Clutch

Comm for Garudina. Featuring Garudina and Gilda. And also what I'm calling "Experiment 3", due to the ongoing color experimentation I've been doing.

I started off coloring this one pretty much exactly as the previous Lacey painting. But then part way through, I suddenly got a bunch of ideas and started experimenting with curves and blendmodes and layer orders. In the end, it got some pretty crappy results. BUT THEN, I got an even better idea, and did even more experimenting, and got some reeeeally interesting results.

It's not quite colorizing black and white. But it's similar.  Rather, I started thinking more in terms of filtering light. The values are just the potential for light. And then the color filters that potential.  I learned how to filter the colors in an accurate way. I won't use the term "realistic". But accurate, in accordance to RGB math. At least, I believe it's accurate. I could be mistaken.  All my tests work as expected so far.

That being said, it still takes quite some effort to set up and paint. There are multiple light sources. One is a dim warm light hitting their front. Another is a cool less dim light coming from above. A dull rim light hitting their back. Specular light is handled on a separate layer. And then there are various reflective light. Light reflecting off the ground and hitting from below. And light reflecting off their bodies and hitting themselves and each other.

I guess you would call it "additive" coloring. Because everything is black until I give it a light source. That means I have to color the shadows manually using reflective light. This is different than what I'm use to. Typically, I have to paint black in order to create an ambient occlusion effect.  But this time, the black areas really are the absence of light.

This is probably way less efficient than just painting normally. Traditional painting where you just choose a color, and start laying down confident strokes.  But I find this more comforting, because I'm very indecisive and change colors and lighting every 10 minutes. Handling color this way, makes changing color and lighting very easy.

Well now I'm excited to try this experiment out on something else. Will it be an improvement? Or will it just be another slow method I'm force to discard? Only more experimentation will tell.