teaonthestairs | Colouring Tutorial (photoshop 7.0) (Reply)

The week has just started and already I'm counting down the days until Friday night comes around once again. nothing much has been happening here, last week that was a 50/50 chance it might SNOW in Melbourne, but only the country areas got it and we were left with icy cold winds and fake storms. Stupid weather.

On Sunday I went to the RMIT University open day, the Bundoora Applied Science campus looks really good and their Nursing course is everything I could wish for - I'm still trying to decided between Development Studies and Nursing, both look very shiny.

So onto the actual point of this update, xanya asked about the colouring of an icon I did for icon_crack and because not doing homework is a great motivator I've decided to have a go at making my first icon tutorial. Now this is done from memory and I'm not one for words and tend to confuse things so if there is something that is unclear, please drop a comment and I'll see if I can be more... uh clear.

This tutorial isn't a step-by-step guide to making the exact icon but rather a guide on how I did the colouring, with pictures and all! Also I'm going to assume you have a basic knowledge of Photoshop.

Start with this base; It has been cropped and the cheeks and neck smoothed with the blur tool.

Then duplicate the base and desaturated the bottom one (base#1) and set the top one, the coloured one (colouredbase), to screen.

Then duplicate base#1 twice (base#2 and base#3) and darken both slightly using the brightness/contrast adjustment tool. Set base#2 to screen and base#3 to soft light. (That means base#2 and base#3 are inbetween base#1 and the colouredbase. Confused yet?)

Then duplicate base#3 again (and it then becomes base#4) and put base#4 above the colouredbase, make sure it’s set to soft light.

On top of all the other layers create a new layer, use a soft round size25 brush and fill in the background with a dark blue (I used #0D004C), over the top of that use another, lighter blue, to create a slightly marbled effect.

Then set the layer to screen. .

On top of that layer create a new layer, fill the background with a light brown/gold (I used #DAC693)

and set to multiply and bring the opacity down to 61%.

Create a new layer on top once again, use a soft round brush to lightly fill the background with a light red, #F69679

and set it to multiply and reduce the opacity to 49% and the fill to 41%.

And then add text, white boxes, racing car strips - whatever and your done.

Clear? Any questions? Any pointers? If so... comment.

I saw Alias 4x01 and 4x02, The Island and the Doctor Who final in the last couple of days, words and anaylsis really aren't my thing - I'll post with icons of each instead.

ETA: Damnit I want 100 icons! *kicks 15*