Coloring Tutorial
Wonder how I color my icons? Well, now you no longer need to!
I use Photoshop Elements 6, but I don’t use tools that are really program specific. As long as you can use layers, setting some to soft light, some to normal, and some to screen and have a brush tool, you should be able to follow my steps.
I am very ramble-y about my steps, which I hope can be seen as helpful.
Disclaimer: I change my entire process every little bit when I discover something new! So if you are coming to this tutorial from the future for some reason, this may no longer be my coloring process.
STEP ZERO :: BASE IMAGE
So, at this point I’ve already cropped the icon. I have on a few occasions kept the image larger for coloring and only cropped down at the end, but I’m a lot less comfortable with that technique. Usually, I stay on a 100x100 canvas through the whole process.
So, at this point I try to have some sort of game plan for my coloring. What do I want to have the focus be? For instance, in the Grey’s Anatomy icon, I know I want to make the background extremely blue, making Meredith pop out with warmer coloring. For the Legend of the Seeker icon, I want to make the background extremely green and soft, mystical-ish if possible. For Fringe, Olivia’s hair will be the focus, I want it to be bright and attention-getting. For Doctor Who, I want the icon to be very stark with Martha’s expression being the focus. Finally, for the True Blood icon, I want Jessica’s hair to be the only real pop of color. Generally, when at a loss for the focus, I go for someone’s hair.
Now that I at least have some sort of idea of what I’m going for, it is time to begin!
STEP ONE :: LAYERS AND TEXTURES
So, I always start out by duplicating the base image twice, making three layers of the same image. The top-most layer is set to “Soft Light” and the middle layer to “Screen”. This makes the images look like this:
Next, I use three textures. I use them on every icon I make!
First up is a texture by iheart-kyujong.
However, I’ve editted it a bit to better serve my needs. The two versions I regularly use are:
and
I used to use version 1 more, but now I mostly use version 2, because the lack of the lighter spots makes the icons look better, in my opinion.
Anyway, the way I use this one is I paste it under the soft light and screen layers and leave it on normal. This is now the base, so to speak.
Obviously, this does not look all that great at this point! That is why I do not stop here. However, a few notes about what I do with this texture: it has a lighter section slightly to the left of the center and on the upper side. I try to have this section going across the subject’s face or focal point. For the Grey’s, Seeker and Fringe icons, I left it as it originally was as the light falls where I want it to already. However, I flipped it horizontally for the Who icon, so the light would hit Martha’s face and I rotated it 180 degrees for the True Blood icon, so that it would get Jessica’s hands and eyes picked up a little bit. I also sometimes blur the texture a bit, if the lines are standing out too much.
Anyway, now time to make it look a bit nicer. First, I duplicate that Soft Light layer a few times. Usually I go for having three Soft Light layers overall, but some caps have less natural contrast and so I make it four. I also occasionally duplicate the Screen layer if the cap still is looking dark. In the cases of these icons, it broke down as follows:
Grey’s: 4 Soft Light, 2 Screen
Seeker: 3 Soft Light, 1 Screen
Fringe: 3 Soft Light, 2 Screen
Who: 3 Soft Light, 1 Screen
True Blood: 3 Soft Light, 1 Screen
These layers will be the top most layers unless/until I say otherwise. All the rest of the layers I use until Step 3 are between the iheart-kyujong texture and the bottommost Screen layer.
Now, I use two more textures. Both are by pinxess
I copy them over, b and set them both to Soft Light. They warm the whole icon up a bit. Now, the first one I always have on 100% opacity, but the second one can vary. Often it can overpower an icon if left on full, so I often turn it down. This is entirely depending on the icon, I’ve used it anywhere from 10% to 100%. I experiment with it depending on the cap.
Checking back in with our images, they now look like this:
This is basically when I consider an icon “prepped” and ready for me to go to town with the coloring.
STEP TWO :: BRUSHIE BRUSHIE
Okay, so now I am going to betray what a true icon ~n00b~ I am. Because I think maybe what I do here has a name, but for the life of me, I do not know what it is. I have seen people throw out references to “painting” and that sounds like it could describe what I do, but it could be something completely different. So, I call it “Brushie Brushie” because it involves the brush tool.
