OKOKOKOK
so first off brushes!!
i dont use a solid brush (sometimes i do idk depends lol) so that probably helps with the soft-ness!
i use shale on procreate (default brush you can find it in the calligraphy section) but basically any sketch-y brush will work!
but i think the main thing that makes my art seem soft is the colors
which actually arent hard to do and i feel like i get a little too much credit for it so here we go!!!!!!
first off youre gonna wanna get a color that you think will match the vibe of whatever your drawing! browns and yellows i think look real pretty and definitely make the colors look soft, so im gonna be using this yellow color for my example. i also drew a little guy to be my example for coloring. again, this will work with basically any color!
ok so now you have that, pick out what colors you want to use for actually coloring your drawing
THEN color pick all these bad boys and set the brush opacity to about 50%. color little dots of each of these colors on top of that original base color you made
color pick these lowered opacity dudes and then just use them to color as you normally would!
sometimes when you do this a couple of the colors might not look right, but you can always correct them! for example i think the white fur on this little man is too yellow so im just gonna desaturate it a bit!
ok so now for the last step for coloring!! because it looks good right now but what would make it even BETTER is using layer modes, my beloveds
make a new layer and put it on top of all your other layers. fill it with the base color
if youre using procreate like i am, click the letter N on the layer tab. a drop down menu will come up with all the different layer modes you can use! if youre not using procreate you can probably look up where to find layer modes in whatever program youre using as im pretty sure most art programs have layer modes
then go thru the modes until you find one that you think looks good! i think soft light always looks nice, saturation looks cool to for some colors but not all of them
but it just so happened that saturation looks really cute for these colors so thats what i used! you can lower the opacity on the layer to your liking (i also removed the color swatches and made the drawing bigger)
you can recolor lineart too!!! that makes the drawing look softer. just alpha lock your lineart layer and recolor
how i usually color lineart is getting a color that matches with the rest of the drawing and using that to color the outer lines, then taking the color of the actual drawing and making it a little more saturated and darker to color the inside lines
(also i lowered the opacity on the layer mode layer before i took this picture but you didnt notice that shhhhh)
and then youre done!!! hopefully that was helpful idk lol
if you have any questions then dont be afraid to ask!!!!!!!