Tutorial 1: Colouring B&W Vinatge Caps

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Tutorial: Coloring B&W Vintage Caps for scoobyatemysnax

Okay, first off, I sorry for being such a noodle. And late. VERY SORRY. ;_; Also, if there are any mistakes, kindly excuse me now. I wanted to put this up before I went to bed.

Anyhow, let us begin. En avant mes amies!



Now, these were the two images I was supposed to do a tutorial for. BUT, because I'm a potato who dosen't membered how she does half her stuff, I couldn't create the icons but what I did do instead is write a tut on an approximation of how I arrived at colouring images like this.

So today, we go from :
this --->   to this --->

For stuff like this, it is best to find the most HQ cap you can cause it does make your job easier. I got my cap from this site known as doctormacro. They have plenty of scans of lot of Hollywood stars, especially the vintage ones.

Now, I look at the cap and decide that the crop is gonna be centre and simple. I'm a simple girl like that. :D Actually no, I'm boring but dont mind me.

Since the cap is pretty big, I crop it down to 1000 x 1000 and I tend to resize as I work. For the purpose of explaining though, the examples all are gonna be 300 x 300.

Anyway,I look at this cap and decide I need some more shadows and darkness. So what I do is duplicate the first layer and set the layer mode to Hardlight 67 %. It looks fine to me but sometimes, it makes the cap look very harsh and in order to fix it, what you can do is duplicate your layer again and set it either Multiply or Screen.

To me, this cap looks agreeable with the Hardlight layer alone and we’re ready to start working. :D

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Er, idk why exactly I did this, but I did it so here goes. I think I kind of wanted a base tone for the cap, so I pick a flesh coloured tone from the swatches of paint and create a colour fill layer. This I set to Softlight, 100%.

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Now painting time! At least that is what I call it.

I get the skin out of the way cause it the biggest area that needs to be coloured. For her face, I decide upon a flesh tone again, but this time I select one which is slightly pinkish. There’s no cut and dry method of choosing the bestest and the exact shade. Just use your discretion.

Now, what we do is pick a brush, a round soft one and paint carefully over her face and neck. If you make mistakes, no problem cause the opacity is gonna change and no one is going to know. XD When you are done painting, change the layer mode to Burn and adjust the opacity accordingly. Mine is at 100% but it feels a little too light still so I duplicate the layer, set to Burn mode again, this time at around 57%. Now I feel fine with it cause her skin looks like it has some depth. 

Now I don’t know if ya’ll already do this but when I’m painting, I like to see how it looks as I paint, so before I paint, I change the layer mode to Softlight, burn etc so I know how it looks, know if I need to tone it down, change the mode, reduce the opacity etc.

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Now, for ze lips. This cap calls for some rich lips. I love love love doing this part cause it’s like putting lipstick on someone and god know, I love painting people’s faces. :D I usually like picking these red-maroon colours cause I think they look nice and vintage-y when you change the layer mode. ( Wow you guys, my eloquence, it just slays me dead.)

When I want to paint over lips and all, what I do is zoom my cap up to 200 % or more so that I don’t fudge details. First I use a 22 size round brush to paint and  when I come to the edges where you need to be careful, I use a 12px round brush and then finally, a 6px round brush to do the corners. At first, I decided to put this layer on Softlight. But Softlight felt too light for me, so what I did was change it to Multiply with the opacity at 85%. I like how dark and rich it looks now.

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Next, Miss Bacall’s hair. I know she’s a redhead but I didn’t wanna do red so I chose blonde. For that, I pick a shade of golden and set about painting her hair. When I’m done, I change the layer mode a couple of times before I pick Burn. Burn makes the colours looks intense, sometimes a little too much so I reduce the opacity to around 44%.


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Now, the cap looks like its coming together yes? But it still feels a little flat to me. So what I did was add a pale yellow colourfill layer and I set that to Softlight at 55%. There’s really no rhyme or reason for why I did that. I think I wanted to lighten the cap without losing the colours? IDK. MY MEMORY IS TERRIBLE. AS IS MY DECISION MAKING.

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But now, #iconmaker problems. IT’S TOO LIGHT.

PROBLEM SOLVER : b&w gradient. I use this ALL the fucking time. It’s so versatile and life before gradients was a barren desert. NO LIE. I set the gradient to Softlight, and I like the way the cap looks.

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But something is still missing.

I copy merge the whole thing and paste as a new layer. I set this layer to Multiply. PROFIT. I like how it looks.

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Still not done tho. Seems I have forgotten the eyes. No problemo though. Depending on how dark you want the eyes to look, pick a shade. I pick a medium shade of blue, and paint carefully on her irises. I set this layer to multiply at 100% and et voila, we are doneksis, broskis!

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Ze end result :

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I hope everything that I just spouted makes sense.  But if it dont, plizz feel free to ask and I shall clear ye doubts to the best of my abilities.

Thank you for your time and patience. <3