[chlywly]

Ok well I understand you must understand painting color shadow line etc to begin with. That's obviouse : I do traditional painting, I was just wondering about photoshop painting if there is a special technique? Like do most of you do a background color first, do you all paint on 1 layer or do multiple layers, do you use masks? Can I find some good tutorials on coloring in pen n ink drawings? using masks etc somewhere? thanks i'd appreciete it.

[Frost]

Hi Chlywly.

There are endless possibilities to paint in photoshop and such. My way (which was deeply inspired by Craig Mullins) is to basically draw from back to front, laying down large areas of color and tone to get a feel and base lighting for the painting. Then I go on fixing and detailing when I am happy with the general base layer and vague color sketch.

[Solitaire]

When it's up to create a character...

I always draw a sketch first - then import that picie in photoshop (or Illustrator first in cases where the Outlines are needed).
Then I create a layer with the Outlines and one with a midlegrey as a background.

I usually start with the skin/body.
I work in Greyscale with massive use of the burn (?) tool to work out the shape with shading and lighting.
When completed all parts I start arranging the coulours and light/contrasts.

[Rinaldo]

there was some talk on colouring line art (pen ink drawing) in this thread http://www.sijun.com/dhabih/ubb/Forum2/HTML/004912.html

it is mostly about how to get a comic book look but there are some things in there which can be applied to everything.

Basicaly I would go with frost on technque. there is a lot less technique than with traditional in a way. you have to concentrate on getting the right colour in the right spot. I have uses for most of the tools in photoshop. bits here snd there but it is very freeform. There are a lot of ways to do somthing. it is really about knwoing what all the tools do in detail and then playing mix and match. I do things differently everytime. You would have to say "how did you do that particular thing in that particular pic".
Sometimes I use masks to seperate a background from a subject or get a particular edge. but mostly it is very simmilar to normal/traditional painting.
You want a hard edge? you make one. make a mask. Or zoom up close and do it with a hard brush. Or make a path, convert to selection and fill. want a soft edge? use an air brush, do it like you would normaly with a traditional AB, mask bits off and all that. or paint with soft edged brushes set to opacity with the wacom (if you don't have a tablet then get one) get a farily good gradient my blending the colours (do this by going over colours with a differnt colour at a low opacity and then selection the result) and then smooth it out with the blur tool and smudge it a bit.
the possabilities are endless. if you just pic up a few tips/techniques here and there without knowing and understanding what all the tools do then you'll never be able to really get to know how the program works.

I find new ways to do things all the time. I would have said differnt things a while ago and will be doing it differently in the future I would imagine.

[This message has been edited by Rinaldo (edited November 04, 2000).]