War Tongue. Part 3 of 3.

I’ve come to the conclusion that art is a bit like keeping in shape. And that different parts of your skills as an artist are like they’re own little muscles that make up your anatomy as an artist. Right now my pencilling and inking skills are hopefully in pretty good shape (or at least getting there) because I’ve put a lot of time into them. And I try to keep an eye on all those little things that go into being a comic artist like figure work, perspective, layout of a page and so on. But to be honest I’ve had so little time to do any colour work recently that, that particular muscle feels flabby and very out of shape. I think that if you don’t regularly work on or ignore certain skills in your artwork, it not like riding a bike were you can just jump back on. You’re probably going to be a bit rusty. It would be more like jumping back on your bike after months of sitting on your arse watching TV and getting slack only to have to enter the Tour De France the next day and wondering why you can’t keep up with everybody else and lets be honest if your trying to be a professional you don’t want that.

So I’m well aware that my colouring muscle has become flabby and unused when it came time to colour this image. First thing I did was reread a short book I had on colouring that I had picked up in college. I just flicked through it and tried to remember how to do different effects. Second thing I did before starting was I just watched some colouring tutorials on Youtube. Some were good some were awful. I think it does help a lot just to watch other people colouring. I knew my first try would probably be awful so after a while I just deleted it and started again. Hopefully working out most of the mistakes on the first try, the second one went a lot better. I was trying out new things in colouring this image that I’d never tried before in previous artwork. I can’t say I was always happy with my coloured artwork in the past. This time I just tried to keep it simple and bright. With my artwork over the last few years I would put texture in with the computer where as now I try to suggest texture more with the brush in the inking stage. It just feels more right trying to do it on the page rather then on the computer. The problem with photoshop is once you first get a copy you want to try out all the effects and filters. My approach above was a lot more casual. More about the colours themselves then flairs and bright effects. Once I feel like I know what I’m doing more with just the basic colours then maybe I can move on to those things. I hope to do some more colour work soon so watch this space. I’ll end by posting everybody’s favourite. The colour artwork without the line work over the top. It doesn’t look as unusual as it used to as so much artwork is done on computer now and so many artist now just colour they’re line work without inking it.

P.S. If anybody knows or could suggest any good books or tutorials online on colouring comics. I’d love to hear them.