[Hippie]

Firs tI would like to thank Joachim for his advice on an erlier post.
As to this post, I have always started illustration with penicl drawings and when i mad ethe move to painting in PS I ahve had a difficult itme working up the values of light and dark. I don't know if I have a probem deeloping a pallette or a problem with the lighting.
I just started this pic only been working on it for about an hour and would like some feedback on my color choices and values. Also any suggestions on how to create a pallette that flows from light to dark instead of constanly picking new colors.

thanks in advance

[EviLToYLeT]

I think the best way, if you want to do light to dark, is simply start a new canvas, and do a gradient of the color rang you want across the whole thing(while holding shift to keep it straight) .. and all you need to do is get the eyedropper tool.

[Anthony J]

Hey Evil, can you say that again, but with more detail. I don't follow exactly how what you mean there ? If your explaining something in photoshop, you should explain it in a manner that tells people how to do it...cause I have no clue about anything you said except 'eyedropper'

What are the steps to doing that colour line thing ??

[waylon]

Well, what *I* would do at this point, just so that you can get a good, quick estimate of what a better value scheme might look like, is this:

Create a new layer on top of the one you're drawing on. Set its blending mode to either multiply or color burn, set your foreground color to black, and start painting. If you're using a tablet, brush very lightly, and just darken everything bit by bit. If you're using a mouse, set the brush's opacity to something low, like 20 or 30. Use a relatively large brush, and darken general areas of the picture, like the trees behind the lizard, or the shadows underneath it. Be vague at first - don't worry about the outlines of the figures or anything, since they're on a different layer and you can fix it later.

Make sure the picture looks good if you step back five feet, or if you zoom way out, THEN go in and start refining the detail. You may even want to add an extra layer above the dark one, set to "screen" or "color dodge" mode, and paint with white to get some highlights back in.

THEN, when you're happy with the values, start fixing the colors - especially since they'll be pretty desaturated from adding all the black and white on top. There are (obviously) a bunch of ways to do this. You could add a third layer on top, and set it to "Color" mode - then, whatever color you paint with will show up underneath, but the values will stay the same. (In photoshop terms, this modifies the hue and saturation, but not the luminosity.) Another good method would be to simply leave the layer on "normal" mode, and re-paint what's underneath, fixing details and stuff as you go along. Or, use a combination of the two. Or do something completely different. Who knows. Learn all the tools you can, and use them when you think they're appropriate.

As for your other question of how to create a good palette from light to dark... well, you can always keep the photoshop "color" palette open. If you set it to "HSB Sliders" mode, instead of "RGB sliders", you can just change the brightness from there. Or, what a lot of people do, is to make a separate layer on your picture with a couple blobs of color. Then, when you're painting, just hold the "alt" key to change your cursor from the brush tool to the color-picker tool, click on your blob of color, then get back to painting. This really speeds things up a whole lot.

Uhm. I tried to keep things as simple as I could, but I think I went way overboard. If you're not sure of any of the terminology, just ask. Or look it up in the photoshop help thingy, and play around a bit. You'll probably find all kinds of useful stuff.

[quaternius]

Here's another way to get your values working... one among thousands I suppose.
Before you dive into color, try and work with 3 to 5 shades of gray first - to get your shapes working, (yeah I know it's more boring than color...) Here's your image changed to grayscale - as you sort of said yourself -there's not really a lot of differentiation and value changes creating any strong shapes.

I struggle with this all the time, but I sort of did a foreground-background thing to your image and then separated light and shadow into black and white. Then I messed around a little until I got the big shapes working to some degree.

Gecko, Micke and others do this much better than I do, but I hope the idea is clear.

Once you've got the big shapes working you can begin to swap-in colors and grads and take it from there; yours will probably be a lot better than my example -


If you want some other ideas that might possibly help, you can visit my quaternius site at critical-depth and go to the tips/tuts section. There's a couple of value-based color sets in the skintones section that might of use as you get the hang of it.

[ May 31, 2001: Message edited by: quaternius ]

[Hippie]

EvilToyLet: thanks I have tried that in the past and it does help with settign a tone but this one is very hard for since I am trying to create an outdoor lighting. (I always struggle with outdoor scenes)

waylon: great ideas, I have always used layers like that for design work but it never clicked in my head do use it for illustration. Thanks for the smack upside the head to get me going.

quaternius:great examples thanks for the ideas