#86 Q&A
1. top 10 recent used and fav. textures? (asked by black_bird80)
burnedbreads || queenb || likealight || raiindust || burnedbreads
planets-bend-between-us x2 || rosebein || wicked-fate || stewark
2. What is the secret to make red icons? (asked by shameless666)
I don't think there are any secrets in the way I make red icons. But there are probably some things I usually do when I make them:
a) Hue/Saturation Layer. It really helps when for example in the process of coloring your red background started looking more orange or purple.
b) Use layer mask on the face/hands of the subject when you make background more vibrant and saturated.
c) Choose wisely the undertone of the icon. If I try to make red icon with warm undertone I try to make all the shadows warmer too and vise versa.
d) RED TEXTURES. To me red textures is everything. When I don't really know what to do with red icons I start to play around with red textures.
3. How you make your comic icons so smooth? (asked by sietepecados)
First of all when I cut out the subject I use this little trick to make edges more smooth. I usually cut out subject from the background using Pen Tool. When I make a Path around the area I need to cut out I choose Make Selection option and change Feather Radius to 0.5 px. It really makes the edges smoother.
The other tricks are well known Gaussian Blur layer and painting around the edges with the color of your background using soft brush with low opacity.
4. How you do the hair colouring? Do you use the graphic tablet? (asked by sietepecados)
I don't use graphic tablet to paint hair because I don't have one:)
I've seen dozens of "how to paint hair" tutorials on Tumblr - some of them are requiring to use graphic tablet some are not. I've tried several of them, and for now I have two ways to paint (or add highlights to) hair.
If I want to highlight the light parts of hair and add more shadow to darker parts I create new layer, set it on Soft Light, and then I take 1-2px soft brush with ~30% opacity and lightly paint white (or yellow) over the lighter parts of the hair. The on the next new layer I repeat this step with black or dark brown color. Then I simply blur both of these layers. (On some b&w icons setting layers on Hard Light works much better).
Examples:
For the actual hair painting I use Freeform Pen Tool. You can also use Pen Tool spend some time and make your Paths look beautiful and perfect but I'm a lazy person and I use Freeform Pen Tool :D
First of all choose 1-2 px soft brush (it depends on the size of the canvas you work with) and the color you want. Then go to Freeform Pen Tool and make Paths where you want colors to be, then choose Stroke Path option. Make sure that Simulate Pressure box is checked and the Tool you use is Brush. And then you have painted hair:)
It may look too sharp sometimes so you can blur it a little or duplicate and use Gaussian Blur.
Examples:
