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Comics 101
Art tips and techniques, reviews and interviews from my studio. Archived here and at World Famous Comics.

Comics 101 Archives

Comics 101 for 10/18/2001
White Wolf - Werewolf: Storyteller Cover!

Week Three: Blur the Watercolor

Besides playing with different brushes for rendering wolf fur, I also wanted to experiment in Painter with 'paper' textures for the cave wall. After I successfully accomplished this technique in the color rough I had to repeat the process for the final art. In Painter, I went to 'File' and clicked and dragged down to 'New' and created a new canvas at 300 d.p.i. I made the width of the canvas wider than 9.5 inch final size since it needed to be large enough to place in a background layer (and to allow for some extra 'bleed') behind the rest of the colored line art and fit the illustration later. In my Art Materials pallette, I clicked on the 'papers' box at the top and highlighted the 'Eggscape' paper texture. In order to maximize the effect of the paper texure I cranked up the paper grain of my digital canvas to 100% in my Options pallette, and chose to apply my orange and purple paint using the water color brush. I also turned the opacity of my watercolor up to 100% in my Options pallette allowing the paint to bleed into the canvas and bring up the desired textured surface. The background cave part of the illustration (Example E) was created in Painter as a separate file I would be importing into Photoshop for the final. My next step to complete my illustration on the background layer was to illustrate the runes I drew in the computer. Since I already figured out their general placement in my final pencil art, I saved the runes art as a Greyscale file separate from the line art on a layer above it using Photoshop. I open the runes art file again in Photoshop and change it from Greyscale to RGB under the 'Image' menu.

Example E
Example E

Using the Magic Wand tool, I selected the shapes of the runes all at once by clicking the white background behind them first. Then I click my 'Select' menu option and then drag down to 'Inverse'. This wraps the selection around the shapes for me. With my rune shapes selected, I go to my 'Edit' menu option and drag down to 'Fill' using my foreground color of an orange-brown color I previously selected. This fills all the shapes with a flat color tone that I can then manipulate.

I had intended to give my runes a different texture than what my cave wall surface had in order to give the illusion that they were carved into the stone. This would also help them stand out separate against the surface and the black line art of the foreground characters. While my shapes are still selected I chose the 'Filter' menu option and dragged down to 'Texture', then 'Texturizer'. In this new window, I selected the 'Sandstone' texture feature. I kept the 'scale' of the texture at 100% and made the 'relief' of the texture '8'. I then went across my selected shapes with my airbrush, using darker and lighter browns to change their tones from one general area to the other to give the illusion of light passing over them (Example F).

Example F
Example F

In order to help me see this better and match the light source of my background, I opened my cave painting file in Photoshop. I then copied the file by going to 'Select' menu option and dragging down to 'All' and then going to 'Edit' and dragging down to 'Copy'. I closed out of my runes art file and moved to my cave painting file which was now open in another window. In this file, I selected 'Edit' and dragged down to 'Paste' which automatically placed my selected colored runes art on a layer above the cave background. I completed the rendering of the runes on 'Layer 1' and before I flattened this artwork, I moved on to the next step of coloring my line art file.

Paint Evil with Evil

I start by opening the final line art and simply taking the 'Paint Bucket' tool and clicking in the areas that I want to fill with color. This technique will only work when filling complete closed shapes otherwise the paint will bleed into areas where you want to fill with another color. There are ways of working around this by closing off the gaps in the linework using the pencil tool. By drawing in the gaps with lines of the actual color you'll be filling with, you'll close off the shape and can then fill it with color using the Paint Bucket tool. I am using only flat tones here and am not masking off the line art yet since I plan on doing alot of the rendering in Painter as opposed to Photoshop. Painter gives me alot more options for different brushes and and painterly textures that simply aren't found in Photoshop so I plan to mask the black line in Painter on this particular peice.

Mask of the Red Death

I close out the file in Photoshop and then open it in Painter 4. I then click the 'Edit' menu option and drag down to 'Mask' and then highlight 'Image Luminance'. This masks my black line art in Painter without masking the flat color I established in Photoshop. Before I begin painting and rendering behind the black line though, I have to go down the bottom left hand corner of my window and click and drag from the 'brown' drawing mask icon to the second one that shows the drawing icon masked in the center.

Now I begin rendering my foreground illustration using the various brushes in Painter. In my 'Brushes' pallete I choose 'Oil Brush' and click and drag down the subcategory underneath it to 'Fine Brush'. In my 'Brush Control: Size' window, found in the Brushes pallette, I can change the angle, squeeze and tip of my brush to achieve various strokes and effects with the paint. The werewolf holding the lantern is the first character I begin to render and looks like a good place as anywere to start.

Dodge and Burn an X in Your Head

Some of the other tools I use in completing the rendering on this werewolf are the 'Dodge' and 'Burn' tools. These tools can be found in the Brushes pallette in Painter and I use them to lighten and darken the tones of the werewolf's fur and clothing. I use the 'Airbrush' in Painter, also found in the Brushes pallette, to create the orange-yellow glow of the lantern. I can adjust the opacity of my paint and size of my brushes also using my 'Options' pallette in Painter.

After completing the rendering of the werewolf (Example G) and getting a feel for the final technique I'll be using in Painter for the rest of the illustration, I close out of the file and return to Photoshop to drop in the background cave wall with the runes.

Example G
Example G

I hope you enjoyed part three of this week's article but if you come back next week for more... realize the worst is yet to come. We can't be responsible if you never sleep again!

-Joe

<< 10/11/2001 | 10/18/2001 | 10/25/2001 >>

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