Colorizing value paints (2D Painting)

Tom Ellis

Hi all,

Got a quick question with regards to colorizing digital paintings.

I've never done much in the way of digital painting but I've started to explore it a bit. I'm just curious as to how to add color when you've done a painting in grayscale.

From what I've learned, it's best to paint value in grayscale first, especially when you're not that great at painting, then add colour later, right? Or am I missing something there?

How do you go about coloring a painting after you've done values in grayscale while retaining the values you painted already?

Thanks

Mark Dygert

From what I've seen there are a bunch of ways to get it done.
Most involve a layer set to color then another layer set to overlay.
I still suck at painting so I'd watch stuff like this:
http://vimeo.com/6710222

Tom Ellis

Bloody hell Vig that's a great vid, thaks for linking!

Ok I'm not sure why I hadn't thought of overlaying color layers with blend modes, but that seems like it's the way to do it!

Thanks again

Eric Chadwick

creationtwentytwo wrote: »

From what I've learned, it's best to paint value in grayscale first, especially when you're not that great at painting, then add colour later, right? Or am I missing something there?

Generally it's better to simply paint in full color, but that requires more practice. Colorizing grayscale is OK, but IMO the end results tend to look flatter, not as dynamic.

Tom Ellis

Cheers Eric,

Yeah I kinda got the impression that the better 2D artists paint in color from the get-go, but for me, someone who is still just getting into it, painting value in two colors seems a lot easier than the full spectrum.

I guess colorizing does have it's limits though and hopefully once I improve some I'll be able to use the techniques I've learned and paint in color.

Thanks again

rollin

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Generally it's better to simply paint in full color, but that requires more practice. Colorizing grayscale is OK, but IMO the end results tend to look flatter, not as dynamic.

Depending on what you want to do, colorizing can offer a higher flexibility in color changes afterwards.

Mark Dygert

I mostly see people use it as they're learning because it allows you to focus on value rather than having to balance a whole lot of other stuff. As people get more comfortable with painting in color they often start to skip the colorize layers and paint over it in color, as time goes on the grayscale gets less attention and looks more like a block in and the color gets more focus.

Those are just my observations from lurking on art boards over the years and watching people develop. Of course there are a ton of pros that use the grayscale method and everyone is different. In the end I don't think it matters how you get to the end result but that you get there, provided you're not a image thieving hack...

Bruno Afonseca

I do the grayscale thing, then I pick a color pallete with shadows, midtones, highlights etc, and make gradient maps using those colors, one for each object or material, using masks. Gives you a lot of control and it´s easy to change later.