Love2DrawManga shows you 7 easy ways to make your digital art look better in her latest YouTube video. By using a sad elf girl's illustration as an example, she has demonstrated 7 easy ways in her video to improve digital illustrations and make them look fancier.
To understand her tips, you will first need a basic understanding of layers and tools. The software used here is Clip Studio paint but most of her demonstrations can also to other similar software.
Quick tip: To manage layers in the illustration better, she has placed her layers into different folders: one for the flower petals, one for the character layers, and one for the background layers.
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Gradients
Gradients can be used to impart more detailing to objects in your digital illustration. In her video, Love2DrawManga uses various gradients by adding new layers to her art and making them softer or deeper depending upon the various effect she wants to create.
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Gaussian Blur
Gaussian blur is a good way to blur out certain objects in your illustration, as our artist does with the petals. Making the petals look blurred out imparts a glow to them to make them stand out.
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Correction Layers
Correction layers can be used to adjust colors in your illustrations. The color balance layer, for instance, can be used to balance colors by adjusting their hues to make the colors look more cohesive. The level correction layer can be used to correct levels of your illustration, that is, make the dark look darker and the light areas look lighter.
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Changing the Line Art Color
Changing the line art color is a more subtle way to make lines in your illustration more prominent. Although the difference is hardly noticeable in certain illustrations such as this one, in most other digital arts, changing the line color can bring about a more prominent change in your art’s overall appeal.
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Highlight the White Portion in Your Illustration
The white parts of your illustration will get darker as you add more effects and layers to it. You can use highlights to make these white portions more prominent, as Love2DrawManga does with the sad girl’s tears.
- Change the Picture Orientation for Effect
With all the above effects in place, Love2DrawManga’s sad girl art already looks more dramatic. Like her, you can also crop your art or change its orientation to add more drama to its theme.
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Add More Depth to the Picture
Depth makes pictures come alive. Blurring out the edges of an illustration helps impart more depth to the picture. In this case, our artist clips a multiply layer, and use a dark red all over the picture. Then, she uses a soft airbrush to erase the middle and the upper right corner to emphasize her character.