Mask shading!
Hey, I guess I should make new posts here sometimes! Here's a Pikachu I did today for the tigforums renditions thread:



Tried a new (for me at least) method of doing shading for this one (using Gimp). In stead of just blobbing everything together in an unholy mess like I usually do, I made a dedicated layer for every color, so eg Pikachu up there has a layer for yellowish, orangeish, brownish, and so on. Each of these color layers are opaque and completely filled with its assigned color. They also have a layer mask where you can do the actual shading, working with opacity in stead of mixing colors.

Masks are greyscale, so all shading is done with just black and white. There's no need to mess with repetitive color picking -- just select the layer mask for the layer with the color you want to modify and draw away, and hit X to switch between black (transparent) and white (opaque). Pressure sensitivity gives you shades of grey for varying degrees of translucency. Also, since every color is kept separate at all times, you can unmix colors, change the effective palette at will (automatically remixing colors!), etc. Color priority is fixed, but you can always have more layers of the same color if that turns out to be a problem.

Anyway, I really like this way of shading. The way Gimp works, or maybe the way I work with Gimp, my old way tended to degenerate into extended periods of, well, pain, because something always got screwed up. This new way is rather the opposite. It's very liberating.

(Also, I've been neglecting the sketchblog.. I'll post something new there soon.)