I recently picked up a copy of a digital colouring tutorial by Reuben Lara. It’s a good tutorial. It basically teaches the “flat and cut” method, that I think was first documented in Brian and Kirsty Miller’s book, Hi-Fi Color for Comics.
Aside: I went to find an image of that cover, and learned that there’s a new edition of that book now available: Amazon describes it as spiral bound, and the price is pretty high.
Anyway, Lara’s tutorial is really well-done, and uses Clip Studio by default (although he does also demonstrate how to accomplish the same techniques in Photoshop), so there’s no guesswork about adapting his techniques. (I did a panel at WisCon a coupl’a years ago about comic-making tools: it turns out that every panelist was a Clip Studio user. I love that it’s so widely used, ’cause it’s a great tool.)
After going through the tutorial, I discovered Clip Studio features that I hadn’t known: that was really cool. And Lara has a comfortable, relaxed way of walking through the material that never feels like it drags. All-in-all, it’s a good tutorial.
I’m still not happy with my colouring technique. I’ve been gravitating more toward a painterly technique, rather than flat-and-cut. Part of me wonders if I should be trying to grow both techniques and see which one wins out.
It’s interesting that art is sooo individual. So many tools. So many approaches. Hm.
