Coloring Between the Lines

[kybearfuzz]

After yesterday's rainy morning, I was very happy to see the sun had dried most of the concrete surfaces by the end of my work day. I went for shirtless run at the track, but had to cut it off at 3 miles when the grade school girls showed up. I think it's some afterschool program, they get stickers for doing so many laps. The teachers offered me stickers as I completed my last lap.

So I settled in after a shower and dinner to color more pages. I never liked coloring as a kid. While crayons in coloring books was fun, I often never got an even coloring, often jumped outside the lines, and regretted the choice of colors after the fact. In coloring a page, you only got one shot at it and any screw-up was noticable.

Photoshop and computers changed a lot of that. Now I use the paint bucket tool and drop an even coat in an area and if I don't like it, I simply undo it. For a former Crayola-coloring challenged kid, this is wonderful. Color does make a dramatic difference in the way a cartoon looks. Here's the rough sketch for page one of the upcoming "Grizzly & The Bear Patrol #6," and the color copy (after inking) I finished over the weekend. They are too funny.





Happy Tuesday all...

Comments

[dendren.livejournal.com]

very nice... good choice on the sky :) and is that a bit of gray I see in his beard?

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

Glad you like :)

The sky colors will make more sense in the story. And the streaks aren't necessarily supposed to be graying, just reflections of light, though I'm not opposed to graying him a bit :)

[designerotter.livejournal.com]

Very pretty and very woofy all at once! Someday, godknowswhen, I may learn some of the technical basics of the photoshop program. So far I've found it utterly daunting, though I do recognize its advantages. Naturally the toughest thing to do by hand - ever - is a plain unblemished colorfield. Next to that, it's creating a seamless shift from one color to the next.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

I'm happy you like it!

And I am completely envious of your coloring skills. The way you blend colors is amazing. Everything is so vivid, almost like watercolors. I would love to be able to do that.

[designerotter.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words, Mark. I can never resist trading art-tech tips:
the vividness comes from the iphoto editing app, which I've learned to manipulate fairly well. The app has an "enhance" button which ups contrast and saturation. There's also a whole "adjustment" array that tunes exposure, definition, contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows, grain, and 'noise'.
The birthday posts are mostly done in pencil and Berol colored pencils ... which allows for a range of gradations. I have to watch some of the colors because of the way they react with digital scanning: oranges can turn brown easily, and reds and turquoises sometimes tend to go neon.
When I'n doing renderings of stage scenes I tend to use watercolor washes along with pencil on top for definition and detail. Sometimes I'll use a colored board or paper rather than white as the base. Also I may use acrylic gesso or Titanium white acrylic for super highlights.
You've certainly got the skill to handle any of these media.

[mort-83.livejournal.com]

Crayola issues, huh?
I loved to color and I stayed in the lines..Too anal for anything else. ;-)

Very nice coloring. I like the closed eye shot. Reminds me of Aeon Flux.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

My problem is a lack of patience for coloring with crayons or colored pencils. I always wanted to get it done in a hurry.

Photoshop helps me quite a bit. I've managed to get most pages colored in about 45 minutes.