How to: Highlight a horse in just a few, simple steps

Hey guys, and happy new years!

From now on, we're back on regular schedule, can't wait to share more content with you 🤩

Today I thought I'd treat you with a very simple, quick tutorial; how to highlight an entire horse in just a few steps. This is the technique I use to make super shiny horses!

PS: did you know that I almost doesn't shade my horses? I simply just correct the shadows on the sso model, and the rest is done with highlighting. I simply just build and build up highlights to create shading from the base instead. 

Step one: Use a round brush with 50% opacity and with both pressure for size and pressure for opacity checked (this is a feature on photoshop, I hope it's in other programs as well).
Go over the horse with the brush with a slightly lighter color than the base lightest color. I use the ref as a guide to where I draw the highlights, therefore I prefer refs where the horse is very shiny. Remember that since you rely on your pen pressure for opacity and size, you have to be light on the hand.

Step two: Blend together. Here I use the color picking technique (tutorial here on patreon), but use the technique you prefer. 

Step three: On a new layer, add another round with highlights, but this time with a smaller brush, and an even lighter color. Also, don't be afraid of adding textures, for example as you can see on the neck. Just go back and forth with the brush to build up the highlights. 

Step four: Another round with blending! Don't give up after just one round with blending. It's a process from previous step to this. Just go around the highlight edges until the transitions looks nice and smooth, but the highlights still pop in the center. 

Step five: Play around with settings to make the highlights and details pop even more. Here I have turned down the shadows a bit, turned up the highlights a touch and added something called "clarify". 

And that's it! I hope this helps a bit, and in the future I might go more in depth if that's something you want. But a friendly reminder, as mentioned previously, I have already uploaded a tutorial on how to use the color picking technique for blending. 

Hope you'll have a lovely day and week!

Hugs from