📝This archived post is originally from my old comics focused Wordpress blog from 2011-2019. That site was a space to publicly commit to learning the art and craft of cartooning and self-publishing. These posts are full of a naive enthusiasm that though at times embarrassing, I'm proud of. I hope you find them useful in some way.❤️

Happy Monday to all y’all. Here’re the finished colors on the Charley Harper comic.

This is the second time (Malphas was the first time) that I color something in Photoshop that isn’t just a spot illustration for a newspaper. I love color and am pretty particular when it comes to palette decisions, but I’m pretty damn inexperienced when it comes to digital coloring. Despite my lack of experience I’m pretty pleased. This is pretty much how I wanted the image to turn out, so hooray. Thanks to Jon Chad for the great tutorial on how to trap colors and how to develop a good coloring workflow.

I learned a lot doing this. For starters, when working on the original art CONNECT ALL THE FUCKING LINES. Jesus Christ,  I’m no tablet ninja, so I was laboring over connecting minute sections forever. Additionally, in the spirit of Charley Harper’s illustrations, I would have wished to not have any outlines. I drew the line art and designed the birds in such a way that I could transform them into blocks of color.

Ideally, I would have plotted out the areas that blocks of color would form and would have simply inked those/cut them out of paper/ done this entirely in Illustrator. Composing in color requires a completely different mindset and workflow.

Anyway, that’s for next time. The assignment asked for us to do line-art, so line-art it was.

For those of you If you’re interested in trying out coloring this way, I can direct you to Dustin Harbin’s spectacular tutorial. He learned from Alec Longstreth, who’s best buds with my teacher, Jon Chad.