Tandra Page 1100, July 11, 2010

Created on 07/11/2010

by Hanther

I’ve always had, with Tandra, a problem deciding how to best make back story illustrations stand out as separate from the main story. The first time I did colours on a back story set of pages (Tandra Pages 272-277), I added in colour as per normal, then I placed a translucent tint over each illo. That seemed to work well, but I decided not to repeat the process the next time I did a back story sequence. For the Titian sequence (Tandra Pages 899-908), I did nothing special with the colours. I simply coloured the pages full colour as I normally do.

When it came to the back story explaining how dragons came to Tandra (Tandra Pages 984-987), I used a limited palette of shades of blue-green. At the time I was under tighter deadline pressures with demands that I complete other commercial art assignments along with my commitment to a weekly Tandra Page, so the colours were less detailed than they might have been.

This time out, I have chosen a range of sepia tones for the back story illustrations. I am using in the range of thirty tints of sepia. And I am fully aware sepia is a specific hue. But I selected a sepia colour, then I chose a sepia biased tint near white and blended twenty samples ranging from sepia to the near white colour. Next I chose a sepia shade that was near black and set a blend range of ten samples from the near black to sepia. The lesser number for the shades of sepia is because sepia itself is about sixty to sixty-five dark on the value scale.

This selection of samples seems about right to give me a range of samples with a nice variety while having samples that are not so close the eye cannot easily tell the difference from one sample in the range to the next. The end result is pleasing enough I may well use the same sepia colour system the next time I decide to do a Tandra Back story.

See all the little secrets of creating a weekly page in full colour I give away for free?

May the sun always shine on your parade!

Next Week; “Birth Of A Ration”

Tandra...more than escapist fantasy, it’s a revolution!

Hanther

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