Painting digitally 58
1. LAYING THE LINE ART The first step is to draw the line art. I like to use the regular ‘Hard Mechanical’ brush (default on Photoshop), with Shape Dynamics turned on for pen pressure, Opacity at 60% and Flow at 40%. This gives me more control over the lines, and I like to sketch lightly so that nothing is set in stone yet. *
2. Blocking Out Colors The next step is to block out all the colors. Make sure you work on a new layer. It’s always safe to make a new layer for each new element (at minimum, have the line art, base colors, shadows and highlights on separate layers). This way, you can easily adjust the opacity and blend mode of each layer, or compare what your painting looks like before and after painting a layer, or even delete an entire layer if you decide it doesn’t look good. Start with a mid-tone for the background so that you can build up shadows and highlights. It’s usually good to pick a neutral color for the background, to let the subject stand out more. However, you can also choose a background to represent a specific mood or feeling; in this case, I want my painting to be extremely colorful.
Next, fill in the base colors of your subject. To avoid colors that look like awkward slabs of paint, keep your brush set at lower Opacity and Flow. This also allows previous colors and lines to ‘show through’ to a certain degree. Your colors will blend easily with other colors. 3. REFINING DETAILS Now you can paint some details. Go over and clean up the line art. Add shadows and highlights. You can paint those shadows and highlights using the same base color if you set your brush mode to Multiply (for shadows) or Screen (for highlights). You can also use the eyedropper tool to pick up colors that are already on the canvas. (Check out the ‘Useful Painting Shortcuts’ box for more tips!) Remember to keep adding new layers. You can adjust the Opacity and Blend Mode of each
added layer to achieve the best results. For example, if you painted the highlights too bright, you can bring the layer opacity down; or if you want to tint something, you can do so in blending options > color overlay. It is also useful to flip the canvas horizontally to check for any mistakes.