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Description
Some notes I made about how I coloured for my most recent piece, since I liked how it turned out. Figured I ought to remember how I did it before I forget, and thought I'd share with anyone interested. The method's mostly the same across all my recent work, but I think the 4th and 5th panel were the most important changes to how I normally approached colouring.

Usually, I would start colouring balancing right after I'm done the shading layer, but this time I slipped in an orange-brown overlay layer to get the feeling of a late afternoon. Then I start colour balancing in Photoshop (all layers at this point are visible, and the shading layer is set to Multiply). The overlay layer is kept visible as I colour balance so I understand the mood I'm trying to convey.

Second important change was that I didn't start masking the flat colours right away, colouring them individually; I actually colour balanced the WHOLE shading layer to a purple instead to unify the shadows. THEN I start to mask individual flat colours and colour balance them individually. Normally, I just mask individual colours right off the bat and colour balance, but I found that the method I mentioned works better because it keeps the colours more unified, even if they look a bit unnatural at first.

In the last steps, I add a layer on top of everything that helps with some colours reflecting. It's not really noticeable, so I hope to do this better later, but it helps reduce the isolation of colours. Finally, I remembered to push away unimportant elements like the background using the blur tool, and darken the values of what's important (in this case, the character).

This isn't really a tutorial per se, so I haven't introduced a lot of the tools I've used. If you're unfamiliar with SAI/Photoshop, everything I've said probably sounds like gibberish to you, lol. This is more helpful to those who already understand digital art programs. If you don't understand the shading layer + colour balance method, Omar-Dogan's colouring tutorial is super useful, and was where I learned the method from ( omar-dogan.deviantart.com/ ).

Description
Some notes I made about how I coloured for my most recent piece, since I liked how it turned out. Figured I ought to remember how I did it before I forget, and thought I'd share with anyone interested. The method's mostly the same across all my recent work, but I think the 4th and 5th panel were the most important changes to how I normally approached colouring.

Usually, I would start colouring balancing right after I'm done the shading layer, but this time I slipped in an orange-brown overlay layer to get the feeling of a late afternoon. Then I start colour balancing in Photoshop (all layers at this point are visible, and the shading layer is set to Multiply). The overlay layer is kept visible as I colour balance so I understand the mood I'm trying to convey.

Second important change was that I didn't start masking the flat colours right away, colouring them individually; I actually colour balanced the WHOLE shading layer to a purple instead to unify the shadows. THEN I start to mask individual flat colours and colour balance them individually. Normally, I just mask individual colours right off the bat and colour balance, but I found that the method I mentioned works better because it keeps the colours more unified, even if they look a bit unnatural at first.

In the last steps, I add a layer on top of everything that helps with some colours reflecting. It's not really noticeable, so I hope to do this better later, but it helps reduce the isolation of colours. Finally, I remembered to push away unimportant elements like the background using the blur tool, and darken the values of what's important (in this case, the character).

This isn't really a tutorial per se, so I haven't introduced a lot of the tools I've used. If you're unfamiliar with SAI/Photoshop, everything I've said probably sounds like gibberish to you, lol. This is more helpful to those who already understand digital art programs. If you don't understand the shading layer + colour balance method, Omar-Dogan's colouring tutorial is super useful, and was where I learned the method from ( omar-dogan.deviantart.com/ ).