12
ADD THE ILLUSION OF LIGHT
With the final colours done, find a soft,
round brush. Using the Eyedropper tool, select
colours from your illustration. Go back in and focus
on large areas such as the hair. Find a lighter colour
and lightly touch the centre of the piece. This will help
give the feeling that light is filtering through the
centre. Choose hotter, bright colours for this task.
You can lower the opacity on your brush if it helps
you build up an interesting texture. This can be done
on a separate layer if desired.11
FINISH THE FLAT COLOURS
During most of the colouring stage, you can
treat your illustration like a colouring book, painting
under your line layer until most of the composition is
filled in with flat colours. Now is a good point to stop
and make sure that you are satisfied with the colours
you have chosen. Keep in mind that as you progress,
certain layer effects will begin to alter the colours of
your work. Later on, there will be another
opportunity to adjust the colours as a whole once the
final illustration is nearly complete.13
SOFT LIGHT
Create a new layer above your colour
layer. In the Layers window, set the blending mode
of this new layer to Soft Light and lower the
Opacity as needed. Just like in the previous step,
find a soft, round brush and select a warm colour.
Go back through and hit the centre areas once
again. This gives them just a bit more warmth and
a glow from their cores. Doing this again on
another layer adds more variation in texture and
allows you to make edits and adjustments as
needed for your particular illustration.10
VARIATION IN VALUE
Adding variation to similar neighbouring
colours will help give a nice feel to your illustration.
While it is not always necessary (such as the robe on
the female figure) it can really help for other larger
areas such as the sky. Blues that are very similar but
may be slightly darker or more saturated than the
ones next to them helps sell the illusion of arranged
glass. If a stained glass artist were using blue glass
shards, not all blues would have turned out the same
during the glass-making process.09
ADD A BASE COLOUR
Create a new layer under your line work layer. This will be your colour layer. Select a base colour that
works for your illustration and fill the layer using the Paint Bucket tool. You can also add a gradient to add
some variation as you begin to paint on top.FINDING THE COLOURS
CHOOSING A COLOUR THEME AND DIRECTION(^001) Finding a balanced composition and FINDING THE COMPOSITION
appropriate style is key, and the foundation to any good illustration
(^002) Clean line work and strategic line weight MAKING YOUR MARK
can help pull the figures together and keep them from getting lost
(^003) Next is to lay down the colours and MOVING FORWARD
to move towards giving off the feeling of light
Adding variation to
similar neighbouring
colours will help give a nice
feel to your illustration
001
002
003
CREATE A STAINED GLASS EFFECT