Traditional and Digital Art Coloring Tips
This is mostly excerpts from a basics in drawing PDF I created a couple of years ago and updated last September, it's not a full excerpt, though; I added some more information and took some out since I have gained more knowledge in coloring and such since then.
Traditional Art Tips:
1. If you
are drawing on paper, if possible scan or take a reasonably good
quality picture (even if it's just a cellphone picture)
of your line-art or sketch first ;The reason is, if you mess up your
drawing with your coloring process your drawing could be ruined
forever, and we don't want that to happen.
2. When
coloring with Markers always try to color in uniform (going the same
way or pattern), though I as well fail in this area at times this is
very important that you use discipline to go the same way, it isn't
like pencils that you can somewhat hide that you were everywhere once
the area is full of color, markers are tattle tails they will tell on
you if you don't color properly.
3. When
using markers and pencils together, use colored pencils to make
layers of wax to clog up the paper pores; the reason is if you have a
lower quality paper like me the makers once you layer enough will
bleed through the paper, the pencil fills the pours of the paper thus
making it easier to color with less worry, it also adds a nice under
texture. If you have a Colorless Blender Pencil (I use Prismacolor)
then use that over the pencil layers to blend the colored pencils and
also to add an extra later of wax.
Note:
Using a Blender Pencil (at least when I use it) makes it almost
impossible to add more pencil over it, it's a little easier once you
put the marker over it.
Note
2: The pencil will make the surface of the paper smoother and
making the marker easier to smudge be careful wile you color that you
don't ruin it by smudging.
4. When you
color in a sketch book, not matter how good the paper I'd put a piece
of printer paper
in between your
drawing and the next page, just in case the colors bleed they won't
put a mark
on your next page.
5. If you
use watercolors to paint but your paper bubbles up way too fast try
doing the same technique as was stated in tip #3 and also try and
reduce how much water you use when you are wetting your paints.
Computer Art Tips:
My Knowledge is in GIMP but some of
these might work in other applications like Sai or Adobe Photoshop.
1. When you
color on the computer with any program that has layers, always make
your line art on
transparent
layers, and make a new layer from visible with no BG of it once you
are finished,
then color from
underneath. When you color from underneath you don't cover any of the
black
lines (or what
ever color your outline is) and it looks much cleaner.
2. If you
want to color BIG spaces with the paint bucket use the fuzzy select
tool and select the
areas that you
wish to fill on the layer with the line art, next grow your selection
by 1 pixel, then
make another layer
underneath and use the paint bucket.
Note:
The reason for making it one pixel bigger is to not have the white
dots around the color.
3. When
coloring a line art that has a white BG in GIMP, use the multiply
layer-mode and use the
base color to
shade on the new layers using multiply, if you wish to use a darker
color use
overlay instead
and move the opacity bar over if needed, and for lighting the best
layer-mode to
use would be
overlay with white.
4. When a
picture is totally colored in GIMP get a black in to white gradient
and make a new layer over your drawing/picture and make the gradient
fade in to the lighting (White being where the light is coming from,
black being where it's fading away from) then make the layer-mode
overlay and adjust the transparency to how you like it.
Wells that's all for now, I hope this helped you or at least it was an enjoyable read!
May God Bless You, Your Family, Friends, Along With The Health Of Yourself, Family, And All Who Know You. ~ Amen
~ Firefly
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