Once I finish the final pencil drawing (see previous post), I scan it with a CanoScan LiDE 100 at 300 dpi for coloring in Photoshop. After scanning, I drew the environment in Photoshop using my Wacom tablet with a custom pencil style photoshop brush. The added ground, clouds, flowers & trees made it feel like more of a world. Time to color!
With my final-final line drawing finished, I used the free Flaming Pear "Ghost" plugin to quickly separate the line work from the background onto its own layer. This lets me paint the colors underneath the lines. Once the colors were finished on a layer underneath, I set the line drawing layer to "preserve transparency." Then I recolored the lines throughout the piece so they are darker versions of the colors they surround rather than being black.
The last pass was touchup - just looking around the piece and painting in some bits or details and cleanup where needed. Once the whole piece was in order, I pasted a grunge paper texture I created over the top as a multiply layer. (I adjusted this paper effect to be pretty subtle - adding just enough noise to add some analog imperfection to help reduce the cold digital feel of an otherwise flatcolored work.) Finally, I wrapped it up with a simple color/contrast adjustment to make it just right.
By keeping my process simple I'm able to work fairly quickly while ending up with works that are decently similar enough in style to all look like they came from the same artist.
