13
The lightning
At this point I start painting on new layers over the
pencil, in a more opaque way. When adding the lightning
(which I’ll leave on a separate layer) I realise that in order
to make it brighter I need to make the background and
general tones a bit darker. For this I use a few adjustment
layers such as Levels and Brightness/Contrast.
14
Finishing touches
For the effects on the rocks and the lightning I use a brush that I made out of
the texture of a splatter. Once everything is done, I open the file in Painter and blend
some parts of the image with a tool called Blender. Notice how the image loses
contrast as it moves away from the focal point. Like the composition lines and the
colours, contrast is another efficient way to keep the viewer’s eyes were we want.12
Building volume
I continue painting, adding more layers of semi-transparent colours, creating
volume and drawing with the colours. I create layers constantly, but I merge them
as I go – I try to have as few layers as possible. Along with the brush, I use a soft
textured eraser to correct and fade my strokes when needed. I keep trying to
push the viewer’s eye to the focal point, adding motion lines in the background
and keeping the warmer tones closer to her face.In depth | Superhero cover
11
Starting to paint
I start blocking the darker shadows using a brush
made by Kyle T. Webster called “Thick & Thin”. This brush
is not completely opaque, and I also set the layers’ opacity
to around 70 per cent so the colours blend with the blue
of the background, creating a harmonious colour scheme.