May MOTM: Coral reef monster painting process // nsfw

download the attached .zip to access the process pack (20 pngs + 1 gif) for may's monster of the month painting! 

i feel like i keep saying "woowee i'm not used to painting with such bright colours" and yet i keep doing it over and over again so ... at the very least i should be getting more used to it by now lmfao. but even so this one is a bit *extra* colourful and ... i'm loving it. and it makes perfect sense that this monster is colourful; he lives in a heckin coral reef and he can change colour at will, to blend in with his surroundings. 

i originally tried out a more green and pink colour scheme, and even though i liked it, i felt like it was too similar to my painting of layla and harsha that i did a while back. not that i don't like those colours, but this felt like such a perfect opportunity to explore some *other* colours, to really venture outside my comfort zone. so i settled for a combination of blue, green, and yellow instead. as you can see on the colour swatches (referenced from pictures of coral reefs) i originally planned to mix some pink in there too, but i didn't feel like i could find a good way to make it work, so i decided not to. but like i said, this guy can change his colours to literally anything, so any colour scheme is possible for future pictures!

the reason it was very easy for me to change around the colour scheme from steps 07 to 08 is that i had each colour on a separate layer. i added the basic flats to a single layer, filling in the whole character, but the bigger and smaller gradients are each on a different layer for different hues. i like doing this for when i'm not 100% sure of the colour scheme, so that i can easily experiment and change the colours around--just lock the transparency of each layer and colour them in different ways until you find the perfect combination. of course you can do this whether you're using gradients or not, it's just as useful for editing non-gradient flat colours. also, you can change the colour manually, but another tip is to use image > auto tone/contrast/colour and see what happens, or to play around with the settings in image > adjustments > colour balance (or any of the other adjustments under that menu)!

on that note, i often use another photoshop trick towards the end of my painting process; i save a back-up copy of the psd, merge all the layers, and go to image > adjustments > levels and experiment with the settings there. i've referred to this trick in my processes before ("adjusting the levels") but i realise that i've never explained how to do that exactly, for those of you who may not know. i usually pull the black and white triangles a liiittle bit closer to the middle, and then pull the grey triangle to the left or right depending on what looks best for the image in question. it's tricky to explain but basically the black triangle controls the intensity of the darkness of the dark parts of the picture, the white triangle controls the brightness, and the grey triangle can sort of balance it out. go explore that function and you'll see what i mean!

for this painting i, once more, used a combination of applying gradients to the initially flat colours (by selecting successively smaller areas with the lasso tool and partly colouring them in with a soft airbrush type of brush) and using regular brushes. however, i didn't "paint" a lot, not in the usual painterly sense--rather i used a pretty small brush to add many small brush strokes, in lighter and darker colours, which both creates texture and builds form. it's especially appropriate for the parts of the monster that mimics coral, his "horns" and the stuff along his spine, tail, and arms. but the method also creates a cool effect when used at the 'edges' of the gradients, where a few strokes sort of blends the shadows and highlights of their skin together without really *blending* at all, if that makes any kind of sense. 

lastly--underwater poses. they're simultaneously fun and tricky, because you don't have to pay normal on-land gravity any mind but making something look like it's floating around in water instead of just laying down (seen from above) can be a challenge. i think that figuring out the position of the legs can do the trick (as in, making it look like the character is threading water rather than the legs being in a resting position), as well as working with the flowyness of hair and (in this case) kaulana's coral-like "mane;" make it flow in that floaty underwater way that wouldn't possibly work on land, especially not for someone that's laying down.

aaand that's enough talking for now! :v feel free to comment below with any questions, and enjoy the pngs + gif!

// art + kaulana © me; kohura © kubi.