{"id":607,"date":"2013-01-18T13:58:21","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T18:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rob-peters.com\/blog\/?p=607"},"modified":"2013-01-18T14:06:06","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T19:06:06","slug":"drawing-a-dino-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rob-peters.com\/blog\/drawing-a-dino-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Drawing a Dino, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week <\/a>I talked about designing the main character in my new book “We Believe in Dinosaurs:Practice” based on the song “Practice” by children’s band We Believe in Dinosaurs. Today I want to talk about how I created a page for the book.<\/p>\n

For every project I do, I “reinvent the wheel” somewhat, adjusting my style and working method to fit the project.\u00a0 I felt like the prehistoric landscapes in this book required a softer and more restrained color scheme than I usually use. But I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed until I read an article on Drawn.ca<\/a>\u00a0about artist Ryan Andrew’s unique coloring methods<\/a>. I would adapt the technique as I went, but this gave me a starting point.<\/p>\n

Let me show you how I\u00a0worked one of the spreads from the book:<\/p>\n

First I worked up this rough pencil sketch which I had my client approve. The book’s unique structure required comic book style inset panels which added an extra design challenge, but I came up with a solution that made everyone happy.<\/p>\n

\"DinoSequence_0000_1\"<\/p>\n

From there, I inked the image like I always do: on paper using\u00a0a combination of my trusty Rapidograph pens and Pentel Brush pen. The inked artwork was scanned into Photoshop.<\/p>\n

\"DinoSequence_0001_2\"<\/p>\n

From here on, I began to\u00a0deviate from\u00a0my usual\u00a0form. Following Ryan’s example, I\u00a0colored\u00a0everything in\u00a0shades of gray.\u00a0Major elements were done on different\u00a0Photoshop layers to make selecting things easier later. By working in grayscale, I was able to make sure that there was proper contrast in the image before I got too deep in the coloring.<\/p>\n

\"DinoSequence_0002_3\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that wasn’t quite enough for me. So I placed in a sloppy watercolor texture\u00a0 in the background. I have a couple dozen of these textures that I’ve made over the years. They help eliminate the harsh, overly perfect feel that my Photoshop work\u00a0can get sometimes. I used various layer effects (overlay, multiply, screen) as needed so that the texture showed through in places. Then I converted everything to CMYK color mode (this caused a few of the grey shades to turn blue for some reason, but that didn’t matter at this stage).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"DinoSequence_0003_4\"<\/p>\n

I had planned to use Ryan’s method of coloring but found three colors to be too restrictive for my tastes. Instead,\u00a0I used Photoshop’s Gradient Map tool and applied a custom gradient over the whole thing.<\/p>\n

\"GradientMap\"<\/p>\n

This turned my blacks into dark brown, mid-tones green, lighter tones into orange, and the whites became yellow.<\/p>\n

\"DinoSequence_0004_5\"<\/p>\n

I was almost done. But now came the longest, but most fun part: painting in the tones. Using my trusty Wacom Cintique and stylus, I painted in shadows and highlights. And I wasn’t afraid to deviate from my color scheme in a few places. I added blue into the sky and colored the dinosaur kids’ clothing less drab colors. I also lightened color of the linework in the background to help it recede and on the kids’ freckles (or are they scales? I was never sure).<\/p>\n

\"DinoSequence_0005_6\"<\/p>\n

And so here is the final product! I’m really quite proud of it.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure if I’ll use this technique again for another book, after a few pages it might have been easier to simply color things using the CMYK values I had already established previously. But I will definitely try it again on a smaller project.<\/p>\n

The book is currently only available at the band’s website, which you can find\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I talked about designing the main character in my new book “We Believe in Dinosaurs:Practice” based on the song “Practice” by children’s band We Believe in Dinosaurs. Today I want to talk about how I created a page … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[22,24,21,23,20],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-book","tag-how-to","tag-illustration","tag-making-of","tag-process-2"],"yoast_head":"\nDrawing a Dino, part 2 - Rob Peters Illustration Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/rob-peters.com\/blog\/drawing-a-dino-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Drawing a Dino, part 2 - Rob Peters Illustration Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week I talked about designing the main character in my new book “We Believe in Dinosaurs:Practice” based on the song “Practice” by children’s band We Believe in Dinosaurs. 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