In Service to the Kingfisher

Painting Grassfields Tutorial by slawekfedorczuk

It was a lot of work to put my art gallery together and get it working, but because I didn't see literally anything on creating such a gallery (other than ready-made templates) I decided to write up a tutorial hoping it will help others who want to code a more robust art gallery that goes beyond just using a simple slideshow/lightbox. Each image is its own post, like how deviantArt works.

This is a draft of the page where I copied my existing posts just to fill up the gallery and see how it fits:

and this is what my individual post looks like:

sorry for the wait, i wanted to answer this on desktop!! i’m not very good at explaining things but for you… i will try my best!

for starters: when i draw traditionally, i use my phone to take pics instead of scanning them! i feel like when you scan a drawing, it generally comes out more “dirty” then when you use a phone. after i take it, i play around with the light, color, and b&w sliders. i have an iphone but i’m pretty sure you can do this with most phones?

i usually move the sliders for light and color all the way to the right, and move the b&w slider to the left but not ALL the way to the left. depending on the lighting of your original picture (but i’m PRETTY sure you can get this effect with any lighting), you should be left with something like this:

i’m sure you notice, but the erased marks towards the bottom of the image are pretty visible. it doesn’t really matter to me because i chose to crop the picture but in the case where you DON’T want to crop out anything: use light pressure when drawing traditionally!! it doesn’t matter how light the lineart is because you’ll be fixing it in photoshop (or any art program) anyways.

this is when i open the image in photoshop. i set it to a multiply layer and then duplicate it. this brings out the texture and makes the lineart darker. having the original and duplicate layer set as multiply layers allows you to color underneath it (in a new layer of course.) but keep in mind that any color you put under both layers will turn out darker then it actually is. you can also do this with any art program… it just might have different names instead of multply.

of course you can slap some colors on and call it finished but i take the eraser tool and erase EVERYTHING around the drawing (and some negative spaces in the drawing.) THIS is what makes it look “clean”, especially if there are erased marks outside of the drawing that are still visible, or when there’s a cat hair that you didn’t notice until after you took the picture.

then you add colors and play around with an overlay and all that stuff… and you somehow end up with something you’re happy with posting. it’s not purely traditional. my work is a mix of both traditional and digital. i’m not sure how this method would work for traditionally drawn comics or for traditional drawings where a background is drawn but hopefully this helps you!! 

Colour Painting Tips by slawekfedorczuk