Fill With Flat Color
Lesson 3 of 6 · Intermediate · 7 min
What you will make
Fully colored art with no highlights or shadows yet.
Lesson checklist
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Fill the cap, stem and spots with one base color each, and confirm the stem still reads lighter than the cap.
Open a 24 × 24 practice canvas with lesson examples and onion skin enabled. Your work saves automatically to My projects.
Starter files and backup import
Follow the steps
Add one base color per surface before any lighting.
Start with: The clean outline from lesson two.
- 1
Pick six colors and stop
One outline, one cap tone, one stem tone, one spot tone, plus a highlight and a shadow. A seventh color means going back to lesson four on purpose.
A palette of six roles, written down.
- 2
Fill the cap edge to edge
Use the fill tool from inside the outline. If color leaks through the border, you have a gap from lesson two: go back and close it rather than painting over it.
A cap filled with no leaks.
- 3
Fill the stem, then place the spots
The stem takes its own tone. Leave the spots for last so you can place them where they help the shape, not where they happen to land.
Three distinct surfaces in one image.
- 4
Check contrast from a distance
The stem must stay lighter than the cap, or the two shapes merge again. If they look the same, change the stem color rather than adding another outline.
Flat art that reads clearly at game size.
See the technique
Outline only
One base color per surface
Learning notes and references
- Assign one base color to each surface: cap, stem, spots.
- Keep the whole palette small enough to remember.
- Resist adding light before the flat version already reads.