Basically, for all the things I talk about below, it follows these three basic steps
Color in shape in new layer -> set to Soft Light -> play with opacity
I always set my layers to Soft Light in this step. Even if I don’t mention it specifically, assume I am doing that unless I specifically say otherwise!
I separate this step into three parts.
PART ONE :: SKIN AND HAIR
Now I create a new, blank layer. Using the brush tool, I color in all my subject’s visible skin and hair with pink. The exact shade of pink varies, but I usually keep it pretty balanced between the purple and red sides of the spectrum.
Between the white lines.
Now, I set that layer to soft light and lower the opacity. Again, the specific opacity depends on the cap in question. In generally, I set it between about 15-40%.
Now, I create another layer and color in all the skin and hair visible again, but this time with an orange-y yellow.
Again, between the white lines.
I set this one on Soft Light also and lower the opacity. The opacity on this layer should always be a bit lower than the pink layer. This one I generally keep anywhere between 10-30%.
Now, occasionally, I also color in the clothing of the character with these two layers. This depends on the color of the clothes and the distance. With my example icons, I did this in the Seeker and Who icons. For the Seeker icon, they are both wearing warm colors and are in semi-negative space, so having one color scheme for the entirety of the non-tree space seemed like a good idea. For Who, Martha’s jacket could look too purple if it wasn’t warmed up the same way her skin was. Generally, at negative space I’ll do this with clothing next to the skin that is yellow, orange, brown and red. In closer crops, I’ll only do it with brown or red clothing next to the skin.
Also, sometimes the colors can look like they end abruptly, so I’ll often do a very light blur to the colors to soften the edges.
Checking back in with the examples, they now look like this:
So, now they are starting to look close to how I actually want them! This brings us, finally, to the point where each icon gets a bit of individuality.
PART TWO :: THE SUBJECT
This is when I start coloring in earnest, bringing out what parts of the icon I want to highlight. I begin, usually with the hair. I create a new layer for it and color in where the hair is, changing what actual color depending on what color hair my subject has.
You may have noticed that in my example icons, I have blonde hair, red hair, brown hair and black hair represented. I actually did this on purpose!
Now, for brown and black hair, which is represented in the Grey’s, Seeker and Who icons, the pink and yellow layer has taken care of the actual hue quite nicely. So, I usually just color in a black layer over the the hair, set it to Soft Light and fiddle with the opacity until I get what I’m looking for. I don’t want it so dark that all detail is lost, but there should be depth to the hair. Very occasionally, I’ll throw in a very low opacity yellow or orange-ish layer to dark hair if I want the color to pop a bit more, but generally not.
For blonde hair, shown in the Seeker and Fringe icons, I love going all out. I like a Soft Light layer with bright yellow, close to the green end of the spectrum. Obviously, there are some blondes this doesn’t work for, in which case I keep the yellow closer to the orange end, but for the most part I love the bright yellow. Yellow I usually keep on 100% opacity, because I love it just so much.
Red heads are the trickiest for me! Usually, what I end up doing for character’s with red hair is making one layer colored in orange, with the exact hue decided by the specific hair in question, one layer of pink and one layer of black, all set to Soft Light and medium opacities. I fiddle around with them until it looks right.
Now, onto the faces. I try to bring out the icon, make it look more 3rd. I do this by using the brush tool some more, with black. I color in sections I want slightly darker with the brush, blur it, set it to Soft Light and fiddle with the opacity until it looks right. I make each section it’s own layer so that I can tweak them easily.
I usually start out by coloring in with black from the upper eyelashes to the eyebrow, coloring in the whole eyelid. If the cap is at an angle where the shadow naturally follows down the nose at one side, I do with that in the same layer so that the shadow is consistent there. I also like to color in the lips, the lower eyelashes and the shadow on the neck to the chin like this. Depending on the cap, I’ll also put in a bit on the shadow under the lower lip on the chin, the nose, the undereye shadows and cheek hollows. Again, this depends on the cap and the character. Character’s that are meant to be stressed, tired or sad, I especially like to darken under their eyes and set it to low opacity. It is not super noticeable but really heightens the mood. Overall, it is about highlighting things that are already there, just bringing them out a bit.
