Lara Croft | Process Video + Art Tips! ✏️✨

Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a happy Wednesday so far 😊✨ Keep on reading below for a few art tips! ~

Here's a little process video of my drawing of Lara Croft from Tomb Raider! I decided to post this for all tiers as a mini thank you for sticking around during my time off this month 🤗 This break has been so needed, but I am super excited to jump back into work in March! I can't wait to share all new content with you guys and settle back into my Patreon workflow :) ✨ Let me know if you guys would like a little blog post in the beginning of March about what I've been up to this month, what it's like being a first time mama while balancing my art, etc.! It's definitely been a change of pace, but I'm learning a lot and I've enjoyed it so much 🙈 For those of you who are curious, my baby boy's name is Sebastian Elliott! We call him Seb for short, and he is the cutest little nugget ever 💛

Now time for some art tips!  

• Adding Luminous Light/Sparkle Effect: If I want to add an easy textural light effect in my drawing, I like to find images of space nebulas or galaxies, drop them onto my drawing in a separate layer, and then set that layer to "screen," which makes it semi-transparent. After that, I like to play with the color balance to make it a color palette that fits the mood of my drawing and then smudge it around in different spots with my smudge tool for a painterly effect! I can make a more detailed tutorial about this process in the future if you guys are interested 🤗
• Finding Inspiration in Colors from Artists You Admire: You may notice in the video that I drop some images from artists and environments (like sunsets & the sky) onto my canvas at different stages of my drawing process, including a piece by Loish! This is because I like to observe the different color palettes to gather inspiration for my own drawing. In one of Loish's drawings, I liked a shade of gray that she used for her background, and so I color picked that shade to paint in some hues of my character's clothing. With images of the sky and space, I also found various colors that I liked and implemented those shades into my drawing via color picking. So basically, you don't have to create all your own colors! I used to think I had to create all my own color palettes, but eventually discovered that it's helpful to take colors I like from various inspirations and use them in my work. 💛 
• Rim Light Glow: I created a tutorial about this technique, so check out that video if you would like an in-depth walkthrough! Basically, to create the glowy rim light, I will draw along the edge of the character with a bright hue (a bright white-yellow for warm light or a bright white-turquoise or purple for cold light), using the Dry Ink brush for some texture. Next, I will duplicate that layer. With the duplicated layer, I will set it to Gaussian blur or perspective blur and play with the intensity until the glow effect reaches a point that I like. Give this a try! It creates an effortless glow that brings your work to life :)

I hope you found these little art tips to be helpful!! Enjoy the video and have a wonderful day 😊✨

Love,

Lydia✏️