Flatting

I'm not educated in the lingo of publishing, illustration or arts.
I know what I know because I've had to learn it. If you'd've asked me what a flatter was years ago, my answer would've had more to do with laying carpet than comics.

Personally, I find flatting takes the most time, and shading, blending, low-light and highlighting things are what I'm quicker at.

Below are some examples of flats, and then the finished colours.
the Kings Watch pages were provided by Nate Cosby for one of his Colourist Hunts,
the X-men pages were provided for the Chris Sotomayor course - Intro to Colouring,
and the Halloween lineart was provided by Lar de Souza of the webcomics Least I Could Do and Looking For Group..and of course, his cartooning / caricaturing.

Kings Watch flats

Kings Watch colours

Lar's line art flat

Lar's line art coloured

 

Wolverine Cover

It's amazing what a simple gradient can do - with and without a background colour under it.

As seen in these Wolverine covers below. Which do you prefer?

To me, the blue background helps the blood and bullet impacts pop a bit more, yet the red - to me - helps denote the "don't give a shit" berserker rage Wolverine is infamous for having.

Some X-men pages from class

This blog is for my art - and the stories behind some of the pieces.

If you follow my twitter account, you may have noticed I've been tweeting about Chris Sotomayor's Intro to Comic Coloring course that I've taken.

Being a mostly self-taught artist, I didn't learn much in the way of theory, but the application of said theories.. man alive, that's one thing - Chris' critiques in class, not just critiques but advice! - that's a world apart.
It looks expensive, and for 6 weeks, it looks really expensive, but let me tell you - it's worth every penny.
Learning not just from critiques of my own work, but of the other folks taking the course.

Before I took +Chris Sotomayor 's class, colouring this would take me about 8 hours:

The below are a couple of the X-men pages I coloured for class. After taking intro to Comics Coloring, already having an idea of the costume colours and effects and such, I can whip off the below pages in about 3-4 hours each.  This makes me a happier person.
If you share / reblog or otherwise pass along said image, don't edit the `for educational purposes only` bit on them. Thanks.

Like I said - that class is worth every penny.