So this is my first ever actual serious attempt at painting and it is unfinished and flawed in so many ways that I can't count them all. I'm posting it in my general gallery for now because I'm proud that I made the attempt at all, and it might motivate me to do more actual paintings in the near future.

I'm reading a bunch of material regarding painting and color theory and watching a bunch of video tutorials on youtube. The thing that has kept me from coloring in the past is the fact that I never could relate dept and plains to how they are expressed in color, lights and shades. Until now. I didn't get how artists can automatically know what color they want to highlight with, and now I know the answer is that they blend colors. I didn't get how they effortlessly render a face in three dimensions, and now I know that they use basic color theory. How they easily apply gradations in mid-tones and shadows: grey-scale painting underneath a flat color layer with adjustment layers and blend modes. Highlights? Blend warmer, more saturated colors. Deep shadows? Cooler, less saturated colors and tones. Less saturation in background, more in foreground, and maintain proper hues by matching them to the proper value ranges while blending.

Lots and lots of information and I haven't even scratched the surface.

The most that I've taken out of this is that coloring is a lot of work. Even if I were to properly ink an image (which I didn't do here) it would take a lot of preparation and work to get a finished product. Hell, I'm too lazy to bother with inking most of the time anyway.

Anyways, Manga Studio is a very useful product--far more useful than Paint Tool Sai. I'll play with it some more.