Learning to Draw: Coloring

Alrighty, now we want to color. Coloring can be scary for beginners, believe me I know.  Unfortunately, I never really tried coloring with traditional art (other than crayons). It scared the poo out of me.  I tried watercolors once and it was absolute crap so I decided it wasn't my thing.  So, point here is, I'm not going to be able to help the pencil and paper folks interested in coloring.  All I can say is grab some colored pencils and experiments!

Digital art gave me the freedom to try because you can create a new layer.  If your colors are terrible, you don't screw up any of your line art and can try again.  Since I've started I have a much better understanding of colors and I think I would be less intimidated to try again on paper.  Someday, I'll have to do that and share my experience with you.  But for now, for all you digital artists, I can give instructions.

The technique I chose for coloring Chris is totally different than what you'll see in most of my artwork.  I'm not drawing cartoons anymore so I want it to look more realistic.  You will use just a standard painbrush and color in each layer and erase any mistakes.  For shadows and highlights you will do the same, using black for shadows and white for highlights, then adjust the layer opacity for both.  It's pretty simple stuff. Ok here we go.



Computer

What you need:

• graphics tablet and pen
• standard hard round paintbrush 
• standard eraser (of your choice)
• 13 layers

You should already have 3 layers, background, sketch and outline.  Now create 10 more layers. From top to bottom they are

• outline
• sketch
• highlights
• shadows
• teeth
• earring 
• hat
• hair
• skin
• shirt
• shoes
• pants
• layer 1 (background)

Ok I usually start from the bottom and work my way up.  As for colors, you can choose any colors you want.  He doesn't have to be the same color as your reference.  I did it that way but you don't have to. ;)

1. Click on pants layer.  Click the foreground color and change it to whatever color you want.  I chose #363636.  Color in all the pants. Erase anything that went outside the lines (all places that aren't his pants).
2. Click on shirt layer. Click the foreground color and change to color of choice. I chose #00169e. Paint in the shirt. Erase anything that went outside the lines. 
3. Click on shoes layer.  Click the foreground color and choose what color you want for the base of the shoes.  I chose #ededed.  Color in shoes and erase any mistakes.  Then choose a color for the bottom of the shoe he has off the ground (you want it to look shadowed a bit).  I chose #bbbbbb.  Color in and erase mistakes.  Then choose the color you the stripes of his shoes to be.  I chose #af4004.  Color in stripes carefully so you don't have to recolor the base of shoes. 
4. Click on skin layer. Click on foreground color and change color for skin. I chose #fdeacb.  Color in face and arms and erase any mistakes.  
5. Click on hair layer.  Change foreground color. I chose #feffba.  Color in hair and erase any mistakes. 
6. Click on hat color. Now colors you like, paint in and then erase mistakes.  (I chose 3 colors.  #222222 for the back of his hat, #efb018 for the front of his hat, and #ca9004 for the bill of the hat. )
7. Click on earring layer.  Color in with color of choice. I chose #e7d408. Erase any mistakes.
8. Click on teeth layer. Change foreground color to white.  Color and erase any mistakes
9. Click on shadows layer. Change layer opacity to 35%. Change foreground color to black.  Color in all shaded areas and erase any mistakes. 
10. Click on highlights layer.  Adjust layer opacity to 55%. Change foreground color to white. Color in all highlighted areas. Erase all mistakes.  If you think the highlight is too bright in a certain spot, take eraser (make it big enough to cover entire spot that's too bright) and adjust eraser opacity to about 30%.  Erase over that area once.  If it's still too bright, do it a second time.  I think I went over the shirt highlights once, pants highlight twice, and back of hat highlight three times. 
11. If you haven't already done so, turn off your sketch layer. 

Now you can touch up anything that looks wrong, add whatever you like to the background (if you want), sign it and you're done!  See, pretty simple :)

Hope this helped.  When we get into more realistic stuff there will be different methods and it will be a bit more complicated.  

Here's a video. Enjoy some daft punk.  

And here's my finished drawing

I hope you enjoyed this. I must say I'm glad we're done with Chris. I'm quite tired of working on him lol.  Next will probably be some manga but we'll see.  

Check ya later!!