In case you are a time-traveler from the future and need to be caught up, visit part 1 of this how-to.
In this case there were some minor issues with breast placement and the face. Not that real people are all perfectly symmetrical but I find I place higher standards on drawings than I do on real people because if a drawing looks off you can blame it on the artist but if a real person looks off you just have to accept that that's how they actually look, and yes, it's possible for them to look that way otherwise they wouldn't. So sure I could draw lopsided legs and eyes, which theoretically could be perfectly 'realistic' but at the same time look wrong. |
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| Now I've really cracked down on cleaning up the lines and defining all the features I want defined. This mostly takes a lot of really zoomed in time with the eraser and brush tool (or in Painter I use the cover pencil). |
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| Now I place her on the page in the approximate position I want. I was silly this time and didn't have an exact idea of the background I wanted when I started. In this case she doesn't need to be interacting with her environment so I can get away with it, but if she were to be sitting or doing something other than standing I would have sketched out at least the rough placement of items beforehand. |
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| Now from here on it will be almost solely Photoshop while I colour everything. I make a new layer for each major colour, i.e. skin, hair, boots/gloves. Since my line art is on it's own layer I can bring that to the top and it will nicely sit on top of everything but if you should happen to have the line art smushed to a white background simply set your colour layers to 'multiply' and they will leave the line art nice and clear. |
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| I decide to render the background in 3d so I take a detour from Photoshop and boot up Blender. For those interested, Blender is a freeware 3d modeling, rendering, and animation program. Very powerful and certainly comparable to some of the mainstream programs out there. Head to www.blender.org if you want to find out more. I won't go into the details of how I created this scene as that is the subject of it's own tutorial. |
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| Once it's finished rendering I bring the background into photoshop and slide it behind the drawing. Then I drag things around until they look to be in the right place. |
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| I've waited until now to start shading so that I could use the scene's light source as a reference for Power Girl. This part I find the most fun out of everything, it's just like being a kid again and colouring a colouring book. I plan on doing a detailed tutorial solely on this aspect so I will just give an overview at the moment. |
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| I start with a roughly mid-way base for all the colours, then I grab a lighter version and a darker version and switch back and forth with the brush until I'm satisfied. I usually stick to a soft round brush for general shading and use a harder one for more direct shadows. Then I usually take white and add a little highlights here and there depending on what material I'm trying to convey - soft white highlights for cloth and such, sharp strong highlights for shiny material etc. |
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Now the finishing touches. I've left the picture for a little while and then come back to it - another technique I use similar to flipping the image - to see if I notice any flaws. Also it doesn't hurt to take a break. When I near the end I try not to wear myself out on the homestretch, that can lead to rushing the final touches which makes for an unfinished looking piece.
I noticed she seemed to be floating above the background a bit so I added more shading and shadows to help give the feeling she is actually a part of her surroundings.
Once I'm pretty satisfied with the smaller details I flatten the image to one layer and use Photoshop's 'Levels' tool to get the contrast where I want it, and the 'Hue/Saturation' tool to get the colours where I want them. Be careful at this step otherwise you could end up washing out a lot of detail trying to get the contrast up.
And that's that. When I'm finished I show it to my rabbits to see what they think and eat a bag of chips to celebrate.
Continue reading with an in depth article on colouring with Photoshop HERE
Or have a go at how to get away with some Lazy Shortcuts |
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Thanks for reading! Questions, Comments and Inquiries can be made to turquoiserabbit@gmail.com
Would you like to Buy a Print of this picture? |
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