DMAC's Coloring Tutorial (Dragon Horse)

[DMAC]

My Coloring Technique in 4 "Easy" Steps:

Stage 1: Scan in Line Art

In order for a later stage of this technique to work, you will need your pencil drawing to have some color to it instead of being grayscale. In my case, this was easy since the drawing was done with colored pencils, but if you use regular graphite, you will need to convert your drawing to Duotone (Image>Mode>Duotone) and make it a dark shade of an appropriate color (dark brown, dark green, etc.), then convert the image to RGB (Image>Mode>RGB Color).

Stage 2: Create Color Layer

Transform your background pencil layer into a regular layer by selecting it from the layers menu on the right then choosing Layers>New Layer From Background and set the Mode to Multiply. Create a new layer (Layers>New Layer) and drag it beneath your pencils. This will be your color layer.

Using a hard-edged brush or the selection tools, fill in your color layer with the base colors you want to use for the piece (also called "flatting" since you're just laying down flat colors).

Here is the color layer with the pencil art hidden:

Stage 3: Shading, Highlighting, Blending

If your flats have nice, clean, non-fuzzy edges to them, you can just select the color with the magic wand tool and then use brushes to bring in other colors, highlight, and shade without having to worry about "overspray" going beyond the contours of your subject. In this case, I used a large, soft-edged brush to bring in yellows, oranges, reds, and a bit of green on the fins. Then I used brighter colors and the dodge tool to add highlights and darker colors and the burn tool to add shadows to the piece.

Here is the color layer with the pencil art hidden:

Stage 4: Tinting the Pencils

To give the pencil layer subtle colors that match the colors beneath it, create a duplicate of your color layer (Layer>Duplicate Layer) and then drag it over top of the pencils and set the mode to Color. This means that anywhere the pencils are over a green area, they will be dark green, over a red area, they will be dark red, etc.

I usually tone it down a little from full strength by reducing the opacity of this layer (in this case to 30%).

That's about it! You can play around with saturation, opacity, etc. to get the look you want at this point.

The finished drawing again:

Let me know if this makes sense or if there are any areas that need clarifying. I'll probably post this on my site once I've ironed out any wrinkles.

 

[pogre]

OK, this is probably a dumb question, but what format do you scan it in? Do you scan it straight to the photoshop application or do you save it on your harddrive as tiff and import it? or something else?

Thanks for posting this - very cool tutorial!

 

[DMAC]

I scan directly into Photoshop, usually at around 300 dpi for pencil images, in either greyscale or full color mode.

As long as the resolution and quality of the scan are decent, it shouldn't matter if you're scanning directly or importing from somewhere else.

 

[frankthedm]

One would think a gold dragon has higher... standards.

Good work on the colouring!

 

[Ferret]

Looks simple enough, whats with the layers in Stage Three though? It looks like there are more layers then you said there would be.


Any tips on drawng scales and fur etc, I have a picture I would like to colour up, but I'm quite sheepish about puting scales to it and it not looking right, It's practially just a line drawing at the moment.

 

[DMAC]

I actually put together the tutorial after the piece was finished, not while I was working on it. The extra layers were duplicates of the color layer that I created to preserve them in various stages while I was working then selectively turned off to hide them. At first I remembered to actually delete the others before taking a screen capture but forgot as I went along... hope it isn't too confusing. As long as you follow the instructions it won't matter.

My best advice with fur and scales is to look at pictures of real animals and apply what you see to your piece. Whether it's a bear or a gnoll, an iguana or a kobold, the same rules apply. Basically, look at the direction that the fur or scales grow and build out in that direction. These pen and ink pieces I did a while back are a good example for fur:

 

[myrdden]

An excellent thread!

Good basic tutorial which has given me some valubale explanations on colouring with photoshop.

Thanks a lot!

 

[Baron Opal]

Stupid noob question:

That was done with one pencil right? The heavier lines are drawn with more pressure / more times than the lighter ones? You're not switching implements in mid-sketch.

 

[GentleGiant]

DMAC, a question about the 2nd stage.
Do you meticulously colour the drawing with a brush all the way to the edge?
Or how do you use the selection tools since the colour layer doesn't have any line drawing to select?
I hope I'm making myself clear. You give both options, but it looks, on the colour layer, as if you have just filled in the line drawing. I'm specifically thinking about the fine lines on the tail fin.

 

[DMAC]

Baron Opal: I actually do switch pencils. Check out my "Desert City" thread for a bit more info on how I do my pencil drawings.

GentleGiant: I use both the selection tools and hard-edged brushes (as well as the eraser) to lay down my base colors.