QUICK TIP
It’s very helpful to create a reference sheet at the beginning of your illustration.
For inspiration purposes only, not to copy! It means that you don’t have to
make frequent trips to Google Images during your creation process. This helps
even more if you have two monitors to organise the material.04
COLOUR THE DUNGEON
Let’s add in some colour. Though it may be tempting to colour
the Hydra first, we should figure out the overall colour of the dungeon
because it will decide the palette and tone in this painting. Go to
Layer>New Layer and drag your new layer under the good lines. Now we
can finally begin colouring. Let’s be sure that the objects here, like the
skull and swords, are influenced by the blue hue of the dungeon, but stay
within the range of the palette.05
CHOOSE HYDRA COLOURS
With our dungeon’s tone sorted out, let’s tackle the Hydra. The Hydra is a big focal
point in the image, we’re going to use a trick to ensure that its tones are easier to edit. First,
select a hard round brush and begin filling out all the areas within the lines of the dragon- pay careful attention to stay within the lines! Now, click the checkerboard icon in the layer
box to lock the colours in.
06
CREATE A MASK
There are multiple ways to go about shading a character, but using
masks in Photoshop will enable us much more flexibility than manually shading
the character. This step will save us time and if we change our mind on the
shading, we can always return to the layer to fix it later. First duplicate the Hydra’s
locked in layer from Step 5, right-click on the layer and Duplicate Layer. Now
unlock the layer and select the mask button on the bottom of the layer interface.07
ERASE THE MASK
Now, select our mask. When using this technique we will use the brush
tool and alternate between absolute black and absolute white. Using black will
erase our dragon’s shading as though it’s being erased with the Erase tool, but
white will re-create the shadows at any given point. Back to our illustration: we
need to consider that the lantern is going to drop light onto our dragons from
behind, so we should erase the shading according to that light source.DIGITAL PAINTING