Our examples:
Some individual notes on them:
I didn’t do anything to Meredith’s scrubs at this point because I was saving them for later, since they will be closely colored to the background. I did do a dark line under her cheekbone, blurred a bunch and set to a low opacity, to make them pop a bit more. Since she is working long hours and dealing with a lot of emotional stuff, I shadowed under her eyes a bit, just so her bags would stand out just a hair. I also lightly colored in her eyes with green, just to give them a hint of color. Also, the whites of her eyes had turned a bit yellow so I colored over them lightly with white, just so she didn’t look ill.
Here I did color in their clothes. I put a layer of black over each, set to Soft Light of course. Then I put a layer of pink over Cara’s uniform so bring out the reds. I don’t use red itself since it tends to act weird on me. Instead, I highlight reds using warm, dark pinks. This keeps the color from blowing out and being eye-hurty.
This will be the most in depth one! So, Olivia doesn’t wear a ton of makeup, so it’s a careful balance with her eyelashes and lips. I want to make them stand out without making it look like I am dolling her up, so to speak. I also want to darken under her chin. However, with this, her hair still looks flat and boring. So, I went more in depth there.
When I want to make a character’s hair stand out more, when it is really the center piece, I will carefully follow all the shadows with a black line of my own. First I darkened up right by her roots, the easiest bit. Then I followed the flow of her hair the darken along the lines of it. Then, I blur.
Without the black set on soft light, this is what it looked like:
As you can see, it’s not super exact. I don’t drive myself crazy over it, just try to follow the general swing. It ends up looking like this:
(I also darkened her eyes and lips a bit more at this point, I forget why I hadn’t done that earlier.)
I really tried to go all out with her expression here. She was just crying and in keeping down tears in this scene, so I did a thick black line over her lower lids and a bit below, to bring out the redness of crying. Now, it’s important to not actually use red, but black, for this layer. Doing it in red would make it way too saturated and draw too much attention to the area.
Here is what it would look like with red instead of black:
It looks more like she had an allergic reaction than an emotional one! This is why I generally use black for bringing out features. I’m not really aiming at changing the actual color involved- the color should already be pretty natural looking, matching the rest of the icon. The black just makes it stand out more.
I also darkened her necklace and the lines of her throat, as well as the crease in her forehead.
This is the icon I had the most difficulty in this batch, and the one I’d be most likely to scrap if I were making icons for a post. Still, I stuck with it. I went more in depth with her hair as well, following the curls. I also followed the lines of her fingers, darkening the shadows so they stand out more clearly. I also put a bit of light blue in her eyes and followed her lashes more exactly, since in the scene she is supposed to have a bit of make up on, so I feel okay enhancing that.
PART THREE: BACKGROUND
This is where I start working with the non-subject space, which has been neglected up until now. I never mess with the background until after I’m done with all the characters, since they have to go together. Generally, my game plan for the background is a bit looser until I work with the subject a bit more.
My plan going in with these examples were as follows: for Grey’s, I wanted a fairly consistent bright blue covering her scrubs and the background, with the only variance supplied by the background itself; for Seeker, I wanted it to be a wash of light green along the cooler spectrum; for Fringe, I wanted the shadows to be a lot darker, including her clothing so she becomes a part of it, with the two lighter sections of the wall to be either a nice warm orange, offsetting her hair, or else black as well; for Who, I wanted the grass and trees to be cool, setting Martha apart from them, without being too attention grabbing; and for True Blood I wanted the darkness to be absolute, and to cover part of her face, making her a part of it.
This is how they turned out:
Overall, they turned out how I wanted them to, though I did change a few things as I went. Going one by one again...
Now, one of the things I love best about Grey’s Anatomy is making the halls blue, though they are actually naturally closer to grey. First I have to choose what blue I want to use. Now, I try to be careful about blues. I don’t like them when they become too purple and I don’t like them when they are super-cyan. I’m not going to say I never use them, it’s just pretty rare. Usually I use within this range:
Now, since Mere’s scrubs are actually separate from the background, I colored them in first. I set that layer to Soft Light, of course, and leave it on 100% opacity. Then I made a new layer and colored in, with the exact same shade, the entire background including her scrubs and set that to Soft Light 100% opacity as well. Then, I doubled it. Most of my bright blue coloring I have to double layer that way to get it looking as bright and happy as I want it to.
