Rampage AVL

Check my feed for a description of the process. So glad to have some time to focus on my illustrating now that school's out for the summer.

Rampage AVL- simulated watercolor technique

Here's a quick walkthrough of my coloring technique for my parody of the Rampage arcade game. Since I chose to do the line art digitally, the challenge became to color the piece in Photoshop in a way that simulated watercolor. Nothing beats the look of real paint on paper, but since the drawing was born on the computer I found this approach to be a worthy substitute.

Here we go...

1.) I painted several pages of watercolor paper with a wash of india ink and scanned them into my computer.

2.) Using Photoshop, I sliced up samples of the ink-wash scans and placed them in separate layers underneath my line work. It looks like an overly complex patchwork of values, but each subject of the illustration actually has its own unique texture and direction of brush marks.

3.) I switch the blending options on the ink layers to multiply and create a new layer for color underneath. The flat color from the Photoshop brush and the black and white ink wash combine to create a pretty nifty simulation of watercolor paint. 

Rampage AVL- Progress

George from the classic arcade game Rampage taking out Asheville City Hall. This is just a small chunk of the piece I've been working on this past month. 

It's been a significant effort to get to this point on this drawing, mostly because I began it with pencil and square ruler and switched to Photoshop and tablet halfway through. A wise decision in the end, but time consuming nonetheless.

I'm planning on printing a copy of the line art and coloring it with watercolor or gouache for the "original" piece, and having a separate look for the print version. More on that later.