Here’s a quick thing I put together, I’m not great at in depth explaining so this tutorial assumes you have basic knowledge of layers and clipping groups and layer modes and all that mess.
HERE WE GO
If you need to grab a ref do so, but sketch a common shape of whateves of your choosing.
Grab your favorite inking brush or pen and get the outline going, thinner lines for the inside. Then kick your sketch layer to the curb. We don’t need it any longer.
Preserve the opacity of your ink layers and add colors if you want, maybe a few and blend them a bit for sparkle.
Make a new layer for your base color then just like your lines add a few likely colors and smudge things around blend them really nicely to your heart’s greatest desire.
Make another layer over everything but your inks and set it to luminosity or what ever your program’s name for it is. Grab a marker brush or something painterly like and make highlights.
You can either use the same layer or make a new lumi layer, get a soft brush and make soft light shade within for that magical feeling. Adjust opacity as desired.
Make a multiply layer under your lumi layer and grab a painterly brush, maybe one with bristles/flat middle/ whatever you like and make a kinda broken/fractured effect inside with a darker color, do the same in one of your lumi layers or make a new one with the same brush and a lighter color, be sure to blend stuff around to make it look nice.
Add more highlights, preferably over the line work so more LUMI LAYERS. make sure your inner lines can be seen somehow.
This is the part where I switched programs (was using Sai) you can do this in Photoshop or whatever you have that enables custom brushes.
I’m using Clip Studio Paint now and here I discovered that it has a broken glass like brush, they are very easy to find for PS users as well and THEY ARE NOT REQUIRED you can make them all by hand if you want, I just added a few strokes on top of my half assed ones to make it look great. Make sure you do a little blending as well.
Add some nice glow behind the crystal and sparkles within the crystal.
Optional but maybe texture your light a bit with a texture brush of your choosing, add more sparkles and you’re done.
I’m a bad teacher but this is how I make my crystals for the time being as I’m always finding new ways to do something better. But this is how I do it and you can always find your own way that works for you. c: Play around with your settings, do what works for you.
The-Lounge 