So here’s something neat. I’m just about done colouring chapter one of DDATOL, and I discovered a neat time-saving trick.

I’ve been using the gradient tool to quickly throw down colours in abstract backgrounds. That’s what you see above. It works well – it’s easy to experiment with and is fast. But I don’t like how smooth it looks. I’ve been fighting this in the past by using a textured brush to go in, sample a colour, paint, sample again, paint, sample, paint, etc. you get the idea. It takes longer than I’d like, and it sometimes muddies the colours. On top of that, I prefer a sort of mottled texture in the BGs – something that looks more like natural media.

Fly past the break to see the results and the method.

Rather than re-paint that background layer – which destroys the original gradient-tool sketch, by the way – I’ve made a layer above it and set it to “Overlay”.

Now I set my foreground colour to a grey of, say, 70% brightness, and my background colour to a grey of, say, 30% brightness. Grab the textured brush and go to town on that Overlay layer.

What you end up with is the subtle texture coming through, but it doesn’t destroy the colours underneath, making it possible to really tailor the texture to the image while preserving the colours from the sketch. This is basically the look I would have been trying to get by sampling and re-painting the BG, except I wouldn’t have had as much flexibility. For someone as indecisive as I am, flexibility is a good thing.