Grayscale study and adding color to your character

Before diving into adding color to our character design, it can be very beneficial to do a grayscale study of our character. We will only need three shades of gray to quickly capture the dark shadows, mid-tones, and brightest light or white colors and see whether our painting is balanced with good contrasting color values. Adding colors first may tempt you to get too detailed too quickly and dive into mixing, blending, and painting your character, only to find that the lighting and colors don’t work.

Creating a grayscale study

Now we are ready to begin working on the grayscale study:

1. For this particular assignment, we will just use the default soft brush tool to paint a three-color image using Black, Neutral Grey (for mid-tones), and White (for lighter values). If the character design displays well with good contrast and lighting in black and white, it will make it easier to paint the character in color.
2. Next...