Royal Family Portrait (color) (Patreon)

I've probably talked about using a blank Multiply layer over a pencil drawing many times, but I'm going to talk about it some more since this came out so darn good. I've been using a Wacom tablet for a while now, but still not enough to feel totally comfortable with shading, and completely uncomfortable with actually drawing. Anything you see me do will always be drawn on paper and scanned before doing anything digital. I don't think that ink and pencils make me a "real artist," but those are the tools I know.

With all the major shading done in pencil, most of the work is already done by the time I boot up Photoshop. I just convert the image to RBG color, create a new layer, set it to Multiply, and simply brush flat colors where they need to go. Once those are all set, I'll do some more lighting and shading by reducing the brush opacity to about 10-20%. I enjoy this part because it's a lot more loose and painterly. I tend to use yellows and purples for lighting and shading, respectively. One of the first painting tips I learned was "warm light, cool shadow" and vice-versa. I'm not good enough with color to pull off a cool light/warm shadow image without observing it, and that's a moot point since I haven't actually gone out and painted a landscape since 1997.

This image is only three layers: the base drawing, a duplicate layer of the drawing that I can blur/colorize/etc, and the color layer. I realize that if I used more layers, I could make more adjustments, but I like treating my digital work like traditional work. I don't want 50+ layers so I can tweak to colors of individual limbs or whatever. I like the immediacy. If I splash a little blue on a part that I meant to keep light, I just want to work through it. I already have the blessing of a History tab. Working with a hundred layers would be more than my brain (and possibly my 2011 laptop) could handle.