Digital Painting - Simple Metal

This tutorial shows a way I figured out to paint a simple metal texture. I used Painter 7.0 for this example, but the same sort of thing can be done in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Open Canvas, The Gimp, or almost any other computer graphics program. I used only two tools - the Brushes->Round Camel for applying color, and Liquid->Just Add Water for blending. This is a modified comic-type style, where I fill an area with a base color and then apply highlights and shadows to it. All of the images except for the last ones can be clicked on for larger versions.

You won't find a high-tech shiny chrome metal texture here, because I haven't done a picture that requires one so I haven't figured out how to do it yet. This procedure results in a simple hammered-metal or brushed-metal texture, suitable for things like the forehead protectors the characters in Naruto wear, or simple metal objects like swords, tools, or dull jewelry (shiny gold and silver need to have sharper highlights added at the end).

This is a complement for a step-by-step painting tutorial I did of Jiraiya and Tsunade from Naruto, and the Basic Digital Painting tutorial I did for that piece.

Legal Stuff: All images in this tutorial are by and copyright to Telophase. Permission is granted to download and save a copy for your own personal reference. You are not allowed to upload, post, or publish this tutorial or images in print or electronic form without the express written permission of Telophase, and you are most certainly not allowed to claim any of the images as your own work. The character of Jiraiya and his character design is from the manga and anime Naruto, was created by Kishimoto Masashi, and is copyright © to Shueisha and TV Tokyo.

Telophase's portfolio is at www.telophase.net/portfolio and her DeviantArt user page is at telophase.deviantart.com. She may be reached through either of those webpages.

Step 1:

First, get your lineart. Meet Jiraiya, the lecherous ninja sage from Naruto. Like most Naruto ninjas, he wears a metal headband thing, which needs to look good to be convincing.

If you'd like to follow along with the same picture I'm using, here is a transparent gif of the lineart. If you color it, you can post it online to show off your new metal-coloring skills if you credit me for the lineart and link to my DeviantArt page (URL above).

I use layers for coloring, and I usually put my lineart on a layer that contains nothing but blacks and transparent pixels because I dislike using the Multiply option for several reasons that I detail in the Basic Digital Painting tutorial. So here I am coloring on the background, or canvas, with the lineart on the layer above it.

Step 2:

Pick a good middle grey for your base color. This is the basic metal color you want - if you're doing copper, you'd choose an orangey-red and use darks and lights from that color family, and if you were doing aluminum, you'd choose a brighter basic grey. You can also pick a warm (tinted red or yellow) or a cool (tinted green or blue) grey to complement the colors in the rest of your painting, if you wish.

Ignore the grey line across the bridge of his nose. *Jedi mind trick handwave* It was due to an accidental stray stroke and I didn't notice it for a couple of screenshots.

Step 3:

The most important step of the process: picking the direction of your light source. Unless you're really experienced at painting (in which case you probably don't need this tutorial), use the same light source that you have for the rest of your image. I'm also using one light source to keep it as simple as possible. Multiple light sources look good, but get good with one first.

I'm using my standard light-from-upper-left source for this image. To remind myself, I made a new layer and wrote a strident note on it with an arrow showing the light direction.

Step 4:

Use white or a really light tint of your base color and scribble in some highlights, and then use a dark color to scribble in some darks. I've got darks placed at either end of the headband where it disappears under his hair to make it rounded, and I put another dark in opposite the highlight because ... er, because I wanted to, I suppose. Light along metal does some really strange and wonderful things, and your darkest dark may not be at the far end. Experiment around a bit to see what you think looks good.

Step 5:

I used Painter's big round Liquid->Just Add Water tool in horizontal back-and-forth strokes to roughly blend the colors. You don't need to do a really smooth blending job here because you'll be doing more blending in a moment. Photoshop's Smudge tool will approximate this, as should any blending/blur/smear/smudge tool in other CG programs.

If you're after a hammered-metal texture that looks like the shape was beaten out of a flat piece of metal, stop here and skip to Step 9. The round smudges left from the big brush look like hammer strokes. You could even go through with a small brush and emphasize the edges of the round smudges to make it look even rougher, but if you're after a brushed-metal texture, keep going to the next step.

Step 6:

I decided that my highlights and shadows weren't quite emphasized enough, so I put in a few more strokes of dark and light. If you're happy with your metal without doing this, then skip to Step 8.

You'll note in the previous step that I didn't care that I was smudging outside the lines. This is a good reason to color on different layers - you don't have to worry about going over any other part of the painting and you can erase everything that went out of the lines at the end. If I had painted his hair first, I would have done the headband on a separate layer and dropped it onto the canvas after getting it finished and cleaned up.

Step 7:

Roughly blending them again with that big round tool.

Step 8:

This is what gives you the subtle brushed-metal texture. Shrink your blending tool down really small. Since my picture here is rather large, I used a 5-pixel size. If it was smaller than that, I'd use a 2 or 3 pixel size.

Take the tool and smudge the whole thing with lots of horizontal strokes. If you have the ability to adjust the amount of color that gets smeared with each stroke, play around with that until you get a satisfactory effect.

Click on the picture at right and see now nice that metal looks close-up. Next, we'll start to add the finishing touches.

Step 9:

The metal texture is great, but the whole piece looks flat and I want to make it three-dimensional. So I went through with a small brush and added shadows and highlights to edges -- on the four rivets and along the top and bottom of the headpiece.

Keep the direction of the light source in mind as you add the highlights and shadows.

The random small circle is the brush tool that I forgot to move off the image before taking the screenshot.

Step 10:

Here I took the blending tool at a small size and gently smudged the highlights and shadows so they would blend in with the whole picture.

Step 11:

Final step - I erased all the places where I went out of the lines. If you're working on a layer separate from the background canvas, you can drop it or merge them now, if you want to.

From lineart...

...to color.