Aurélie greyscale/color process (Patreon)

Here’s a video demonstrating the process for coloring this piece - more often than not my first stage is painting the tones in greyscale. My brain still seems to work better in black and white than in color. Once I am satisfied with the values in grey, I will then use either an adjustment layer or a gradient map to add colors. The final stage is to add finesse, minor highlights, value tweaks, etc, in color, and add a fine noise or grain.