I recently received a blog comment suggesting that I should share my colouring process of sketches, so I bared that in mind while digitally colouring my offering for this week's #colour_collective and documented as much of the process as I remembered to; I coloured the image over 2 days, so as you'd expect I neglected to take screen grabs towards the end of colouring the piece – sorry!
To begin the process, I scanned in my sketch and tweaked the levels and brightness and contrast until I had some nice, crisp linework to work with that still kept the pencil lines and quality of a hand rendered illustration. From then, I began blocking in a colour scheme that worked around the phthalo blue, and tried out a couple of different approaches.
After deciding that the yellows of the moonlight were a little too warm and didn't set the right atmosphere, I decided to cool the piece down by opting for while moonlight that I feel worked better with the blue and created harmony throughout the piece. After settling on my colour scheme, I then began adding highlights, shading and details to start to give the piece some depth.
I was a little sad to see the pop of warm yellow go, so I decided to bring it back with the addition of fireflies and some lakeside flowers, which I think helped to break the illustration up a bit and helped to really make the dinosaur the focal point of the piece. Just as I thought I was finished with the illustration (left,) I realised that the lighting and shading on the dinosaur was a little off, so I went back in and added some shadows to really place it into the scene properly (right.)
And with those final tweaks, my piece was finished! This took quite a few hours from original sketch to final piece, but I think that this time I'm actually happy with it. Like with anything, perfecting something takes time, so from now on I'm really going to make an effort to join in with #colour_collective every week in the hope of improving my skills and portfolio.
As ever, my apologies for the shoddy quality of these images. Blogger just ain't my friend.
Love this! Great to see the behind the scenes process. What program do you use to colour the sketch?
ReplyDeleteGreat, I'm glad you enjoyed it! And I colour in Photoshop :)
DeleteI absolutely adore this! It's so beautiful. Love the inclusion of the fireflies too, really finishes it off!
ReplyDeleteI have tried and would love to try again joining in with colour collective but I feel like I don't have the right kind of work/style to be able to! But I guess I just need some practice.
Lauren // OhHay Blogs!
xxx
Thank you Lauren! I know completely what you mean about joining in with CC, it's a tough crowd to try and match! I put it off for SO long (considering it started back in January, haha!) but I'm really enjoying having something of a weekly brief set for me at the minute by choosing to partake :) I say go for it if you're thinking of joining in again!
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