Notice that going through the middle of Tiny is the wall and door that is behind him (you won't see those things when the painting is done)...why would I leave those on the drawing?
I want to save time and I want to be accurate with my paintings. Three of the spreads of Tiny and the boy use the same background...the kitchen and kitchen back door. I will use technology to bring parts of the paintings together as three finished pieces...all with that same view of the kitchen and kitchen door. So I need to paint the part of the kitchen that you will see as a painting by itself.
Remember, I've already painted Tiny and Elliot in this scene by themself on another board...
My task today, is to use technology to help me find the right colors to go in this kitchen scene...I'm not sur what they should be at this point. I want the overall look of the kitchen to be bright and cheery and a little fun to go with the playfulness of the story. I could jump right into actually painting and try to make it all work, but why not help myself gain confidence by using photoshop to help me find the right colors and values that I need. That way I'll be able to see exactly what to actually paint before I ever dip my brush into the paints. Photoshop can break things into layers...like pieces of clear plastic with color on them....you can lay these layers on top of each other any way you like and then tell the computer to squish them all together to make a picture. It's very fun and very useful! My top layer will be the picture above that I already painted. Then the middle layer will be the tight sketch (and I'll make it transparent so you still see the lines but clear in between the lines. And finally the bottom layer will be the actual layer that I'll play with color. Below I drew a diagram showing you how I use photoshop to do this:
So, using this method, I bring my finished painting of Tiny and Elliot into photoshop as a top layer and lay it on top of the layer below it...the tight sketch. I haven't moved Tiny and E. into their correct position yet. They are opaque and whatever they lay on top of, you won't see that anymore...
Now I will move them into their correct place.
Great! Now you can see the parts of the room I need to find colors of. I'll start with what I already know...the bright red kitchen back door. Remember I already painted it when I did the back yard scenes? That door color cannot change...it must remain like that color from now on. I purposefully did that because my editor said to be sure I identified that as the door to the back yard in some way. Thus, the bright red color. In photoshop, I make a bottom layer for the color and add red over the top part of the door...
I like it! So, I do the bottom half.
By putting on the bright red door, it will make the choices of the other colors more accurate. I decide to echo the red door color down on the checkerboard floor but with less intensity.
And I feel yellow would be a good cheery contrast, so I add it on next...
That feels good to me. Now I want to try a wall color and am leaning toward a light blue robin egg color. So, I add it onto the bottom layer...
I like that too...but I want to see what adding the outside color would do next to all that blue....
I want to play with that blue and see what a light green would look like...so photoshop let's me see what that change would do to all the colors I've chosen so far...
Pretty good, since I've got the "complimentary" color thing going on with the red door and green wall, but, I'm leaning toward the blue instead. So I go back to it and I decide to add a wall decoration shelf to break up all that wall space with some interesting kitchen shapes and colors.
I'm almost done with finding my colors and I notice that Tiny's big front paw is going into the door frame and it needs trimming to look like it is going outside the door frame. Just for fun, I trim it.
Perfect.
What did I learn in using technology in this way? It can help take away the "risk" involved in just trying color. It's like deciding on a definite game plan for when I actually paint this kitchen scene by itself. And when I am ready to work with the other two kitchen scenes, I'll take the other Tiny and Elliot paintings and sandwich them into this scene and it will look different....but the same. My art experiences have shown me that wherever I can, I should try to take the strengths of traditional work and the strength of technology and put them together. I've not let technology take over here....I've let it be a "specialized player" in my painting game for these spreads. It has served me well. Now, I got to get busy painting what the computer has shown me is the way I want to go! I'll be showing you how these three spreads worked out in later posts.
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