[fantazyy]

Hello there!

If anyone could please give me advice on how to navigate this program? I'm relatively familiar with digital art as a whole, having used paint to SAI and GIMP very prominently in the past!

Of course I do have a few questions! I'm putting this on the beginners board since I'm new to this program, and maybe more seasoned artists will be looking around? Anyway, on to my questions; Does anyone have any advice on a good window layout? How do I rotate the canvas to lie vertically rather then horizontally? What does "Sample all layers" mean? Any advice for coloring, shading, doing lineless art etc? Any other advice?

I'm really sorry if I'm being a massive idiot and all these answers are obvious, I'm just bad at figuring things out at times ( I'm still learning stuff about SAI, even though I've had it for two years! ) so if anyone can point me in a good direction I'd really appreciate it! Thank you for listening to my tired rambling, tbh I should sleep soon anyway XD

[Mincinno]

Hi there! Sorry for my bad grammar! To flip the canvas, click on the button next to the eye dropper tool and drag around ^-^
not really much else to say...
The best tool (For me) to shade and add lighting is the burn and dodge tool. Once you have colored in your drawing, click the burn tool to darken the colors, or, to shade. Do the same with the dodge tool but it makes the colors brighter.
I would suggest when you first open a canvas to draw, imminently put three layers, the top one for lines, the middle one for color, and the bottom one for background. You could always add more layer after you've put the three, BUT LISTEN, Layer one is colored white and if you do lines on layer one then you cannot color it on layer two because the white on layer one is blocking the color

..I hope I helped someway...

[fantazyy]

Thank you so much for your advice! It really helps, I'll take it all into consideration!

[Guest]

Hi c:
While this can sometimes be overwhelming due to how much info it has, This thread is really great for learning the program. It outlines and explains a lot of the tools and aspects of using Oekaki.

As for what does the 'sample all layers' do, it merges your layers without getting rid of them. Allowing you to make quick edits to the entire piece without having to change layers. It's extremely useful to use when you're in the last few stages of your art, but not real helpful before then. The simplest way to explain this is honestly with pictures: Link

I typically never shade with the Burn and Dodge tool. While those can be used for shading, it's not a look I like. Instead I will layer colours on top of each other each one on its own layer. For shading and highlighting it's really best to steer away from using blacks or whites. Use purples or blues for shadows and yellows or soft pinks for highlighting. Overlay, Hard light, Soft light are my go to for shading/highlighting layer settings. Other people like to use Multiply, screen, and lighten. It's really about what look you want to go for and what you like.

The airbrush tool is a great thing for having smooth transitions of colour and is my go to for doing animal bases and eyes. I tend to work with it on a really low opacity setting and low colour setting, but it's really good for smooth colours and shading once you get the hang of it.

I don't work much with lines as I prefer to do lineless art but I highly recommend when doing lines you turn the smoothing setting up to some degree on the brush settings. It helps massively with getting straight and smooth lines if your hands are too shaky like mine.

Layers are also your single most friend when it comes to oekaki and any digital art. I highly recommend you use them to seperate things such as backgrounds from line work, colours from shading, shading from highlights, ect. Layers also have several settings you can use that really have a drastic effect on how the art works. Play with layers and settings plus opacity, it's a really good thing to know how to use and what layer settings you like the look of.

I hope some of that is useful information c: