Harley Quinn Deluxe Book 1 Step by Step Part 3 Color

Here's the Harley Quinn Deluxe Book 1 Cover Art!

By Rachel Dodson and Me.

Out now from DC Comics.

Now for Part 3 of the Step by Step making of the cover art for Harley Quinn Deluxe Book 1 -

COLOR

FLATS

The first stage of color is called flats - flatting allows me to choose an area to color at any point throughout the coloring process.

I try to adjust the colors to their medium value or imprimatura - I use this as the starting point for the piece. 

INITIAL COLOR (ROUGH IN)

I colored this on my Cintiq 22 HD using Photoshop CS3 .

Here I rough in quickly all the medium lights and darks on the figures and cast initial shadows.

Using the Pencil Tool at 100% to knock those in.

I also used the Gradient tool to give variation form warm red to cool red in Harley's costume.

ADDITIONAL ROUGH IN

I went on the rest of the figure and face and knocked the next lights and darks using the pencils tooling at 70-80%.

I go to the next level of darker darks and lighter lights

COLORING THE LINE ART

This is the icing on the cake step of the process.

I used a previous Harley I colored to "cheat" on the line colors since I already figured it out once...

Just about ready for primetime ...

FINAL COLOR

I added a "Leyendecker" texture to Joker's jacket, more rendering on the fish, a little more rendering on Harley...

And done!

PART 1

PENCILS

PART 2

LINE ART

TD