How to color a highly detailed illustration in Photoshop

Filed Under Tutorials by Paul on 09/11/09

In this tutorial you will learn how to color a comic book illustration. The reason that the artwork is so easy to color is simply because it’s highly detailed by the artist Walter O’Neal. Walter is a painter, illustrator and sculptor and he provided his artwork to use in this tutorial. Stay tuned for my interview with him tomorrow!

The character in the illustration may look like an evil Superman but basically that’s because he is. His name is Bizarro and you can read more on his Wikipedia page. While Bizarro’s costume colours are different from Superman’s costume, I chose a more realistic look because of the highly detailed illustration. Let’s begin!

Resource needed:

Download Walter’s illustration here.

Step 1: The Base

Start of by creating a copy of the illustration. Set the Layer Mode to “Multiply” and set the Opacity to 50%. To eliminate the chance of doing any kind of work on that layer you simply need to select that layer and click on the little lock icon.

Now create a new layer, name it Dark Purple Base and put it in between the background layers.

Step 2: Coloring the costume

Start blocking in the base colors, these are usually called ‘flats’. Use the Pen Tool (P) to create a new Path Layer. Let’s begin with the torso. Start by clicking on the point where you want the path to begin. Now you’ve created an Anchor Point. Drag the mouse to the point where you want to create another anchor point and do a simple click with the left mouse button.

If you need to create a curve, click and hold the left mouse button and drag it. Now you can curve the line where ever you want. Whenever you create a curved line and click at the next point, you’ll notice a very annoying Bezier curve you don’t need. You can edit this by dragging the Tangent line. You need to hold the Ctrl button when you edit the Tangent Line.

It doesn’t really matter if you miss or overdo small spots, you can edit this once it’s colored. Once you have finished the path around the torso, close the path by clicking on the first anchor point. Right-click on that path and go to Make New Selection.

Set the Feather Radius to 0 pixels, check on Anti-Aliasing and create a new selection. Now it’s time to select a color. Go to the Color Palette and set the color to #640093. Now use the Paint Bucket (G) tool to fill the selection. Set the Dark Purple Base layer to Soft light and set the Opacity to 75%. Repeat Step 2 for all of the other parts of the costume until you get something like this;

Step 03: Setting the background on fire

To blend the costume colors with the background, we need to start working on a few (but very easy !) background layers. Create a new layer, name it Fire Base and go to the Color Palette and select an orange/yellow color (#ab6e00). Now fill the layer with this color and set the layer mode to Overlay.

Create a new layer, name it Warmth and fill it with an orange color (#bb581f) and set the layer mode to Color Burn and the Opacity to 71%. This is what you should have when you’ve reached this point of the tutorial;

To really make the background pop, create a new layer, name it Intense Heat and set the Layer mode to Screen. Go to the Color Palette and select a light blue color (#1864b9) and fill the layer. Create a new copy, name it Adjustment, put it second in the Layer menu and set the Opacity to 37%.

Order of layers;

Get ready to start working on the Intense Heat layer. Grab a Soft Round Airbrush around the size of 45 pixels and start ‘painting’ slightly outside the heat streaks like this;

Do this with every heat streak you see in this illustration but focus mostly on the center. Don’t worry if you paint over the figure, we’ll edit this later. Lower the opacity if you think the heat looks a bit too intense. This is what I have at this point;

Step 4: Color correction

Select the Intense Heat layer, grab the Pen Tool (P) and start drawing a path layer around the figure (cape included!). Once you’ve finished this path, close it by clicking on the first anchor point. Right click on the path and click on Make Selection. Set the Feather Radius to 0 pixels, check on Anti-Aliasing and create a new selection and delete the part you want to get rid of. Repeat this step on the Fire Base layer and erase the skin part of this figure. Do not erase the parts on his hair.

Create a new layer, name it Reflections and set it to Screen. Go to the Color Palette and select the same blue color we used on the Intense Heat layer (#1864b9). Grab a Soft Round Airbrush of around 60 pixels and start painting on various spots around the figure to give it a sort of glow from the heat. Once you’re done with this, do the same steps again with the Pen Tool (P) and erase the outer part of the figure. If the blue is too much you can lower the Opacity, in my case I’ve set it to 29%.

Time to add reflections to the skin. Create a new layer, name it Heat Reflections and set it to Color Dodge. Select a color in the Color Palette (#8e2618) and use a Soft Round Airbrush of any size you may need. You now can start painting the heat reflection wherever you would like. There’s now one last thing to do. Create a copy of the Dark Purple and Purple layer. That’s all there is to it!

I’d appreciate to read what your thoughts are on this tutorial. Please let me know in the comments!