Painting the clothing (4 of 5)

Now it's time to move on to finishing the clothes. There is a bit of a challenge here because she is wearing black and white, but this can be overcome if you remember this simple axiom: Black isn't really black and white isn't really white. These are the absolute extremes in value and you should stay away from them in most circumstances. White usually represents the brightest level of illumination and black is the darkest possible shadow, neither of which is really the general value of clothing (or anything else, for that matter).

To show you how this works, paint the flat overall jacket shape with PMS 433. Using Pantone grey colors is really helpful because there are a wide variety of greys from which to choose. In real life, there is rarely anything that is completely greyscale; most greys have some color in them. 433 is the darkest value in its color ramp, but it's not quite black. That's what we are looking for here. Pick colors that are a step or two lighter from this same ramp and paint in the highlights on a separate layer clipped to the 433 layer. Use a light touch and don't paint anything too bright. This is black, after all.

To finish it off, make a new layer for shadows and change its Blend mode to Multiply. Use 433 to paint the shadow areas on this layer. You might be surprised, but it is darker than the 433 on the underlying layer. That's because any color multiplied against itself will get darker (except for white, which can't be multiplied). Some parts on this layer may end up being close to pure black. If the jacket needs a little something more, make a new layer in Screen mode and paint in a few highlights with 123. Just like before, we are bringing in some background color to tie things together. That should do it; because the jacket is so dark, it doesn't need much in the way of painted detail.

Let's not forget the buttons. They are a nice little detail and should be fun to paint. Paint them with 432, one step lighter than the base jacket color. You could use the Ellipse tool to build vector shapes for them, but painting them would be quicker and we are going for a loose, painted look here, not crisp perfection. Paint the details on a new layer, using the bottom one as a clipping mask. All you need to do is just suggest some shapes. You can pick colors directly from the image. Make sure to put in a few points of specular highlights to show the shininess of the buttons, just not too bright.

Finding the base color for the white skirt was trickier because it needed to be a  very light cool grey with a hint of blue. I eventually settled on 7541. The shadows where painted on a separate layer with 441, but since it needs even lighter greys than that, you will need to paint very lightly and then start picking colors directly from your image. Notice how the bottom strip was left unpainted to suggest the hem of the skirt. The highlights were painted on a new layer in (you guessed it) Screen mode. Use Cool Grey 3 or 4, painting very lightly. Painting highlights with just a bit of color yields much better results than just using white. Keep the details loose and just try to hint at the pleats and seams. It doesn't need much more.

The shoes need to look smooth, dark, and shiny. Paint the base layer with 412. Even though they are black, their color and texture need to look sufficiently different from those of the jacket. As always, paint the detail on a new layer. Shiny shoes will mainly just need some intense highlights. Because the ground plane is yellow, pick some colors from it and lightly paint into the bottoms to show that they are reflective. The top highlights should be painted with a light cool grey. On a new layer in Screen mode, paint over the highlights with 123 to put some yellow back in. Color Dodge might seem like a good idea here, but that Blend mode won't be visible over black or very dark colors. Finally, paint some shadows on a new layer in Multiply mode. You can use 412 or some other dark color; it will probably end up being black anyway. Now we are done painting the black jacket and the white skirt, but there is probably very little pure black or white in the image, aside from the background. That's the way it should be; reserve those extreme values for the few places that really need it.