This post is a collection of art tips I’ve gathered over the years (since 2018). Some of these are good art tips for beginners that can help teach the basics of drawing. A lot of these are tips for digital art, but I hope artists of all kinds (including those looking for painting tips) will find them useful.
A Simple Guide to How Colors Change Under Different Lights
You've probably noticed that the same object can have very different looking colors under different lighting conditions. Is there a pattern to how colors change? How does one accurately paint colors as they would appear under certain lighting conditions? While covering this topic in full would be far too complex for this post, I can share an easy way to approximate these color changes.
This tip comes from @marinscos on Twitter. She shared a way to use the features of digital art programs to quickly create ambient color:
There's also a similar tutorial by gigi d.g. that explains the terminology seen above in more detail.
marinscos explains that the "multiply" layer mode is best for strong light, and the "normal" layer mode is best for shade.
For those who paint traditionally, here are some color wheels with these filters applied:
Cecile's Step-by-Step Tutorials on Painting Water
In 2018, Cecile made a tweet containing tutorials on how to paint waves, a lakeside, a cross-section of water, and droplets. This tutorial is written for digital art, but the steps are so detailed that I don't think it would be too hard to follow them with a paintbrush.
A Shadow Coloring Tip
A lot of beginners tend to draw shadows as black or gray, but did you know shadows can have all kinds of hues? Earlier we showed how the ambient lighting of a forest casts green shadows on its subjects. Here's a tip from Riana Dorsey on how the same object can have both warm and cool shadows:
Quick shading protip: planes that face the sky have cool shadows, and planes that face objects lit by the sun (the ground, for example) have warm shadows.
See Riana's addendum to her initial tweet for an example:
Not Worrying About Anatomy Can Improve Your Art
I worried about anatomy a lot when I started trying to draw "seriously". I would carefully measure out the length of each limb. This wasn't fun, and it caused my art to look stilted and awkward. Nowadays, I very much follow the ideas of this tweet by Acid Neko:
This other tweet by Toni Infante does a good job of further explaining what "gesture" means:
I know these examples are all humans, but I hope you find the idea useful no matter what you draw!
Next: values > color. A work of art can pop more, and be more clear, when colors contrast each other. Of course, two colors with different hues contrast, but you can achieve a stronger contrast by using colors with different values. A value is how "dark" or "light" a color is. Yellow is a very light color, while purple is a very dark color. Imagine that someone who can only see in greyscale is looking at your art; would they be able to understand what the art depicts? Choosing colors that contrast well in greyscale, colors with different values, may improve your art for anyone looking.
How to Love Your Art
This last one is a motivational tip. I believe it also comes from a tweet, but I couldn't find the original source. I hold this tip close to my heart:
A lot of people think their art will look better if it looks like it was not drawn by themself. That’s tragic. The best thing about anyone’s art is that it looks like it was drawn by themself. We each put a bit of our souls into the art we create.
That's all. If you found any of these tips helpful, please share this post with your artist friends!
Or, if you have ideas on how to improve this post, please comment!
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