Nico’s Cloud Tutorial ; requested by anon and aojou

Okay, so I’ve been getting questions regarding how I make my clouds lately, and to be honest, I’m no pro. So let’s just say you don’t need to know a whole lot (Just the basic, layers, etc.) 

Just a heads-up warning:

This might suck. Lol. Do let me know if you’re confused about something (which you’ll probably be since I suck at explaining things and will most likely be making words up OTL).

You’ll need a pressure supporting tablet and paint tool sai. I don’t know how to paint in photoshop. Sorry!

The very first thing I do is go to google and start looking for sky scenery. CLOUD SEX. Get a boner. Get inspired.

1- First off, start with a gradient background (No, there is no gradient in sai, you make it yourself with the airbrush tool). Then make some sort of rough sketching. Make sure you do this in a separate layer, we will be taking it out sooner than later!

2- After that’s done, get the pen tool from SAI, density around 30%, and go over your rough draft with a lighter color than the background.

Make sure it’s FAINT! This will help create shadows later on.

3- Okay now we take out our rough draft sketch. Put it invisible, don’t delete though. It might help you if you get lost later on. To turn off the layer, simply click on the eye thing next to the layer.

Mine is already off. 

Here’s how it should look like.

4- Pretty hideous, ne? Looks like white poop floating. Anyways, next thing you do is SET A LIGHT SOURCE. It will help setting it from the start. I’ll show you how I set mine.

5- Here’s where the fun starts! make your pen have sex with your tablet! Grind those two together, they love it, and make random circle-y doodles around your faint floating white poop.  Start doing the doodle-y thing around all the floating poop, and paint a base shadow color right underneath your light source color.

6- Yep! Looks like more poop doesn’t it? Next thing you need is the WATER TOOL. 

Let me give you my settings for it, I change it as I go but these is what I used the most while making these.

size - 38%

density- 100%

color blend - 32%

opacity mix - 14%

persistence - 100%

What you do with the water tool is blend colors, so with a small brush, blend your light source and shadows to make some sort of base.

7- Now with the pen tool, use the color you used to set your light source and give it a sharper edge. Start adding your light source color, over the edges, where you want it to go. Basically make your pen and tablet have a round two. 

I tend to use different colors. If I use blue, I twill try not to shade with dark blue, but with purple. Or something. It makes your painting stand out.

8- As you keep adding shadows, blend them with the water tool. This way you wont leave any if forgotten. And just keep adding lighter colors towards your light source, til you reach white (or until you like it).

And that’s it! basically, here’s how mine looks like.

Then I experimented a bit, moved the clouds a little, changed some colors, and added some stuff but you dont have to do that. Here’s my finished piece: