Welcome to the first article in the NSFW Art Fundamentals course!

I want to start by introducing you to the typical art workflow. As your illustrations get more complex, you’ll want to spend more time planning things. Be creative and make mistakes while they’re cheap, early in the process.

The 7 steps

1. Research & Studies
2. Thumbnails
3. Rough
4. Value and Color Comps
5. Lineart
6. Flats
7. Shading

So, where do you begin? What happens at each stage and why? Let’s go through some examples!

Do you need to go through each step each time?
These steps are not rules. As you draw more, you’ll include some steps and drop others. Maybe you’ll do all of them. Your style, what you draw, and how detailed your art is will all influence your process. My only suggestion is don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, especially because each step has a purpose!

Research & Studies

Could you draw the layout of your house? Even if you’ve been living there for a year or two, that might be a bit difficult.

The same applies to drawing NSFW. It’s reasonable to expect you can draw people after seeing them all your life, but that’s probably not going to happen.

Even pro artists know that, which is why they start the illustration process with finding or making their references. Using reference isn’t a weakness as many beginner artists think, but a powerful tool to make sure your interpretation has a solid foundation.

Once you’ve assembled your references, you might notice gaps in your skill. Maybe it’s your first time drawing a character, or rendering swimsuit texture.

Artists do studies to overcome this gap. When you understand something, you can stylize and interpret it confidently.

Studies aren’t just for specific artworks. Exercises to improve your art fundamentals are also key, which I’ll be sharing throughout the course.

Thumbnails

Armed with your references, its time to begin the creative process.

Thumbnails are small and quick sketches where you figure out how to visually communicate your idea.

It might seem more fun to jump to drawing. After all, who cares about these small sketches if you have the final artwork in mind already?

But our first idea is rarely our best. Much like you stretch before a workout, thumbnails help you cut through ideas that don’t work. And find the ones that do.

Notice how messy my thumbnails are. That’s important; you want to think about big picture things such as arrangement of elements within the canvas, camera angles, and the action of the character.

Roughs

Once you’ve chosen a thumbnail, it’s time to start adding in details. But wait! Make sure you stay loose.

This is the time for you to figure out the big picture technicalities, like perspective and construction (breaking down complex forms like the body into simple shapes like rectangles and circles).

Value and Color Comps

This is a more unknown step in the illustration process. I only learned it a few years into my NSFW art career.

Comps are short for “comprehensive”. They’re quick works that show the client (and yourself) a rough idea of the final output.

They’re commonly used to figure out the values (how light or dark objects are) and the colors. Similar to how thumbnails are quick and cheap, comps allow you to test ideas. You might have spent hours coloring, only to hate how the color palette came out. That’s why we comp!

If you work with strong lighting, a value comp is important. We’ll go into it in more detail later in the course, but value is just lightness or darkness of a color.

It’s an odd concept at first, so let’s visualize it. Here’s a red apple:

What happens if we strip away the color? We’re left with black and whites, or values.

You can tell where the light is coming from through clues such as highlights, rim light, and cast shadow.

Values are a powerful tool for directing the eye. For example, see Feng Zhu’s work below:

Despite the complexity, he’s able to make your eye go to the creature’s head before anything else. Its low-key (darker) head against the high-key (brighter) sky creates a strong contrast (and thus a focal point).

It’s easy to miss those things when you jump straight into color, which is why we do value comps.

Lineart

Awesome, we’re making good progress!

Lineart may seem tedious, but it’s also an opportunity for your style and artistic choices to shine through.

First, what genre is your artwork? Will it have thick, graphic linework like a cartoon? Or are you going for a semi-realistic, thinner lineart? Maybe a painterly lineart so you can jump into coloring faster?

I like lining with a sketchy brush, suggesting depth with thick and thin lines. I also incorporate a lot of hatching, using it to create focal points.

Flats

This one’s easy enough. In preparation for shading and lighting, artists usually color in the flats (as in no indication of form or 3d-ness).

The important part here is how you structure layers to save yourself time later on. For me, having each different colored thing on a separate layer works best.

Shading

And now the moment you’ve been waiting for!

Shading is all about adding light sources and their equivalent shadows. At this stage, you’re thinking about the shape and form of things. For example, how would circular shapes like the head and breasts catch light and cast shadows?

The simplest approach would be cel shading, as seen in anime and cartoons. You simplify shadows, use hard edges to depict light and dark.

Going a step further is soft shading, since shadows get softer the further away from a light source they are.

When soft shading, be careful of pillow shading, where you evenly the body without establishing a directional light source. If you use it too much, your art might look same-ish.

Going a step beyond shading is rendering. Instead of just adding light and shadow, we’re approaching realism by adding textures, details and effects. Rendering captures a lot more subtlety, like shadows within shadows and material textures (clothing, fur, cum, sweat).

There are many other ways to shade and render. Some artists like digital painting, using color blending rather than blurring. It’s a bit more difficult because you lean less on lineart, and more on light/shadow to depict forms.

It’s a lot to take in, but the more you try these techniques out the more you’ll find what works for you.

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Great, I hope all the examples left you with a better understanding of the NSFW art illustration process.

Next up, we’ll go through an exercise where we finish an artwork. I’ll join you in the process, and show each step.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at hbeats.art@gmail! I’m happy to answer any questions.

Cheers, Beats.