Basic Coloring Tutorial Page 3

Now we start getting into some detail work, like the eyes, the skin of the muzzle, hooves, and the mane and tail. This page will mainly be close ups.

Eyes

I start by making a new layer behind the body layer, this saves me time by cutting back on the erasing I have to do. After that I pick my color, in this case its a brown, and fill in the eyes with it. Then I select a darker color and add in shadows to the eye to bring it to life. After that I add in the pupil, black of course, not that the horses pupil is not round like a humans rather eliptical(oval). To bring the eyes to life I then add in wet spots, or highlights, to the eyes. With all that said and done, I take the blur tool(not the filter like before) and lightly blend the individual components of the eye together. And of course you can forget to clean up after your coloring :P.

Muzzle

We all know a horses muzzle does not match it's body. So here we learn how we change the color. I prefer the good old fashion hard way of doing it, IE making a new layer and doing the muzzle all over, however some people would prefer the easier way of changing the hue of just the muzzle. I will not be teaching you how to do that today.

First step in making your horses muzzle more realistic is chosing a color darker then your horses body(not applicable in black horses just use highlights to make the muzzle stand out more). For this image I selected a dark brown. Before coloring make a new layer above the horses body, I do this so I can be messy with coloring the muzzle.Before moving on to the highlights of the muzzle I adjust the opacity of the base color of the muzzle so I can see through it and then I make a new layer for the highlights. Then I select a lighter brown to be the first layer of highlights on the muzzle, I place this color in places that generally recieve a lot of light (the ridges around the nostrils etc.). And of course a second layer of highlights really pops the muzzle out, as seen in the pictures below.

Go back to the base color of the muzzle and put the opacity back at 100%, then merge the layer with your highlights with the base color of the muzzle. Now I blur the muzzle, using the gaussian blur, I use a lower setting then I did on the body. And of course after that I clean up the excess coloring of the muzzle, I used the same technique as I did for the body in doing this.

So far your horse should look something like what I have below. Do you think you've been doing a good job following this tutorial ;)

The first thing I do for the hooves is make yet another new layer. After doing that I fill them in with my chosen base color. Then I select a highlight color and put in random streaks across the hoof(following the direction of the front line of the hoof.). I blur the hooves like I blurred the eyes, using the tool not the filter. This is done to all the hooves but I only show one. The final product is the last image.

Ok for the main and tail I LOATHE doing them in solid clumps and then adding in highlights and shadows, for some reason that always looks fake to me. So I take a small brush(generally 9 px) and draw in many strands of the hair, how many lines varies on how much it takes to make it look right. after getting in the base color I go back and add in shadows, and sometimes highlights if it looks too flat. For black manes and tails just add in highlights.The pictures explain it better then words. I also go back and use the blur tool to blend the shades of the mane and tail together.

Now your horse has been colored. From here you can add in your text to 'personallize' the image for the specific horse you have colored :D. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful. I will be making one on markings in the near future.