NVMUG eNews 3/27/2004

Last updated 4/02/2004

Rob Walker on Creating Illustrations Using Photoshop

Rob Walker, Warren Walker's younger brother gave an excellent presentation on creating illustrations using Photoshop to a large and enthused audience at the March NVMUG meeting.

In this NVMUG eNews

---

1. Designer Demonstrates Photoshop for NVMUG

As reported in the Caledonian-Record Tuesday, March 29, 2004

Rob Walker shows members how he creates illustrations using Photoshop at the NVMUGG meeting in St. Johnsbury Saturday.

Rob Walker demonstrated how he creates illustrations using Photoshop at the Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group meeting in The Old Mill Club in St. Johnsbury Saturday.

Walker is an illustrator, animator and multimedia designer who received his BFA in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, Samples of his work can be seen at:

http://www.walkerillustration.com/

Walker does all of his drawing on paper, scans the drawings and black and white paintings into his computer, and then uses Photoshop to add the color. He sketches an illustration using a nonreproducing blue ink. He draws the illustration over the blue sketch using black ink. Then he uses Photoshop 7 to get rid of the blue that remains in the drawing.

Using Photoshop he scales the image to fit the media for which it will be used. He likes to work at 400 dots per inch so that he can make the image either larger or smaller for publishing.

Once he has an image with black lines on a white background, he makes the white background transparent using Photoshop. Then he will build colors using Photoshop Layers which are like transparent plastic sheets which show through to the layers underneath.

When he creates layers, he thinks about the different parts that he will want to control separately. In this case, he created a layer for the sky, for the rocks, and for the figure. Each layer is independent, volatile, nondestructive, and since they are separate, they can be corrected separately.

There is no right or wrong - there is only how you do this thing, and why you do this thing. Walker thinks. "What is the client going to want to change?" In this case Walker is the client. Make separate layers so they can easily be changed.

Walker demonstrated using the Magic Wand tool, the Selection Brush, and the Lasso to select and make separate layers of the rocks, the sky, and the figure in his illustration. With each on a separate layer he could work with each one without affecting the others.

Any layer can take an adjustment layer. The adjustment layer adjusts the appearance of the layer without changing the layer. Walker demonstrated how he could make the rock darker with an adjustment layer, which was dynamic and nondestructive. At any time he can change the adjustment layer to modify the appearance of the image.

The colors on the projected screen did not match what the color looked like in the print. So Richard Smith demonstrate the ability to adjust the projected colors in the projector.

Give a meaningful name to every new layer to make it easier to keep their purpose straight later. Otherwise, with many layers, it can get confusing. The only limit to the number of layers is the amount of memory available.

Walker uses a light box or window, and paints on the back of the paper where the shadows will be. He scans in this back-of-the-paper drawing and makes it a selection. He uses that selection as a mask when creating an adjustment layer of the shadows. This way he can adjust the shadows and highlights separately.

He makes separate drawings which he will convert directly into layers. He used a brush to paint a black sky which showing the brush strokes. This provides the organic feeling of painting in place of the flat look often found in computer colors.

Walker does all of his coloring in Photoshop because he likes the control of colors possible using the computer. He demonstrated using a color fill layer and using a color adjustment layer which provides independent control over subtle color relationships.

Walker studied what happened when an image gets old, then created a master distressed page. He used poster board and made a ragged tear to create edges looking like it was old. He folded it to create white stress lines. He then scanned this in to make a distressed layer which he uses as a mask to give this affect to an illustration.

He scanned a chip board to get the texture, adjusted it to a 50% gray in Photoshop, then built the image on top of it. When Walker applied the stressed layer mask, Phyllis Joy Hammond exclaimed, You can make an antique painting!

Walker has modified this same poster illustration, which looks like a comic book cover, to make a poster and a post card. He is now modifying it to make business cards. He gave everyone at the meeting a large 12 by 16 inch poster of his Astonishing, Astounding, Amazing Rob Walker Illustration.

---

Return to Top

2. More From The Meeting

Rob Walker, Warren's younger brother, gave a well prepared, beautifully organized, and very interesting presentation on how he creates illustrations by drawing them and then coloring them using Photoshop 7.

He began by telling us how he sketches with a nonrepro blue color, draws with black ink and then removes the blue using Channels in Photoshop 7. Even with Rob's clear explanation, Channels were too technical to try to explain in the news article.

You can think of a Channel as four layers of clear plastic, one for al the red color, one for all the green color, one for all the blue color, and one composite layer showing all the colors. Selecting a blue to match the nonrepro blue drawing for the blue channel, and turning off the red and green channels makes the blue in the illustration disappear.

