until then artist, chase that passion. Grab your stylus or your sketchbook and get that practice in.
| Production Info | |
|---|---|
| Music | sero - Change - Instrumental Version |
| VRChat World | Sea Breeze by WispyWoo |
| VRChat Avatar | Vulper by Royalty, Meaty, and Reval |