ICON TUTORIAL... THING

I figured I'd just show you a quick progression of an icon commission so you can see how I make them. Just so you know I do all my stuff (or at least this icon, just to cover my tracks if my line art in Photoshop stops sucking and I go back to that later after I post this) in Paint Tool Sai.

STEP ONE: SKETCH.

I actually don't have a picture of this since after I draw the inks/line art, I delete the sketch layer but basically just imagine a crappy version of the ink layer in a lighter color and that's about it.

STEP TWO: INKS.

Self explanatory, just the clean line art drawn over the sketch.

STEP THREE: COLORS.

I'M PRETTY SURE YOU DON'T NEED AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS ONE.

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STEP FOUR: BACKGROUND.

Typically I use a flat single color for my backgrounds but once in a while I'll switch it up and add other colors or shades just to make it a bit less boring

STEP FIVE: TEXTURE.

Since I started adding texture to my stuff I just can't work without it now, when I add texture then make the layer with it hidden the work just looks so bland. Then again I usually only add texture (at least at a high opacity) to stuff I don't do a ridiculous amount of shading on. If you haven't noticed yet, up until now I create the new layers for color and background under each other, just to make sure things stay clean. Texture I always make the top-most layer and set the blend mode on multiply. If the image I use for the texture has an area that's too dark and messes with the overall appearance of the work, I set my eraser on a very low opacity, with soft edges and a fairly large size and try to lighten it up without removing too much and making the spot where I erased stand out. Here you can see where I had to erase around the white on the face in a few spots. It was mostly just around the area of the mouth just above the lower jaw but I erased a bit more to spread out and create more of a gradient so it didn't look so obvious I had to erase the texture there.

STEP SIX: GRADIENT... THING.

Just to add a little depth or whatever to my icons... hmm that kinds sounds like bs. JUST TO MAKE IT LOOK COOLER, I darken around the edges of my icons. depending on the icon I either use black or a dark shade of the background color. This is usually with the Air Brush tool, set with a soft edge, low opacity and large size. This icon is 300x300 px and the Air Brush was set to 80 px just to give a general idea of how big a "large size" is

And there you have it, that's how I do my icons and actually how I do a lot of my art. You can pretty much see that in any of my other WIP posts of cheaper commissions or stuff that doesn't have shading/a lot of shading.