Part Two: Coloring in Painter

Step 5: Coloring the Skin

Now, originally, I had intended to make a Photoshop-only tutorial, but this picture was on a deadline and I'd been playing around in Painter 7 recently, so I colored it there instead.

As you'll recall, I'd drawn the outline and done all the color-mapping in Photoshop. That makes my coloring in Painter very easy. It just so happens, Painter can open PSD files. (The reverse is not true; in order to open an RIF file in Photoshop, you must first save it as a PSD.) So open up my color-mapped file in Painter 7 and begin with the skin. You can really begin with any area, but I just decided to use the skin this time. In order to give the picture a painted color feel, I utilize the Roudn Camelhair tool. (It's under Brushes.) I have the size set to 45-ish and the opacity around 65%. The Resat's at 43 and the bleed is at 92.

Now, usually I use the Round Camelhair at 100%, but on this picture, I want to do more blending. You can change from a harder painted line to a more blended one by adjusting the opacity, assuming you have the ROund Camelhair adjusted the way I do. I like this because it's more like paint in my mind.

The color mapped for the skin is more to the yellow side. I use colors more to the red for the shading. Skin, unlike most other things, should have this kind of differentiation. I think it has something to do with skin's transparency. They had issues with this in Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within where they had to paint the skin a certain way. Or something like that.

Anyway.

I do my skin in two stages to start. First a slightly darker (and redder) shadow, then a much more darker one. In this image, you can see I've gotten the lighter shadow on most all the skin and started to add the darker shade. (Ignore the area on the neck, which was done with a 100% opacity brush -- though it does show you why I lowered the opacity.)

You don't have to add every area of lighter shadow at once. I usually work on one area at a time. That's why the blobs of color off to the side are so important. They're my palette. With those, I can always grab the pure form of the colors I'm using, so I can work on one area and have the same colors when I move to the next. (Or just select the pur colors in a pinch.) I work around like this, putting down my first color, putting down my second, selecting the halfway colors, blending and sharpening until I have something I like.

Here's a few tips:
1. If you're using a color-mapped file with preserve transparency (like in this example), always start your brush stroke on the colored area, not in the blank space. Painter considers all of this blank space to be white, and starting your brush stroke in this area will result in a white streak.
2. Starting your brush stroke in light or dark areas will affect the blending. Experiment!
3. For cel-style stuff, try the Scratchboard Tool
4. Normally, you would probably draw your outline in Painter and color in Photoshop. Outlinging in Painter is superior because Painter is better at interpreting pen movement and results in better strokes. I'm being an oddball. XD
5. You really can't use Painter without a tablet. Sorry. See my [Things to Know About Tablets] (under construction) for more info.
6. Normally, you wouldn't use Painter on a color mapped file like this, due to the blank space = white space. I'll have to write a tutorial on the proper way to do this later.
7. I keep my hands on the Ctrl and V keys. By holding down ctrl, I can easily pick up all the intermediate shades between the shadowed and light areas and blend them in, and I can also quickly undo something if I dislike it. See [Notes on Undoing in Painter] (under construction) for more details.

The last touch is to do a bit of even darker shadow and some highlights, seen here.

I know you'll go, "Hey, wait, you jumped way ahead!" but that's really all there is to it. Base color, shadow (sometimes two levels of shadow), blend and experiment until you like the way it looks, some spots of even darker shadow, and some highlights. For the clothing, I really only applied one level of shadow (besides the small darker shadow) because it doesn't need that depth the skin does. I moved the shadows on the yellow shirt slightly more to the red of the spectrum, because if you don't do that, yellow things look too greenish.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I also started using a large eraser to soften up the outlines. Eh heh, I kinda got carried away with what I was doing and forgot to save copies along the way. Finally I start the hair, adding the shade.

This ends up being one of the harder parts of the image. It takes less time to complete the hair than the skin, but it's more frustrating. Above, I added the shading for the hair. That worked like a charm. Then I had to add the highlights. Not such a charm. I worked on the pink hair first, but the color didn't like being dragged suddenly to white, so I had to experiment a bit, adding in successively lighter/redder shades of pink. Lots of little brushstrokes, and constantly tweaking the color on the palette. It ended up looking like this:

Which was passable, but not as big a bang effect as I wanted. So I made a new layer and drew some quick, messy highlights with the scratchboard tool and used the eraser to soften the edged. Voila, the hair pops out and is shiny. You can see the un-softened highlight on the blonde hair and the softened on the pink.

Now I finally start on the eyes. (I also tweak some of the highlight on the blonde hair.) Since I didn't have the eyes color=mapped, I do them the way I normally would in a multi-level Painter painting: I color in more area than I need, work on the area, and then erase the excess. This avoids that little earlier problem I mentioned about how Painter treats blank space.

Since so many people seem to have an interest in eyes, I'll quickly over how I do them. (I do them a bit differently in Photoshop, but meh, I'm in Painter and I don't feel like changing.) What you can't see in the above picture is the fact that the eyeball is finished. I simple painted a large grey area and then added a white highlight. You could also paint is white and then add a grey shadow, but I personally like the way the white highlight looks better. (You'll notice a lot of very good artists do eyes like that, and better.) Moving on to the pupil, I first start by putting on a darker color. (Who'da guessed!?) In this case, though, I go with a really dark color in comparison. I color the pupils and a bit of the area around the outside. Then I add a black area in the center for the pupil. You can see both of these stages on the characters eyes (black pupil added on the right). It should be noted, while I did most of the work on this picture at 50%, I do the eyes at 100%.

I darken the eye shadows a bit and start to add the highlights. For the big highlight, a big patch of near-white or white with a bit of a dark line added underneath. For the rest of the eye, I use the dodge tool and make four little ovals of highlight and finish off with a stroke of highlight over the four. The number of "little ovals" will vary depending on the size of your strokes. You can use lots of little narrow strokes, or even not use little ovals at all. This will probably clue you in as to why I prefer doing eyes in Photoshop. Painter's Dodge is really inferior. I don't really know why I'm using it besides being too lazy to switch programs. The really sad thing is, I'll have to switch programs in a minute to resize the image. (Painter is also an inferior program for resizing images.)

In the below image, the eyes are, from left to right:

1. with big highlight
2. finished
2. with little "oval" highlights
4. finished

I erase the excess area, add a bit of darker shadow on the eye (my initial grey wasn't dark enough), erase the palettes, sign it, and voila, I am done with the image and tutorial.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go open up Photoshop to resize it and add a really cheap background and some text. (Painter, by the way, is the suckiest program ever for adding text. You're better off using MS Paint.)

... And finish the gold. I completely forgot about it. *sigh*

Finished image

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