I spent my evenings during the weekend flat fill coloring pages. This morning was an attempt to return to my usual routine of waking up early. I finished flatting the last two pages so now I can either draw and work on more pages or spend time on each one adding gradients and figuring out rendering. I think it’s a better idea to draw some more so I’m not just tweaking the same pages over and over.
I’d like to render shadows and highlights on each page. The way I’ve done this before is a multiply layer for shadows and a screen layer for highlights. If I decide not to go with it I can just hide those layers and stick with flat coloring. It’s good to have a uniform process I can repeat on every page. The problem with this style is it tends to look flat unless you spend time shaping forms which can be time consuming. There’s also the question of which brush to use. Does simple, flat shading look better? How about a soft airbrush? Should I try a texture? Would a wash brush look out of place if I didn’t add a paper texture underneath? Ultimately it’s whatever helps the look of the comic. Sometimes you need to run a filter on the color layer or change it’s opacity. Other times you lower the saturation or add a halftone. I’ll just play around with it until I decide on something that fits the aesthetic.