Rock Shack
August 31st, 2009
Another background test for my story. Was able to traditionally paint this and some other backgrounds rather quickly — faster than it would be for me to paint digitally — but the scans came out terribly. I’m picking up way too much paper texture, and when I blast it out in the levels adjustment I eliminate all the subtle lighter values as well. So I end up having to do a lot of Photoshop retouching on top of the digital finishes I already have to do… not an efficient way to work!
I might use a tripod and camera next time.
August 31st, 2009 at 8:51 pm
me likie! reminds me of the southwest really nice
August 31st, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Hey you made it! Can’t wait to hear all about the JMT. And it is the Southwest. Specifically, Red Rocks. See ya soon!
September 5th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Yo Mike,
I’m in Tucson now. I agree with Michelle but it’s too blown out. Don’t know what the original looks like but rule of thumb is get a full range scan then start working on it. Try taking the unsharp masking down when you scan and it will be smoother. Sometimes you need a strong midtone to get contrast. I can’t paint clouds for shit but sitting here looking at them I see some veridian and a bit of cool red (alizirin ?)to give them shape. I gotta go paint!
DW
September 5th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Hey Dick,
Thanks for the tech advice! I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of doing full color bg paintings for the comic (at least using this method). But I’ll still need to do some heavy scanning on tonal work, so I’ll follow your tips next time. Strange, I don’t have this problem when scanning original art for prints… then again, the point there is to preserve all the texture so the print looks more like the original. In comics, it’s the awkward juxtaposition of polished photoshop figures against grainy imperfect bg’s that’s bugging me… I prefer imperfect versus digital’s somewhat sterile look, but there needs to be a marriage between the two somewhere. One other thing I suppose I could do is paint much larger…. the texture fades out in the reduction. Of course, the overhead in illustration board costs alone would outweigh my publishing fee!