Got lots of asks about this, so here it is! Doing these are different and fun~ I made up this way of doing them by playing around, so I hope it makes sense!  I haven’t done a tutorial in 3 years

At 100% density, do a sketch using only the colour black and the eraser (I like to sketch using the brush tool) . It doesn’t really need to be neat. Make sure you don’t do anything else otherwise the next step will fail

Choose a colour. Paint using the marker tool. Magic! If it’s done correctly then the sketch should visible no matter how much pressure you use.

Using the same tool slop on your colours very roughly. Keep in mind that the tool is at very low opacity so all the colours will be “diluted”.

Too make this look “soft” blend as much of the colours in with the bg. So most of the colour should be directed into the centre of the sketch (?)

More colours like so. I have no idea what is correct lighting so just go with my gut.

Time to switch tools. I use a mixture of all of these. vv

The default settings should be fine. If you ever mess up the settings, you can always get them back by right clicking on an empty square. A drop down box will appear with the list of tools

Then, I EYEDROP 95% OF THE COLOURS and just clean as much as I can with a mixture of tools. I start with what is “further away”. In that theory I’ll start with the skin and end at the hair.

The airbrush can be good for blending things into the background- what I did for the fish blobs

Part of the cleaning is re-lining the sketch as outlines. The brush and water tool is good for this because it blends the colours around it.

The hair is actually nothing different, it’s just lots of strokes haha; It’s better doing the hair last so it doesn’t get covered by later strokes

Going back into some things SAVE……..AND THEN YOU ARE PRETTY MUCH DONE………

…

…..But it’s time to cheat! Why are the colours to dull and light? Because in the beginning I worked at very low opacity. The colours are very washed and it’s time to fix that! 

 I can switch on photoshop and adjust levels-. If you don’t have photoshop, duplicate this layer and set it to “multiply”.  

I overlay colours too! Technically this makes it three not one layer, but WHATEVER all the stuff that actually counts was on a single layer. This is just after effects

Keep doing that until uh. yeah. Done! This pic took me 2 and half hours; If you would like to see the full size of this picture, > http://namface.tumblr.com/post/7450235776