Immovable

Hello again all, this here represents my first post in my second month of posting, wahoo! In all seriousness I'm glad that I've been able to keep up the pace I started in Maine upon returning to the beloved land of my birth, Pennsylvania. This piece was made in response to another Illustration Friday prompt, this time the topic given was "Immovable." I decided to pair the immovable element, which is purposefully very static, with a fiercely agitated scene involving two lovers in a highly dramatic spat. Seen above is the result of my endeavors, a clear cut case of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

This is my first time really working with digital coloring, and I think that there is a lot of potential for future success. One of the greatest benefits is that it is significantly easier to manipulate and alter colors and compositional elements on the computer, which makes the whole process less stressful. Parts of the physical drawing irk me a bit, like the way the man is rendered, especially when compared to his female counterpart. I wanted to create a more dynamic composition with this piece and I think I succeeded, especially compared to some of the previous work that I put up.

Here's how the process went down:

First, I started with the final sketch:

From here I put it on the light box, got out my final paper and proceeded to set about inking it. The product of those efforts was this:

I then scanned this into the computer and attempted to isolate the line (something that has given me heaps of trouble in the past) and begin digitally coloring it. This is what it looked like to start, after I had done the flats, a process which I will be elaborating on in one of my next posts probably (I've got like 3 projects going right now).

Notice that white haze that covers the whole thing? That's the problem with the line isolation that I was talking about, its the tooth of the paper that got transferred when I attempted to copy the line. Basically what was happening was this: In trying to isolate the line I select all of the background white on a grayscale channel first, then I would normally just opt to "select inverse" and that would then select and copy the linework, then being able to paste it into a new layer.

However, when that final stage would roll around I would be dissatisfied because that white haze would remain, which honestly was thoroughly frustrating. I experimented and realized that when I selected the white of the background initially I needed to delete that selection and only THEN could i select the linework.

This got rid of that gross fuzz and left us with our final image:


Like I said, I am quite pleased with it as a whole and I am very excited for what the future holds for me and digital coloring. There will be more coming next week I expect, LOTS MORE, so stay tuned and as always, thank you and happy viewing.