Postby Esoteric » Sat Jan 21, 2006 6:44 pm
Hmm, well where to put the shadow depends on the shape. The techniques vary as much as art style. If you want soft shadows, use a soft edged brush or a gaussian blur filter. For hard shadows, a hard brush, pencil tool, or even selections and path shapes.
As a rule of thumb, the more layers, the better control you have. It gets really cluttered at times, but I always like to add shading/highlights on seperate layers first, to see how it looks before I commit. Many people like dodging and burning to shade their work. It's a good technique to learn, but I don't recomend using it soley to shade because it's very noticable. Instead I use a combination of colors on seperate layers with blending modes and partial opacity to obtain the desired shading.
When working from a scanned drawing, yes, I keep the drawing separate and use layers to add ALL the color. I put the solid base color for each region/item in the drawing on it's own layer, and name it acordingly to keep track. To make the drawing show thru, I put all the color layers on 'multiply' mode. Then, once the base colors are in and decided upon, I worry about shading each region according to it's texture, light source, transparency, etc. by building the effect with multiple layers. Only when I'm completely satisified with my shading will I consider merging layers to save space, but I don't merge any colors with the original drawing...unless the style demands it.
All hail the tablets and congrats on being a fellow tablet owner! ^_^