Actually, there are not three sheets of clear plastic. A pixel's color is encoded into 24 bits. If it is a RGB, red, green, blue color, eight bits are used for red, eight for green, and eight for blue. Photoshop knows which bits are for red, which for green, and which for blue, and makes each into a separate channel. Any channel is an 8-bit grayscale image and the eight bits gives 256 shades of darkness. In Photoshop Channels you can look at the image in each of these grayscale channels. Paint 100% in red makes a black line in grayscale. The composite is the blend of the three colors each in different degrees of darkness from none to black.

Rob illustrated this using CMYK ink colors,. He painted on the screen with 100% in the cyan channel, and nothing in the magenta and yellow channels, producing a dark cyan color. Then he used a 50% cyan channel to paint near and partially over the 100% cyan. The composite showed three different cyan colors.

Making a selection from a channel, selects the white area and filling it makes it black. Instead choose Inverse from the Select menu first to fill only the black lines. Forgetting to Inverse is an easy mistake. It is simple, if you get an all black image, just back up a step and select inverse first.

Rob then made a transparent layer. which showed the black lines with the white area transparent. Painting on a new layer preserves the black lines and shows the paint through the transparent layer.

Next, as discussed in the newspaper article, Rob separates those parts if the illustration that he or his customers may want to change later and puts them on different Layers. In this illustration he separated the ground, the black sky, and the figure.

Walker used the magic wand tool to select the outside of a line. Then he inverted it to select the inside. Next he reduced it by 2 pixels so that the edge is within the black line, giving it a cleaner line to work with. He magnified the line to demonstrate the difference.

He selected the sky with the magic wand because the rocks had lots of lines in them. However, in this case the lines around the rocks had holes so the rocks to filled, not just the sky.

So he went back to select by hand using the Selection Brush to go around the edge. Rob used he Lasso tool to finish off an area of the rocks for this demonstration. On the layer he locked the transparency so that transparent parts stay transparent and opaque parts stay opaque.

Phyllis asked if he used the spray paint to instead of the brush to fill areas. Rob answer was that he likes the nice solid color from a brush instead.

One reason for making selections it to create a mask which controls what areas are affected and what are protected as you work.

Rob Walker demonstrated a Layer Mask, which is a Layer that contains both the image and the mask. He paints in the Layer Mask by selecting it. Paint with 100% black to mask the image so that it will not show. 100% white will show. The mask is a grayscale image which can make things partially transparent by setting the opacity. A paint brush with 50% opacity makes the image 50% lighter. Rob made the space ship in the illustration disappear, but it was still there so it could be made to reappear.

Rob selected a layer with type, then created a layer mask with a graduated density make the type look as though it was shaded from black at the top to lighter at the bottom without modifying the original type layer.

Photoshop Elements 2 does not have a Layer Mask, but there is a work-around using an Adjustment Layer such as the Levels Adjustment Layer which contains a mask just for the mask, and grouping it with the layers to be masked.

Rob uses the R, G and B channels in the Levels Adjustment Layer to do much of his coloring. Rob created a new levels adjustment layer to make the whole image a little darker.

When he wants just the shadows darker the levels adjustment has a layer mask he can use. He scans in the black and white drawing of just the shadows, and makes it a transparent layer in a separate Photoshop image. Then he drags this layer in to his original illustration as a new layer. He sometimes uses dots to align the layers, but the alignment is never prefect. Then he can independently control the way the shadows look.

Rob summarized the process saying, I start with line art, fill in the flat color I want, than add an independent shadow which is a levels adjustment.

Rob showed drawings he made for different layers. Some images have several layers; -shadow layers, highlight layers, stars painted to add to the sky. Rob has only a small scanner so has to line up images and their alignment is not always perfect. He accepts that for the greater control he has in the results.

Rob uses Photoshop because he really likes to have color control. He has not mixed real paints in a long time, but would like to get back to some painting in the new water base oil paints. With them you you can mix water with oil.

In photo retouching he overdoes the adjustment all the time, but not often in illustrations. Over adjusting makes it easy to knock it back a hair using opacity to get the effect he wants.

Phyllis said how you can soak a paper from behind, put on glass ot dry, to take distressed appearance out of a water color painting

Rob sometimes uses selection tools and levels adjustments on a grayscale image to adjust the light and dark tonal relationships of the image to make parts of the image stand out. It also works to establish these values first in photos.

Rob has a vision in his head as to what it will look like. When he uses solid colors or the Channels tool, Rob can see when it does what he wants. Using the Levels Adjustment to adjust colors Rob cannot know exactly what the results will be. He experiments with the color adjustment layer and uses a mask to limit it to the area he wants. He can go back to this Levels Adjustment to change it at any time.

Rob summarized the steps involved:

1. Scanning line art
2. Transparent layers
3. Opaque color fill layers
4. Layer adjustments for color tweaking

---

Return to Top