I noticed at this point that next to this new, blue background, her skin was looking a bit off. I just made a note of it.
Now, this one actually changed a bit! I originally was planning to just make it a sea of green, following the same general steps as with the blue above, including doubling the layer at 100% opacity (I don’t always do this with greens, it depends on how it looks. This time, I wanted the greens to really pop and so I did double it).
However, I felt that after I had done that, it looked a little off...
Instead of looking like a sea of beautiful green, it just looked a bit flat. Mostly, those green trunks were bothering me. Sometimes in forest shots, I can get away with coloring everything in the same, but sometimes, like in this icon, the tree trunks just look weird. This most often pops up when I am using relatively cool greens, like I did this time.
So, I left the green layers as they were and created a new layer. I went for a dusky orange, not super bright but not exceptionally dark. I used this color to draw in the trunks in the background, the downed tree in front of them poking through the plants and a few bits of ground around them. Again, Soft Light, blahblah. Then, I doubled that one as well, leaving both on 100% opacity. Now I felt the background looked a lot more dynamic.
This one I mostly just followed my plan, choosing to go with orange for the wall. I used black to color in all the shadowing and her shoulder. An important note is that when I do this, I have to carefully make sure I am coloring in all of the shadows. Sometimes it gets hard to see the subtle difference, so I often invert the color while I am filling it in and re-invert it back to black when I am done. This is important for later steps!
I chose to go with orange because, generally, I try to preserve the original background, and I felt they made a nice shape. I chose an orange, filled the two sections in and set to Soft Light. However, the left section was slightly more greenish, which I didn’t like, so I doubled the layer and erased the right section. This made the two sections look like they were the same color but lit differently. In general, unless the background is a big part of the focus, I don’t want all that much variance going on in it. It’s distracting.
Now, this was fun. The background was already nicely separated into three stripes: the grass, the trees, and the non-grass floor beneath the trees. So, I just made each it’s own layer and started coloring them in with the colors I thought suited them. I wanted to keep it mostly in the cool spectrum, but the line of brown I decided was okay. I still wanted the icon to be slightly warmer over all, so I put all the greens closer to the yellow end of the spectrum rather than blue, the way I had done with the Seeker icon. In selecting my greens, I kept them in the same color window, just making the trees darker. This adds to the internal consistency of the icon.
They ended up fairly bland comparative to the extreme contrasts going on in Martha’s face, so I doubled all the color layers up to make the background colors pop a bit more. This made the trees end up a bit too dark, so I used Hue/Saturation tool and raised the brightness, though I also could have used variations or Brightness/Contrast or a bunch of other tools. I ended up making that one a truly pastel-y looking green. I ended up setting it on 65% opacity, where it just highlighted the top of the leaves without bothering the shadows.
Mmm, darkness. Now, the light greenish line the textures had left next to her face had been annoying me this whole time, so now I finally got a chance to get rid of it. Using black, I colored in all the background, gave it a light gaussian blur and set it to soft light.
I find all black backgrounds to be boring and look a little fake unless they interact with the subject in some way. So, I decided to sink part of Jessica’s face into the shadows. Following a vague line of where the shadows were already hitting the far side of her face and hands, I colored them in with black. Then, I turned the gaussian blur up a few notches so that it looked more natural before setting it to Soft Light. I ended up copying the layer a few times until I achieved the level of darkness I wanted. I didn’t want it too dark- you can still see bits of her shadowed features, they are still there, but she is clearly melting into the dark.
As a note- the background here was fairly blank so I didn’t need to do this, but often when I’m darkening out a background where there a light sections, they can’t be gotten rid of unless you put one of the black layers above the screened base image. This is the only time I’ll put something above that base image.
Now, finally, STEP TWO is done!
STEP THREE :: WAIT WAIT THERE’S MORE
No this is not the end! We still have a bit to go.
First up: take everything you have done and flatten that sucker into one layer. Then double it up and set the top layer to Soft Light.
Now we shall be using some more textures!
First up, by innocent-lexys.
