So... I got some requests for a tutorial. Thing is, I'm terrible at explaining things to people. And even when I get specific questions about Photoshop I find that I only get confuzzled looks when I try to answer. So there'll be none of that here! This is simply what I do when I draw something, from start to finish. I hope helpful things can be pulled out of it... Enjoy! n_n
I should think by now it's pretty obvious how obsessed I am with Trigun... and I figured it was about time I drew Wolfwood. So I pulled out my mechanical pencil and some letter paper and a pad and went outside on my patio and... drew him. And got four mosquito bites. Oh well.
After I finish my hand is cramping pretty badly so I stop drawing for the day. (cough) I have a tendency to press down really hard to figure out how I'm going to ink the drawing later. To help me decide where I want to put my thick outlines and such... So it's the next morning and I pull a sheet of 9x12 inch Paris 74lb bleedproof paper for pens. I love this stuff. I trace my sketch really lightly against my windowpane because I don't own a lightbox and take the time to make some changes. His left hand was way too big so I sketched a new one, and since my paper was larger I was able to draw the rest of his cross, and then I took out my kanji dictionary so I could randomly write his name up there because I thought it looked nifty! (cough) On a whim I decided to scan what my paper looked like right before inking so here it is. It was... much lighter and hard to see but scanners can't show (or scan) that very well so here you go.
A few hours later... my hand is cramped again. I really need to figure out how to loosen up. I use Sakura micron 005 and 05 (0.20 and 0.45mm) pens which cost about 2.5 bucks a pop but they are really nice. I use the 0.20mm pen for the super thin lines and details and the 0.45 pen for everything else.
So then I go flip on my scanner and... scan it. I forgot how large, heh. Large enough for me to make nice prints when I get around to finding a good place to get prints made. Because I just know I'm going to want one on my wall... The first thing I do in photoshop is convert my grayscale scan to color mode. And here's the following steps in an orderly fashion:
- I copy the image into a new layer (it gets called "background copy" by default)
- I set the layer blending mode to multiply
- I clear the background layer and fill it with a neutral color (pale yellow here)
- I create a new layer under the lineart and over the background. This is the layer I color on
- I set the paintbucket tool to "all layers" and a tolerance around 30%
 Then I just fill in the flat colors with the paintbucket, touching up the fills with the paintbrush whenever the paintbucket gets touchy. After that I start to shade! I like to select the areas I want to color and paste them into a new layer and check the Preserve Transparency checkbox (in photoshop 6 it's that checkbox on the far left that looks like a section of checkerboard), because I get a better idea of how my shading looks without those annoying marching ants distracting me. And every time I finish coloring an area I merge it back down to the color layer and move on to another area.
Check out my steps for shading skin! Shading other things is basically the same, but tends to be a bit simpler.
- After deciding on a lightsource I pick a color to rough shade with. I tend to view my lightsources more as guidelines than rules, though. It would make my head hurt to do otherwise. ;) I use a hard-edged paintbrush with stylus settings set to "opacity" so I can have fun with wacom's fantastic pressure sensitivity...
- I take a darker color and go through and add more depth to the shadows. When shading skin I usually make this color redder and more saturated than the orginal hue for the flat skintone.
- After that I pick a big blurry paintbrush (I think this one was 65 pixels or so at 0% hardness) and a really intense red and -very- lightly give him some color. :D Rosy cheeks and red ears and noses are so cute! I also add some to the fingers and knuckles and areas where... agh I don't think I can explain it so I won't even try. That'd be a whole other tutorial that I don't know enough about to write on, and you can find info about the translucent properties of skin somewhere that isn't here. c_c I also take a pale yellow similar to the background color and add some highlight.
- With the shading done it's time to clean it up! What I used to do was go over everything with softer brushes but then I played with the smudge tool and got results that I liked better! I had it set to 52% (don't you just love random numbers?) pressure and to have the pressure respond to my tablet pen. Then I just went at it, using a hard-edged brush most of the time and switching to a bigger softer one for smoother color transitions.
When I finish shading his skin I'm ready to leave him alone for the night. But first, I figure I'll take the time to put my inks on their own layer. I don't always do this but I will here because I plan on coloring in some of the outlines. So once again here are the steps I take:
- I select the entire top layer (with the lineart on it) and copy it
- I create a new alpha channel and paste the lineart into it
- I invert the layer. Yeah it's that simple
- Then I load it as a selection by clicking that little button that the arrow is pointing to...
- and switch back to the layers palette and create a new layer
- I go to Edit|Fill and fill the selection with black
- I make sure to check that the Preserve Transparency is on and delete the original lineart layer and the alpha channel
- The image then looks... exactly the same. c_c
 Later on after I finish shading everything I like to color in certain outlines because I like how it looks (why else? ;D). I find myself coloring in lines I drew for details. Here I just did a dark grey-brown for the creases in the cloth of the cross, a dark red for most of the outlines on the skin, and a grey blue on the seams of the shirt. Oh, and the kanji. Half-scribbling over the lines makes it look like the image on the right. I actually think it looks pretty cool...
After much birdwalking, rambling, lurid staring, singing, dancing, snacks, and plenty of other distractions I finally finish. Take a look!
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