/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>4039525
I don't know what your personal level with colour is, but if you feel like you're ready to go into the deep end go read Gurney's book on colour and light. There is a *lot* of information in there, but it is all useful. Even the stuff on physical paint mixing is useful to get a better idea on how to understand how colours work when you work in digital.

In your pic, the top one has highlights that are too strong and too white, and ambient rim lighting that's too strong. They demand too much attention, keep them subtle.

When mixing colours, don't underestimate greys. They are sleeper OP, and you can use them to work for you when you understand them. The eye can pick up very subtle differences in grey tones (Saturation between 0-10) and it does look amazing.

I would suggest going and looking at the works of Cyancapsule (fuller figures with nice shading/colours), Ataruman (subtle colour changes on the abs) , and Krenz (subtle greys + colours, Nurzhan Bekkaliyev shading)

Oh I thought you meant something else. But layer modes are the best. It's good to use them to understand how you can change the colours on your piece without impacting them directly. Use purple for shadows and setting it to multiply or overlay then using sliders to change the colour until it's pleasing to your eyes is good. Most of the time when I finish I'll add some subtle dodge layers with very very low values for nice effects, also When I'm done I usually add an overlay gradient of Yellow>red>purple>blue at at about 10% on the top to just shift the hues a tiny bit with pleasing effects.

>>4039602
My usual blending brush in SAI2. I don't know what it's called in PS, but just play around with brush settings and look at guides. It's important to spend time figuring out how to configure all the brushes to your needs. I think I've spent a couple weeks in total just getting adjusted to each setting's effects and tweaking them until I know how they will behave.