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Introduction
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This tutorial is focused on how to cg a background, mainly leaves and trees. This example panel is from page 6 of verse 1 of the comic. This is how I color backgrounds as of June 19, 2004. This particular background is full of autumn leaves. So oranges, reds, browns, and yellows are used abundantly. This technique can be applied to normal green leaves as well and any type of foliage.
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Brushes, tools, and materials.
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To do this tutorial, any good photo editing program will do fine. GIMP, Jasc Paint Shop Pro, or Adobe Photoshop will work well. A tablet and a stylus will help but are not absolutely neccessary. This tutorial assumes you have already a scanned drawing. A line drawing is needed before this. It just needs to be some kind of outline. Ink or pencil is fine. The only brush used is the normal paint brush. The paint brush should always be at 100% hardness (hard edge), the spacing/steps always at the lowest setting, and opacity will vary from 10%-50%. This paintbrush setting will be used throughout the tutorial. References are always useful and should be used often. In this case, any autumn phot of leaves would be good.
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Setting up layers and properties
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(the following methods will work for GIMP, Paint Shop Pro, and Photoshop, you just have to find where the options are) Before I start coloring I set up the layers for the image. For this panel I will put the scanned outline in its own layer at the very top. For this panel I use the multiply setting because it will only show the dark outline and put it over everything else. The white is automatically gone. I add in the other layers of skin, clothes hair, etc under the outline. You don't have to do that right now because they are empty, but I'm just showing you where they are now. I then add the last layer called "background" which will be the layer we will be coloring in. Every layer is at 100% opacity, unlocked transperancy and under normal settings except the outline layer.
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Step 1 Coloring Main Areas
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The first step is to find a color and fill the entire background layer up with 100% opacity. The color isn't so important but it will help if it is the average or most prevalent color of the background. Since I am doing autumn leaves I chose a brownish red. After this is done, take the paintbrush with 100% hardness and change the opacity to about 50%. The size of the brush will depend on the size of the background. Find a size not too small for coloring large areas, but not too large for making some detail. Using this bursh color in the main masses of color. No great detail is needed. We just need to apply some color first. The colors chosen are just generic autumn colors, a reference would be very good to use.
I just put down areas of color. I'm not too worried about detail just about where the colors are.
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Step 2 Smoothing and softening
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2 is to simply go over the masses of color and smoothing the differences of color. Using the same size paintbrush, turn down the opacity to about 30%. Take the brush and go over the edges of different colors. Blend them together by repeatedly laying down the brush on the edge. See example for detail.
I just put down areas of color. I'm not too worried about detail just about where the colors are.
The lower opacity will ensure a nice smooth color transition.
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Step 3 Coloring Organic shapes
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In step 3 I will start making it look like leaves and foliage. Detail is not important now. The focus here is to start to make the color masses look like plant life. Using a photo or manga reference would help in creating the right organic shapes. I am not too worried about the outline I drew because I will remove them later. In the example I am working on the left side. The right side is basically untouched from step 2.
Step 3 is to start forming some recognizable forms of foliage. Not too much detail yet. In this picture I am working on the left side.
This is the general process of forming foliage shapes.
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Step 5 Coloring Leaves
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In step 5 I took a smaller brush (about half the size of the previous setting) to create smaller detail. Using the same technique I added much more to the organic shapes. In this step I can now start forming single leave shapes. The brush used is small, 30% opacity, and 100% hardness. Using a reference from a manga or comic would help a lot at this point. Use the brush to start making small leaves and shapes. Make sure the edges of the shapes are crisp and with high contrast from each other. The colors should not blend in.
The focus of step 5 is to create detail and make it seem more realistic.
Use the smaller brush to create more and more detail.
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Step 6 Finishing the background
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In step 6 I continued putting the rest of the detail into the right side. I used the same techniques as steps 4 and 5. After doing this step, the background is pretty much done. All detail should be pretty much done by now.
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Step 7 Starting foreground
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In step 7, I removed the outline for the background. If you like your scanned outline then it is all right to leave it. In this case, I chose to remove it. I created new layers on top of the background and under the outline layer. These layers are for the clothes, hair, and skin. In this step I started coloring Autumn. Since this tutorial only covers backgrounds I am not going to go over coloring characters. Please check the other tutorials to do this.
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Step 8 Finish
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I finished Autumn and Mathew. I also reworked some of the background. This is the finished panel. If you worked on a large image, shrink it down to normal reading size. This will greatly enhance the artwork. Check page 6 for the entire finished page.
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[Written and drawn by Henry Del Rosario, through experience and personal education]
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