Hi all,
I've been doing inked drawings for a bit, but have been wanting to try adding some tones to give them a more finished feel. I currently do up my stuff like this image here:
(http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/1284/fangirl5fr.th.jpg) (http://img92.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fangirl5fr.jpg)
I've messed around with just coloring in black and whites in photoshop, and adding screentones never seems to work out right either. Best I've done is to color normally and then convert to grayscale. This dosen't look right, or seem right to me. Looks something like this (unfinished, just to show my meaning, thats where the weirdness in the hand come from):
(http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/4092/fangirlcoloredcopy2az.th.jpg) (http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fangirlcoloredcopy2az.jpg)
Anybody have any advice on how to tone this up properly? One problem of my art is that things can get kind of muddled on my larger Illustrations, takes a moment to decipher, I am hoping if I can tone it will help set things apart.
Thanks for any help.
I don't know about the colouring. I'm too busy being shocked by her huge neck. Also, why does the hand suddenly get darker?
I googled up some screentone links (using "digital screentone":
http://www.onikimono.com/links/#scr
http://www.operafloozy.com/digitone/
They have free tones and tutorials... I've never used tone before so I can't judge the quality, but it's probably a start. Good luck! ^_^
Quote from: Haddas on Tue 13/06/2006 07:56:37
I don't know about the colouring. I'm too busy being shocked by her huge neck. Also, why does the hand suddenly get darker?
Thats an issue I am having lately, womens necks. I knew it was bad on her, and I showed it to the "client" and she said it was fine by her. Definately something I am focusing on as I practice though, thanks for the crit. The hand is colored bad because I just did that tone/color whatever up quickly, I tried to explain that in the first post, but guess it didn't get across.
Mash Potato Thanks for the links, I have paroused many of those articles in the past, but some are of help to me. None of them really touch on excactly what I want though, but they are of great help regardless, thank you. I'll scan a pic of somebodys work that I want to emulate here in a bit to see if anyone has any further ideas.
First thing that pops out to me is, where is the light source?
hopefully you won't mind a paint over, I guessed not since you posted the line art
(http://kafkaskoffee.com/junk/edits/forsquinky.gif)
more could probably have been done to seperate the woman from the background but it's almost 1 am...
personally that is what I'd do. I'm interested in knowing who you're trying to emulate and if they work in flat colours like your first image.Ã, There's nothing wrong with not adding shadows like I did but you really have to pick shades of grey that really stand out from each other. Dark colours of course push into the background and light into the foreground and on your image the brightest most eye drawing parts are her shoulder bits and watch.
My image uses 4 shades. I threw down a base layer which is the dark grey that is in the majority of the wood and hair, then I worked out of that with a lighter shade, to get that lighter shade I just drew with the skin shade onto the grey base with a 60 percent opacity, selected that colour and used it to paint with full strength. I had to mess with brightness/contrast a little towards the end but other than that it wasn't so bad. I would probably throw a nice shadow from her across the wooden background to make the background a little more intersting light wise.
I've started using screentones lately just for fun, if you want I can show you some stuff I do with them, I don't go as deep as Helm* so it might be more accessible to you, I dunno.
Eric
* to the hilt!
Eric's edit as far as comic tone goes is pretty much spot-on, all I can add is MORE SHINYNESS which is a personal thing, a lot of people don't like it. And grain.
Below is neck and face edit. Probably a bit too much, got carried away because I like playing with your art. I don't know if it's useful, if it's too much, I apologize in advance. I tried to maintain that she's not specifically attractive, and to work with the limited tones provided. The points to gather are the following:
*Another level of rendering/refining could possibly be needed. That which seperates good blocked art to finalized rendering. Go in with smaller brushes, even in photoshop like I did if you're afraid to mess up the real inks, and make those bits and finishings that make a good design into a great one.
*With tone, as with ink, don't be afraid to fade out by scribbling. This creates the illusion of intermediate shades between the tone shade and the whitespace. You don't need extra colors to do this. One could theoretically make a very volumetrically sound design using only 4 shades spanning the entire BLACK-WHITE spectrum, like a gameboy for example, if they get the hang of creative crosshatching and scribbling the intermediate shades.
*This isn't fine art. It is however, illustration work. I wouldn't put the same amount of detail as I did to the face, all over. Just where you want the eye to be drawn and for the ease of reading of expression and the like. If she were also holding a gun, I'd render the gun likewise, but not every fold of her clothing for example.
*When you have tones which represent well, don't be afraid to add another layer on multiply, pure black at about 25% opacity, block out some more shadow over large areas, and then refine with the eraser. I did this on the left side of the face to differentiate and push out those highlights I rubbed out more. This is a great way to keep the neatness of working with few shades (gameboy, as we said above) but also make your life easier with additive shading.
*grain. If you like 'dirty' effects in your work (I think pieces like this call for it) you could, when you've finalized your work, run a noise filter over it (remember to back up your clean layered art before) and experiement with the settings until you feel there's no information loss and the gritty effect helps the piece. This is uniform noise, not much.
Anatomy: neck was too long, and the head not connecting properly to it, changed lips, pulled eyes together.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/forsquinky2.png)