- Borneo River Village -
Here is how I went about creating the dragon below. The technique was developed after my frustration with starting an image in color. This was an experiment to see if I could get a good looking image starting with black and white. Scroll down to see the steps:
I started
in Photoshop sketching out in grayscale the dragon's head. After I got a range
of grays I liked, I just used Alt-Click to select the shades I needed for
a different area to render.
After
completing what I needed in grayscale, next comes the color. Basic midtones
of color were added to a new layer on top of the other. The layer setting
was set to 'Soft Light'. Below is what it was looking like.
Now all
that's missing is some grit (and a neck, but I won't get a head of myself
=). I took a generic texture, and applied it over the other two layers and
set it to 'Color Dodge'. I adjusted the contrast of the texture image to give
a more subtle kind of details and highlights. Below is what that layer looked
like when it was on 'Normal'.
Below
is what it's looking like with the new 'Color Dodge' layer. This layer also
helps with lighting. Notice in the above pic I painted in areas of black where
I wanted shadows to be placed.
Adding
gold to the same texture map gave some interesting results and some better
highlights.
Finally
I put a neck on the creature. I went back to the original black and white
of the head, and just enlarged the canvas to draw its neck.
And the
'Soft Light' layer was added to. On the right is what this layer looks like
when it's set to Normal to give you an idea how the color was added.
And then
the texture layer was extended and tweaked
And the
final image. I hope this made things a little clearer. If you have any questions
or want to know how something else on the site was made, don't hesitate to
e-mail me. Have a good day =)