Color Doodles

[PencilPunx]

I tore these pages out of my sketchbook and scanned them because I wanted to play around with Photoshop, which I've never really made a concerted effort to learn before. So far, I've learned how to set line art to it's own transparent layer and gotten a grasp on the magnetic lasso and fill tools. That's where my expertise ends. If anyone can give me some pointers on coloring with Photoshop, please help me out, because these are terribly lacking in depth. I pretty much just set the layers to multiply and tried to throw some shadows on there but it didn't turn out so hot. So if you can suggest things such as pressure sensitivity, which brushes to use, and what brush size works best I'd love to hear it. Oh, and also feel free to critique the actual drawings. Thanks!

http://mason.gmu.edu/~tdiamond/circletodd2.jpg
This was sort of a self portrait of me and my best friend.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~tdiamond/sumosmaller.jpg
This was some form of sumo wrestler/samurai I was messing with at work. I think it came out looking kind of like a Samoan Marlon Brando.

[Calibretto]

A tecnique that I find useful in coloring with photoshop is to use subtle gradients. For example, in the picture of the sumo, you could try filling in the background rising sun with Radial Gradient, using a bright red for the forground color and a slightly darker red for the background color. Gradients where the contrast between the two colors is small can give a subtle dimesion to an otherwise flat color area. Observe the difference between these two:
http://plaza.ufl.edu/bwe/gradex.jpg
The sun on the left was filled in with the Paint Bucket tool and the right sun was done with Radial Gradients. Of course, if you are going for the perfectly flat look, then stick with that. Hope this advice helps, and I hope I haven't told you something you already know.

[skvv]

okay, 2 things, good start w/ pshop (i can guess you're using some kind of anime tutorials, they all start w/ line art seperation and full color blocking for cell shading)

the bottom pic looks like Edmond Honda from street fighter series.

the top pic would have so much more appeal if the head and can were pointing up and left, not just up, it would really take away some of the "gravity" of the whole thing, as i expect you were trying to get rid of w/ hair and mt dew floating.

[PencilPunx]

Thank all of you so much for your replies. I'll take all of your suggestions to heart.

kbg_Fiske-As of now, all I really do is use the fill tool, then go over a few areas with the airbrush tool set to a low pressure. It's not a very precise method at all, I'm sure the best thing I could do is study light and shadow more so that I'll have a better understanding of WHY I'm shading a certain area. But I will definitely use your brush suggestions. I do have a Wacom, though the stylus has stopped working ever since I upgraded to Windows XP. I need to look into fixing that as it's pretty hard to do even this limited coloring with only a mouse. Thank you for your suggestions!

Calibretto-Wow, thanks for the visual aid! No, you're not telling me anything I already know. I'm honestly a complete amature when it comes to digital coloring so I've never used the gradient tool before. I really like the effect you got with it so I will certainly make use of that feature in the future. That helps a lot dude.

evisr8r-Pretty close on the anime tutorial thing. I'm not a huge anime fan, but I checked out a book from the library called "Photoshop Wow!" and flipped past all the stuff on altering photos and went straight to the section on coloring line art. The example in the book was an anime picture, so that has to be why I have a cell shaded look here. Good call on the gravity thing. I just may have to redo that one now if for no reason other than to see how that would effect the final product. Thanks!