COLORIZE A VALUE SKETCH INAUTODESK SKETCHBOOK

STEP 1: THE COLORS OF THE FACE

STEP 2: STARTING WITH A BASE

STEP 3: “COLOR” BLENDING MODE

STEP 4: PUSHING COLORS WITH SOFT LIGHT

STEP 5: TAKING A BREAK FROM BLENDING MODES

STEP 6: ADDING COLOR TO THE BACKGROUND

STEP 7: FINAL ADJUSTMENTS

Using different blending modes, you can take a painting done in blacks and whites and add colors to it. However, it’s important to note, simply using blending modes on a greyscale painting won’t give you the vibrant tones you would get

from painting straight with color, but it’s a quick way to colorize your art.

The picture to the left taken from Gurney’s blog, shows an overview of the different zones of the face with light skin, and which tones they tend to be. It’s a good idea to head over to the blog and give his post a glance:

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.-ca/2008/05/color-zones-of-face.html

Before we dive into the painting part, since we are doing a portrait in this example, it’s important to conduct some research on the colors and tones of the face. There is a combination of different warm and cool tones that make up the face depend-ing on the different zones and skin color. James Gurney, a master artist and author of “Color and Light”, explains the 3 different color zones in on a light-skinned face on his blog.

Desaturated reds were added to get the blue looking hues into the chin area and yellow hues into the the forehead. Sometimes warm hues that are very desaturated can appear to be cool when relative to their surrounding warm colors.

The painting was flattened by merging all the layers in the image. Create a duplicate layer, and make color adjustments to the new layer. I reduce reds and bring in cooler blue tints to the image, which is then blended into the previous warmer image we had earlier by lowering the opacity.

For the final step, a Color Dodge layer was added on top with a new layer to give the painting a final glow.

Now the sketch that was initially in black and white is colored! This method can be used with any painting or photo that is in greyscale. By using a combination of adjustment layers and blending modes in Sketchbook, you can bring colors and vibrancy to your work. Painting in values first can help you focus on establishing proper forms and lighting, and colors can be a separate aspect you can focus on after.

Remember, there is no substitute for painting straight in color, as you get genuine tones and blending compared to starting from a black and white sketch.

Adding a gradient to your black and white sketch, gives you a good base to start with, and this way, you can reduce possible dull tones that would appear on top of the greyscale image. In this example, I duplicated my original sketch and using the Color Balance function, I moved the RGB sliders to add a sort of purple hue, and decreased the opacity while still having the original greyscale painting underneath.

Now that we have something other than black and white to start with, create a new layer with the “Color” blending mode.

The Color blending mode preserves the values of the original image and uses the luminance of the base color while using the hue/saturation of the blend color. Therefore, it is important to get accurate values in your sketch and lighting drawn out so when you use this blending mode, it won’t effect the lighting but simply add color to already existing values. However, even if you don’t think you have an accurate value sketch, it can always be fixed.

During this step, a simple base hue was applied to the overall face to get a base for a warm tone, although it may not be accurate for a light-skinned face, we can build up from this.

Here we introduce a new layer with a Soft Light blending mode.

The Soft Light blending mode can darken or lighten colors based on the blending color. If the blend color is either lighter or darker than 50% grey, then the image is also lightened or darkened with that blend color.

This blending mode allows me to intro-duce a wider value range within my tones and control the color at the same time. It’s always a good idea to use reference to able to study, as well as understand with real life examples. For this study, a painting by Sargent was referenced and I studied the different colours that he used in his portraits. The cheeks and nose tend to a redder hue as mentioned by Gurney. A desaturated bluish color was used for the eyes.

Now that there are some more colors to the portrait, switching to normal blending mode and simply using the color picker to choose colors from your canvas to paint begins to unify and bring life into the face.

Continue refining and rendering while making sure to keep the original light source in the sketch while also making any adjustments that need to be made.

For the background, a yellowish-orange hue was glazed over the entire canvas with a Soft Light blending mode with a 50% opacity setting on the layer. Strokes were erased where the figure is as we only want to effect the background.