I really love your art and the way you color so I'd just like to ask if you are still using the fire alpaca program like you before? i'm still quite new to it and I just wanted some advice on alternative art programs besides the usual sai/ps. Like how do you get the painterly type of feel ( I'm sorry for bombarding you with all these questions! ) that is in your art or how do u add patterns and textures (again if you don't feel comfortable answering these it's fine as well ) ! Thank you :D

Hi! No, not anymore; I switched over to MediBang Paint (cloudalpaca) a while ago, but they’re very similar since they’re made by the same people.

The main difference is the materials panel which is what lets me add patterns/textures/screentones and stuff like that:

the tiles are repeating, while the tones are single “sheets”. the program comes with a bunch of them (you get a lot more by making an account (free) which also has some other features) and you can upload your own into the program. transparent textures is a site I know has a lot of patterns and textures.

to add textures you just have to drag it onto the canvas, then you can move it around, rotate, zoom using the options it gives you, then push OK. if you only want to cover a certain area, just select w either the magic wand / lasso / select pen / etc, and drag inside there:

in terms of painterly feel.. um… i tend to merge things into single layers as I go along and work on top of those over and over so I dont have any past stuff I can use as examples but in terms of colouring, I dont generally do line art and use my sketches instead, and usually put more attention in the hair, then keep everything else kinda simple? (it’s a style derived from laziness…. ha… ;;;)

I like this sketch of minato’s head from earlier, so I’ll colour it as example:

sometimes they’re clean, sometimes they’re super messy, but in the end it doesnt make a huge difference (I consider this very clean)

i use square bitmap brushes to sketch/colour:

sometimes I might use the mapping pen to sketch on smaller canvases or for really exact details

(I use a lot of quick strokes, and for blending stuff like blushes a lot of quick tapping) (there are other types of brushes like watercolour though if that’s more your thing)

next, I colour in the base colours on a layer underneath. I try to keep inside the sketch, but i dont care if it’s messy inside nor is it a big deal if it bleeds the sketch. Some quick, blocky shading on the skin/clothes. if there are a lot of colours or I want to even it out a bit, I might add an overlay/screen/etc layer on top now, or wait until later to do so. 

after that, I make a new layer over the sketch and colour in the hair w the shade colour entirely, then I shade that with a darker colour. on a new layer, I colour with the base colour. then I merge these, the sketch, and the base and fix some of the shading and lines. I pick colours that show up when I added the base as lighter shading. Sometimes I add highlights, sometimes I dont. then I add some quick blocks of the base to hide the shading and make it, I guess, less shiny?

it looks like a lot of steps, but this is usually done pretty sketchily, with some attention really only being given in 4/5, maybe 6

everything else is just blending the shading with quick strokes, overlapping the base and shade, and cleaning up the sketch. usually done on one layer.

the sketchy/blocky -ness is probably what gives it a “painterly” feel? idk

I hope these answer your questions! (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ*