I guess the only way to describe my coloring is āexperimentalā. I like to try with both vivid and monochrome colors, but I also dabble a bit with just black and white. Overall, Iād say I use different colors for different highlights and shadings. My overall goal is to make my art look less muddled.
Initially, I would shade with purple and set it to multiply:
But after experimenting a bit more, especially with darker skin tones, I found that hot red/hot pink worked better for shading. It really gives more life to my characters, like blood is running through them. For a highlight, I use a soft yellow/gold and set it to gold dodge. Since I use Clip Studio, Iāve gotten to experimenting a lot with the different modes to bring out the best results. Hereās a breakdown of how I use vivid colors. Overall, Iād say I use five different modes to shade and highlight my art. I want everything to stand out and look soft in a way.
For organizing, I keep a color set with my shading colors. I also reference back to the modes whenever I need some help experimenting. Even more, I might reference the hue changer and color correction in Clip Studio to help with saturation and contrast.
Thatās mostly just for vivid colors. For my monochrome colors, I have a certain aesthetic I like to go for. When I think of monochrome, I think Film Noir. So I mostly have a golden tinge with my monochrome, as well as some Chromatic Aberration effects. I also add a light tv filter for that extra bonus.
Again, I keep a color set for the flats. I mostly shade with a light gray on multiply or linear burn for these.
And then thereās just my black and white drawings, which dive more into hatch shading, maybe a bit of grey for color, and some patterned brushes for extra details. I did a lot of experimenting with this color method, mostly in order to understand lighting and depth without colors. A lot of my work was for my shorter Webtoons, and it helped me really understand the tone I wanted to make.
Iād say for this, I used a few of the Clip Studio pattern brushes for details, as well as downloaded brushes to do extra detailed hatch shading (though I mostly did my own).
In the end, Iād say all three of these methods overlapped with each other. I was able to take what I learned from all of them and apply them to other pieces. Itās really fun to look at my color style because it just changes so much over time XD