FINAL LINE
STEP 5: Clean Line Drawing
For the purposes of this walk through, I needed to make a clean version of my finalized rough layout. (see fig. 5) This clean line will be used later in this process to incorporate some traditional elements into my digital painting (more on that later). When creating a painting, this clean line step is not always necessary. However, it does serve as good drawing practice... so don't be afraid of it!
Open your drawing in Photoshop (see fig. 5a) duplicate your line drawing layer, and set this duplicated layer to Multiply (see fig. 5b) By doing this you make anything in your drawing that's white (see through or invisible) this allows you to use your black line as a guide when painting. And if you prepared a clean line drawing which is made up of continuous connected edges (see fig. 6) (edges that create closed shapes in your drawing) you can use your magic wand tool to select these shapes. This gives you the ability to isolate shapes within your drawing as you render. And in addition, since this multiplied layer exists as only one layer, you don't have to worry about too large a file size ( a problem that occurs if you save a channel for each shape you like to work with)
As in real paint, having the ability to work with individually selected shapes is similar to masking out an area of your painting with something like frisket (a material that allows you to isolate a specific area of a painting)
Do not abuse this technique of isolating shapes. It will cause you painting to seem disconnected. The shapes run the risk of having different rendering qualities, or color that does not relate to adjoining shapes, etc. Use this technique only when necessary, for areas that may require special attention. Remember, even though we're working digitally, we don't want that fact to be easily recognizable.