During the colouring stage of my webcomic, I turn off any solid colours I’ve placed in the panels. With just the ink levels showing I start placing shadows on the characters and parts of the background I want to stand out. I blend some of the edges with a sponge tool then convert the level to “shadow map” which basically darkens the area and blends it with all levels in Painter.

I thought it would be nice to show my thought process when drawing Team Spectacular.

You’ll notice I do a lot of mirroring of images, to help get a fresh eye on my drawings. I also save like a crazy man (I’ve lost to many good drawings to a computer/program crash).

Now that I use the computer to do my comic you’ll notice I enlarge and move objects to make better compositions. I spend a lot more time experimenting, I can do a quick drawing see the results, throw down a new layer and try something different without ruining any thing I’ve done.

In this video near the end I try out a new angle on the middle two panels. After having a second look I went back to my original panels. Showing the reaction of Captain Spectacular and SideKick Boy while their son was being treated in the Emergency Room was an important part of the story.

I’d love to hear what you think of the video so leave a comment when you have a minute.

I’ve recieved a number of emails over the last 2 weeks asking if I would do another colour tutorial. This time I added an audio description of my thought process.

If you like…pass it on!

I get a lot of requests for tutorial on my colour process in Corel Painter. This week I thought I’d let you get a little peek at how I do a traditional watercolour painting. 

This piece took me just under an hour (before I speed up the video) but without the use of a hair dryer you can add another 20 mins.

Enjoy!