keskiviikko 10. kesäkuuta 2015

Wilf Mulberry - Digital colouring

After I was satisfied with the outlines, it was time to splash on some colour. In Photoshop, this usually involves building a whole bunch of masks to isolate different areas, and their numbers tend to go up as the drawing is in progress. In Procreate, this kind of process is fortunately not needed, as it is very simple to just turn an area you have just coloured into masked, isolated instance.

So instead of creating masks, I first made separate layers for each piece of clothing, skin, hair, etc. After everything was applied a flat colour base, I then alpha-locked each layer, essentially masking out everything else from that layer. In this way no matter what I would thereafter do with the colouring of that particular item, the results would be applied only to that predetermined area, and it made using texture bushes for example very neat and simple. And although I could not find a way to set a brush to Multiply or Screen as I used to in PhotoShop, it was just as easy to make new layer, make a selection based on the layer I wanted, and then to set the whole layer on Multiply, Overlay or whatever I wanted, and then merge that layer with the previous one. Working with layers instead of masks felt a bit weird at first, but pretty soon it became a natural way to work.

And just as with PhotoShop, I found that I tinkered way too much with minutea. I need to devise a simpler, more efficient way to apply shadows and highlights to the base colour, be done with it, and then texture it for my liking. But apart from that, I find Procreate a very user-friendly tool, and I especially like the fact that I can use it wherever I have iPad with me. For example, I dabbled with this image a bit while waiting for my wife in a car. I did not have my stylus with me, but colouring works quite well even with just your fingers, especially if the layers are properly alpha-locked beforehand. But as with any digital painting tool so far, the hardest thing for me is to realize when a piece is ready, when it is time to stop.

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