Here is the opening splash page, and I think it's possibly one of my favourite colouring jobs I've done in my career.
[Click the images for larger, more detailed scans!]
Comic book colourists get the short end of the stick sometimes. A lot of people think that what I do is pretty easy, that I just sit down, open a page, and unleash my inner 5 year old with a pack of Crayola crayons. I suppose in some ways this is true, but there's actually quite a bit of artistic knowledge and study needed before it becomes second nature. I'm going to deconstruct the colour choices I made while painting this page and give you a glimpse into the thought process and considerations involved!
The biggest thing I noticed as soon as I'd opened up this page, drawn by the late, great John Buscema, was the depth. From the close bearded man carrying the bag, to the far buildings in the distance, there was so much distance depicted in this drawing. I knew right away that I wanted to employ every colour trick in the book to separate the multiple fore, middle, and backgrounds, and really inject a sense of atmospheric perspective into this splash page.
Here's a shot of the page separated into 6 planes that I felt needed to be separated. The darker the silhouette, the closer it was to the viewer.
- Old man carrying the bag
- Conan, Fafnir and the horses
- A gang next to a door with an overhang
- Distant wall of a building
- Even more distant buildings and spires
- The sky and clouds.
I used four aspects of colour theory to acheive this.
1. Value
Darker colours tend to appear closer, while distant objects should seem lighter in colour. Next time you spot a bright flag on the horizon, notice how the reds (and blues if you're in the U.S.!) aren't as vibrant when you first see it. You'll notice I've made the old man with the bag in the bottom right as dark as possible, being that he's so close to the viewer, while the background buildings are lighter.
Another subtle manipulation of values occurs in the actual ink lines used to draw the buildings in the background. I've added a subtle glow of sunlight that has the effect of making the lines delineating the building's shape orange and brown. This helps set them apart from the full black used to draw the foreground. See the image to the right for a breakdown of this effect!
2. Saturation
The less saturated a colour it is, the more gray it seems. Where value is essentially changed by adding white (making it lighter), saturation is changed by equalizing the amounts cyan, magenta, and yellow in a colour. And the lighter and grayer it becomes, the farther away it seems.
3. Colour temperature
In short, colours like reds, magentas and oranges are said to be "warm", and blues, greens and purples are "cool". Warmer colours tend to jump out towards the viewer, and cooler colours recede into the distance. Here, I reversed this rule, by putting a cooler purple at the forefront in areas 1 and 3, while the background areas 4 and 5 consisted of warmer colours. So while the orange and yellows of the buildings in the backgrounds should theoretically be jumping forward according to their colour temperature, I've reduced their value and saturation. Because the cooler colours in the foreground are so intense and bright, they tend to advance ahead of the lighter, desaturated warm values.
4. Contrasting colours
Colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel tend to pop from each other. For example, Blue and Orange are opposites. On an orange background, a small blue square will 'pop' more to the human eye than a green or yellow one. To help separate the planes, I've chosen a yellow for the buildings in the background that is on the opposite side of the colour wheel of the purple used on the bearded man in front. I then lightened and desaturated that yellow/orange to further help accentuate the distance between the nearest foreground and the far background.
While I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the 1990's, pretty much everything I learned about colour I learned in high school. I was very privileged to have had a wise and patient master in Mr. Abbas Elias, who taught his students all of the concepts presented above. (Although I'm sure he could explain everything I just laid out with more convinction and elegance). I consider myself very lucky to have had experience to University level art instruction at such a young age.
After reading the above, I'll bet colouring funny books doesn't seem so simple now, does it? If you've read this far, I hope you found some of this interesting!
Here's a few more excerpts from the book. Some of the scans don't do the work justice.
Currently playing: Autograph - That's The Stuff
Proudly in my sixth Cola free year!
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