I paste this between the two layers and set it to soft light. Now, the dark patch at the bottom of the texture can throw off the coloring, so I often rotate it to where the darker color will look good or stretch the texture out so the dark path isn’t on canvas anymore.
This makes our examples look like so:
This I feel makes the colors look a lot starker, which I like, and it cools the skin tones down a bit. Of course, it can make them a little too purple and blue. I mean, I don’t want all my icons to be in the cool spectrum.
This is where the next texture comes in! From cielo-gris:
So, copy this one over, but this one I set to Screen. At 100% opacity, this is generally way too much! So I dial it down a bit. Exactly what opacity I keep it on wildly varies icon to icon, so experiment around a little. See what looks nice! But using this texture will warm up the shadows quite nicely.
So, now we are pretty close to finishing, but you might notice that through all this, a few flaws have been exposed. For instance, Meredith’s skin has become a bit too pink, Olivia’s eyes look faded and, most embarrassingly, it looks like I missed a patch when I was darkening the background of the True Blood icon and now it is sticking out like a sore thumb. Which brings us to...
STEP FOUR :: CORRECTIONS
Like I said, this is just about fixing up little errors that may have cropped up along the way. Because of the screened red texture, all the shadows will have a bit of reddish, lightened tint to them, so often I will redarken things like eyes and occasionally hair. Also, skin tones can sometimes become too purple/pink, so if that happens I just put a layer in of warm yellow-orange, set it to soft light and turn the opacity way down until the skin looks right again. For the problem with the True Blood icon, I just put a layer (kept as Normal) underneath the screened layer that matched the color of the rest of the base image. Fixed it right up.
With all these fixes, the examples now look like this:
Now, I can stop here and these would be the “finished” icons. Still, I usually play with the image a bit more, just to see what I can turn out.
STEP FIVE :: EXPERIMENT
This is when I start really messing with the icons to figure out what I want to do with them. The regular techniques I try out are:
Rotation: Often, if the coloring still looks like it is lacking a little something, I’ll rotate it around a bit to see if different angles look better. Often, flipping the image upside down or to the side can make the coloring look pretty different.
For instance:
Changes the focus entirely!
A better example would be an icon I made a while ago for the Secret Icon Battle. It ended up being an icon that got a ton of praise, but before rotating it, I was actually considering scrapping it and starting over.
Here is the icon in question:
And here is what it looked like before I rotated it:
It is hard to express how much I dislike the non-rotated version. The crop makes her face look like it is going on forever out to the side. It is boring, the colors look flat, it is just an icon that is slightly off and bugs me. But, rotated to the side, suddenly I love it. It looks cool and her expression sticks out more.
So, rotate around! See if something pops up.
Textures: Specifically, textures, usually black and white, set to screen. I love them. Pretty much any time you see an icon of mine with white shapes or where the shadows have a slightly grungey look, this is what I was doing. In fact, I ended up sticking a texture on every example icon here! Some are more subtle than others.
Now, a great deal of my method just involves trying a bunch of different textures over and over, but occasionally I actually put some thought into it. For instance, in the Grey’s icon I knew I wanted to shift the focus to the right side, which meant covering up most of the left, so I looked for a texture that could do that. For Fringe, I wanted something understated that could imitate her hair. For True Blood, I wanted to give the shadows some, well, texture.
Duplication: I often like to play around with having multiple versions of the same picture in one icon. Now, sometimes I plan this ahead of time, but mostly I do not and so just experiment around at this stage. I usually make the duplicate smaller, different shaped, and/or flipped to face the opposite direction.
Sometimes I specifically use a duplicate to hide an area I don’t like as much or to provide more interest to an area I find boring.
Examples:
Those are my big three! And, generally, I like to mix and match, like so:
So, there are all kinds of things you can do at this stage to give your icons individual flair.
ALL DONE!
I know it looks long when I write it out and ramble, but I made all of these over the course of two episodes of Psych (I make all my icons while watching TV and measure how long it takes through that) and they took slightly longer because I was taking noted on my steps and saving them in progress. Once I got comfortable with this method, it became quite quick to do! Honestly, the longest part is deciding which of the infinite variations I make are the ones I will actually post.
I hope this tutorial was interesting and maybe even a little helpful. It was a lot of fun to write!