I have many miscellaneous “creative” tasks I’m working on right now,

• Coloring my 2nd children’s graphic novel, which is taking forever… I’m dreading the lettering part next.

• Making Patreon Sticker Rewards. Halfway done!

• Pondering how I don’t have enough hands to work on my other comic projects.

  Yup, thinking is still an active task.

Yet, amidst all that, I was able to do some sketches in between and discovered a new way to render my colors, which I will show as a tutorial later below (so stay with me on this).

The beautiful art of bread-making

Lately, whenever I take breaks between my tasks, I like to watch baking videos. No, not the ASMR tutorial ones or baking competition shows that love adding dramatic effect (gotta enjoy the tension & drama though). I’m talking about the ones who casually travel around to film historical baking methods, in other words, documentaries.

Somehow, I came across a random Italian channel that shared traditional baking from different regions. Even though I understand naught of Italian, I can tell by watching that the country has a long history of bread recipes. Feel free to expand on this in the comments below.

Anyhow, it was still very therapeutic to watch and made me want to study them through drawing. Maybe I’ll even bake up some story…

Maybe some of you might wonder, “Okay, why didn’t she use all that sketching time to work on her other comic projects?”

Well, here’s the thing.

Back then, taking a break, to me, meant using my free time to complete unfinished tasks. I would work on my main comic project, and during my breaks, switch to my side comics. In the end, I’m pouring the same energy into everything without having a moment to relax.

This eventually led to more anxiety and burnout. Psychologists call it toxic productivity where we pressure ourselves to get more done, when, in fact, we should make a serious effort to rest our body and mind.

It’s good to shift focus on something entirely different by doing things unrelated to one’s work. Some artists (who can’t stay away from drawing, like me) do this by drawing fanart or monthly art challenges, which I used to do. But art challenges are generally about community participation, and the limited time frame somehow adds to the unneeded pressure, so I only do these art prompts twice a year. As for fanarts… well, that’s another topic I’d love to discuss in the future. And no, I won’t be disparaging it.

I realized I needed my very own “me/study” time, where I could do activities that would benefit my well-being, without the influence of fandom or social media.

If you all thought I was going to say I found it through the joys of baking bread, I’m sorry to disappoint. *insert laughter* But I definitely want bake something now!

For me, it was simply through drawing in a sketchbook.

I encourage others to find something that will make you slow down. Whether it’s taking a walk, stretching, reading a book, journaling/blogging, or even baking. Anything that involves a slow process to escape from the constant rush of life is well worth your time.

And speaking of time.

It’s finally…

TUTORIAL TIME!

Here’s a simple way to render your final colors in Procreate.

First, I like to merge all my layers into one.

Without losing all my hard work, I made sure my top most layer is selected > go to Actions > Copy Canvas > and paste. This will duplicate and flatten all your layers.

I then used the Curves and Saturation to darken and bring out my colors, which are found in the Adjustment tab.

*Note: if your artwork’s color is already dark and vivid, you may skip this step. Since I’m using a watercolor brush, the colors tend to come out light on my end.

Sometimes I’m satisfied and leave it as that. But I still wanted to go for a more “aged” and warm look. So I experimented using the Gradient Maps.

On the merged layer, go to Adjustments > Gradient Maps > Select Blaze

Then go to its Layer Blending Options > and select Soft Light

Adjust the opacity of the warmth to your liking. I put mine to 80%

This next step is an optional one. In short, I wanted to add another layer of cool shadow tone.

Go to your Layers > duplicate the gradient map layer we worked on > select the layer below.

Go to Adjustments > Hue/Saturation > Change Hue to a cooler tone, preferably blue

Go to its Layer blending options and select Multiply > adjust opacity however you like, mine is set to 15%

Hope you have fun experimenting with this!