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Introduction to Digital Painting (continued from previous page) Here are a couple quick techniques to try: If you have a scanner, this is a great place to start playing with digital art. Take a sketch or drawing of yours, scan it, and load it in Photoshop. Make sure you're in RGB Mode (Image->Mode->RGB Color). If your scan is kind of messy, try playing with the Levels (Ctrl-L) to eliminate some of the mess. Move both the black & white arrows closer to the center arrow (the gray one). You might have to play with it a bit, but eventually this should eliminate some of the mid-tones from your scan. Make a new layer, (Layers->New->Layer) changing the name from "Layer 1" to "Colors" and the mode from Normal to Multiply. Make sure you have your Layers window open (Window->Show Layers if it's not already there). You'll need to switch to the Background layer if you want to edit the scanned image, and back to Colors if you want to edit the colors. Make sure you're on the Colors layer, and go nuts! Usually when coloring line-art, it's best to stick mostly to the paintbrush tool, as it gives nice clean colors that you find in comic books and animation cels. To simplify things, pick one medium value for each colored area, and then choose one lighter value for highlights, and one darker value for shadows. Avoid shading with the burn/dodge tools, as they produce too much uncontrolled contrast. Try to figure out a strong light source for your picture, as that will tell you where to use highlights and shadow. In the example above, the light source is coming from the right. Note: If you're having trouble with realistic colors, find some reference. You can use the eye-dropper to get basic colors off another image. Images.google.com is a great photo-search. Just be mindful of copyright when using reference. For skin tones, check out a cosmetics site. Places like this (http://www.4mybeauty.com/cosmetic.html) have great palettes available online. To see just how far digital coloring can take you, check out www.horizoncomics.com/radix. No Scanner? No problem... try this: Introduction to Digital Painting Jeff Priest -- www.JeffPriest.com

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