Painting & Drawing - Greyscale to Color - 'Let's Get Better'

Good evening / day / morning!

Today is Wednesday and thus another episode of 'Let's Get Better' .. Today I will talk a little about going from a grey-scale painting to a colored painting. ( Digitally / Photoshop )

Let's Do This!!

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Many people (you as well maybe?!) are a bit intimidated by color.. They can draw fairly well have definitely painted some stuff before.. but whenever they paint something they rather do it in black and white. Especially on the PC..

I get that! .. I used to do it too! .. Color is intimidating!

Luckily there are some techniques that you can do on the PC to easily transform your painting into a colored painting.
(there are some ways to do it too with Oil paints.. but that takes about 10 years so let's not get into that!)

Please watch the tutorial video for this week's episode:

Please.. Just watch it and then carry on reading! As I explain some of the layers and functions in photoshop!

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Okay so some of the layers that you see me using are 'Overlay' - 'Multiply' - 'Color dodge'

Overlay Layer:

• Is a layer that boosts the saturation in relation to the value of an area. ( you see me using it in the demo)
  It sort of makes an area look as if it is lighted, but this happens only when the selected color to paint with close to/is high in values (white). If the color you paint with is below 50% value then it boosts the saturation and darkens the area.
  My advice is to just play around with the layer and the brushes and see how it works for you.
  
• Multiply Layer:
  Darkens the area you paint over with by a certain % and also pushes in the color of the swatch you paint with. As you can see in the video I use a fairly dark purple color to paint some of the shadow areas.
  
• Color dodge:
  Color dodge is a layer that is rarely used. When you want to make an area of a painting looks like it is 'burning' in the sun. Or a very strong reflection it can be very useful. The way you use it best is by creating a new layer, set it to color dodge and FILL it with BLACK!, then select a soft round brush and paint in the 'Lighted' areas with WHITE.. That should give the proper effect. Try it with different colors to get a different effect... as always just play with it and discover how it works.
  

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Again.. Please watch the video to get a more complete understanding of how these layers work and how you can use them to bring color into a greyscale picture.
THIS ALSO WORKS FOR PHOTOS

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Thank you for watching! Please follow me for more Art / Tutorials and giveaways!

Cheers
Rogier