Hey all.

Once again, Gerry has commissioned me to colour a piece of commissioned artwork, and asked me to do another step-by-step thread on the process.

First off, here is the piece - a recreation by Joe Rubinstein.

Here, I've laid down some flat colours. These won't be the final colours, but are just 'placeholder' colours so I can easily select the areas I want to colour.

I'm toying around with making the background warm (based on Dormammu's flaming head), skewing the foreground to a cool colour.

The background elements.

hmm....I'll probably go back to this after more of the characters are painted.



hmmmmmmmmmm...................

by Dormammu's flamey noggin!

...okay, I've obviously been tinkering more with the background. I like this one more, but it could probably still use some tweaking. Again, after more characters get finished on it.

Energy effects and more background stuff.

Still being tweaked, but I finally like how the background is coming together. I knew it would be tricky working with multiple overlapping energy/mystic effects like this, especially with flamey-head-guy back there.

Baron Mordo and the Minions.

These came together fairly well. Nothing much to add here

Clea and the Ancient One.

In the original wraparound cover for this piece, the Ancient One was wearing a red outfit. Since he's right behind Doc's cape, however, I decided to go with a green outfit, one that I've painted him in before.

Also, I've added a blue side-light to Clea, to pull her further into the foreground and give her a bit more mass.

Doctor Strange.

The cape is a large mass of shadow - I like the contrast this creates against all the wild energy effects.

That's pretty much it for the painting. Now, on to the fx and finishing up!

Colour holds and glows.

That's pretty much it. I did one final tweak to some of the background.

Now, we just wait to see if Gerry requests any changes

thanks for doing the step by step for this Ian, its wonderfull seeing all the different stages as the image comes to life . .

Excellent work as always, Ian.

That's really great work, Ian!

Thanks, folks

Cool beans Mr Sokoliwski. There's some expert knowledge in action here, but there's one thing I don't quite get... The energy-beams from the villains, why are they all in a reddish tint, when evil flame-heads uh, head, is so close to them?

Now, I think I understand the reasoning behind making Mordo's beams red, since it creates a perfect contrast to his green clothes, but those purple guys below him, hmm... it just feels a bit off. I probably would have given either Mordo or the purple henchmen, a greyish beam, perhaps slightly tinted to green or yellow, just to break it up a bit.

Just a quick question for you before finishing off, I've been colouring some flaming characters myself recently, and found it hard to find a colour-hold that works well for them, now, I'm thinking your brown lines on Dormammu is working quite nicely, would you recommend that for most situations with a flaming character, drawn in that manor?

( naturally if there's more advanced rendering on the flame-form, several different holds might be adviced, I suppose)

Well, I went with different shades of red to keep all the villains connected, to have their bad-guy blasts easily separate from Doctor Strange's blue energy shield. Yellow wouldn't be as effective for anyone, because it would fall into the yellow background behind Dormammu (the flamey-headed guy), and there is already so much green in the Baron's costume. So, I went with red

As to colour-holding flame, I tend to vary it a lot from picture to picture. Sometimes a deep red, sometimes orange, and sometimes (like here) what is essentially an orange-heavy brown. It really depends on the picture. You have to be adaptable.

Great work Ian

Thanks

Out of curiosity, when Gerry commissions you to do this, what does he get? A large file e-mailed to him? Do you printed out a poster or something?

Gerry (and all my other clients for colouring-only) gets a high-resolution colour file - usually, it's too large to email, and is sent via my FTP site or YouSendIt.

This works out to be a lot cheaper than me printing and shipping a poster out to the client (especially one living so far away, like Gerry). Also, if something happens to the piece (sun damage or something like that), the client can get it reprinted or just print more than one.

There are exceptions, but then a printing and shipping charge is added as well.