I’ve been asked before how I do coloring. I hesitate to call this a tutorial as that implies this is the RIGHT way to do it. Instead, this is just how I do it. My image is a bit risque, but I think Tumblr will be okay with it. This assumes you already have a drawing saved as some sort of file that can be opened in Photoshop. The principal is the same in about every program, but the specifics of how to do things are different. So I’m starting with this:
(BTW, if the images are too small, try right-clicking and Open In New Tab. Seems to show a bigger image.)
So first off, you may need to change the mode to RGB to work with it. I’ve opened the file here and am changing the mode to RGB. (Edit > Mode > RGB). Once that’s done, we can start working with adding a flat color, a soft shade and a shine layer to it. That’s what I’ll be up to here.
Next, I like to make the line layer editable, so I click the little lock icon there. By default when you do this it will name it Layer 0. That’s fine. If you’re anal you can change it to Line Layer or something.
Next I’m changing the Line Layer to Multiply. This is pretty critical. You can do it from the top menu there, or there’s a place just above the layer name (where we Unlocked earlier) too. Either does the same thing. As best I understand, Multiply says to combine other layers with this layer So when we color, the white areas will be colored, the black lines won’t be.
Now I’m adding a new layer that my flat colors will “live” on. It can be a Normal layer since it’s going UNDER the line layer and nothing needs be seen underneath it.
Okay, you can see my new layer on the bottom right I named Flat Color. That’s where our actual colors will be painted. (or more accurately, PENCILED!). You can drag layers above and below each other there, and this layer needs to be under the line layer. I used to make this the Multiply layer and had the line layer underneath it. That works, but will lead to issues later on as you learn to do more layers, so best to just always keep the line layer on top and MOST other layers under it.
Last step before we get to work. I do NOT paint flat colors with a paintbrush. I use a PENCIL. Because the pencil tool is pixel-perfect. That is, there’s no soft edges on a pencil line. Each pixel is either fully colored, or it’s not at all. Even the hardest brushes still have bleed over from pixel to pixel. The size of the pencil really depends on the size of the lines in the line art, but typically I set it at about 5 pixels. That’s pretty small, but lets me get into tight places. I’ve seen others do this differently - but this isn’t about them. It’s how I do it.
Time to zoom in and get coloring. I’ve chosen my color. Obviously this pencil is bigger than 5 pixels, but I wanted it to be clear what I’m doing. I’m drawing with my pencil right into the line itself. If I stray outside, I use the eraser (ALSO SET TO PENCIL SO IT ERASES PIXEL PERFECT) and keep the edge of the color underneath the black lines. I don’t care about the other side because Flood Fill/Paint Bucket will handle that later.
Here I’ve finished drawing the color inside her butt cheek, keeping the edge under the black lines. In practice I’d have gone on to everything that needs to be colored with the same flat color, but keeping this simple. Now I’m switching to Flood Fill/Paint bucket and am going to fill in the rest with one click. It normally will fill the entire section pixel-perfect, though sometimes around very tight angles it may miss a few. Those I fix with a pencil directly.
Bang! Butt cheek filled with a solid flat color. Now draw the rest of the damn owl. No, but seriously I will do this for the entire character with the various colors I want. For her I did this color for her body, a pinkish color for the tail and nose, a white and a green for the eyes. But there’s another advantage of doing this - I can select entire body parts by just selecting the Flat Color layer and use the magic wand to select everything that is that one color. Trust me, that’s a real benefit. You can get stylish later on, but having this flat layer is still awfully handy to keep FLAT. Okay. On to shading. Notice I now have a 3rd layer in between the Line and the Flat layers. It’s where I’m going to do Soft Shading. I also put it in between the line and flat layers, and I set the layer type again to MULTIPLY. Because I do want the flat colors showing through it.
Now I’m getting ready for soft shading. I almost always you a greyish-purple color for shading. For me, it just seems to work the best. I know there are more intricate things, but this is a basics lesson. Another thing, when doing Soft Shading, I use a HUGE paintbrush set to the softest possible setting. Typically the brush spans the entire size of the body part I’m painting. I also SELECT just the part I’m shading. Sometime that takes some patience with the lasso tool, sometimes you get lucky and can just use the Flat layer to select, then move back to the Soft Shade layer. The important thing is to select only the part you are going to shade. You’ll have to do it over again on the other parts. Ideally the separation between the body parts will be a nice line you can hide the transition inside of. Othewise the Smudge tool is your friend to correct small mistakes in shading.
HUGE soft round brush. I think I used about 400px here. But the important part is, you don’t even put the center of the brush inside the section you’re shading! The shading is done with the edge of the brush. Essentially you’re almost doing a gradient.
Zoomed out with a nice soft shading. I did use a similarly soft eraser to work it back a little too.
BONUS! Notice the new layer? SHINE layer! I put it above the soft shade. Really I’d probably do a hard shade layer in as well, done similarly to the soft shade in the same color but with a smaller, harder edged brush and just in limited places.
But I want to show the MAGIC of COLOR DODGE! That’s what my Shine layer is set to. Essentially if you color in black, nothing changes. If you color in a grey, it lightens the colors underneath. If you color in white, no matter the underlaying color, you get white. There are other blending types that work similarly but I just like the effect of color dodge best.
Also, note the color I’m chosing. It’s ALMOST black (which would result in no change). It takes only a very small bit of not-black to make a big difference. Going to give that cheek a highlight. First, with a soft brush at maybe 40px.
What a difference a little dot makes!!! Now that cheek’s really popping out! The type of brush used when making a highlight makes a big difference too. I do tend to overdo this, I know - but I like it! I can’t help myself! One last thing - what if I use a hard-edge brush instead of soft for the highlight?
Same size brush, but now its hard edged highlight. Really the softness (or other texture used) defines the kind of surface it’s on. The soft looks more natural, esp. on skin. The hard edge looks more like rubber/latex surface. (Neither look like rat fur, but sometimes you don’t care!)
That’s it. This is how I do stuff. Plenty of other things I could have mentioned. Reflection layer is a biggie. I like to do both soft and hard shading too. Eyes of course. Nothing makes a picture shine like good eyes. And then there’s what I truly call Highlights - a layer that goes on top of the line layer, so it can obscure even the lines. Backgrounds, which I’m not very good at but I almost always do them anyway because I like pictures that define a place and time as well as just a character. Shadows (as opposed to shading) which is frankly an art form in itself. But I’ve already put in more pictures of a rat butt than Tumblr is happy with so I’ll end it here.
