colouring sketches.

[Iwan]

OK, I'm quite sure this is in the right forum.

I'm trying to find my own style of drawing backgrounds and I thought it would be cool to sketch the background out on paper, scan it in to the computor and add colour to it on the computor...

01



...and...

02



The thing is that adding colour to the sketches takes forever.

Anyone know if theres a faster way of adding colour to them?

Iwan

[Privateer Puddin']

Crits Lounge prolly better for this but, not too sure

[BOYD1981]

you should talk to LGM, or look for an old post where he took greyscale images and coloured them with pretty good results

[shbaz]

I know!

Are you familiar with the "colorize" feature? You can use freehand select to get the area you want colored and then colorize it.

Another (IMO better) way is to make a new layer above and just paint in the flat colors that you want. When you merge the layers it will look all pretty and colored. Actually, I can't remember if it was "merge" or "flatten."

Remember to use transparency so you can see what you're coloring.

[BOYD1981]

i find using a "multiply" layer (PSP) is good for colouring stuff, much better than a colour layer or even using colourise, but when you just use a layer to do the colouring you're gonna end up with jagged edges unless you use anti-aliasing or the soften brush

[Pet Terry]

Vel's ezine has once good tutorial how to colour hand drawn graphics. Here, http://www.twin-design.com/agsezine/issue5_garagegothic.cfm

[Minimi]

You could use the magic wand tool, of The Gimp, and select every part of the picture. Or you could sharpen the outlines on a new layer, and colour it.

[LGM]

Yes.. what boyd said. Make a new layer, with the multiply setting (this works in PSP, PS, and GIMP) and then use a brush and color of your choice and start coloring in the area you want that color. You can use the freehand selector or magic wand to select the certain area, thus only coloring in that area and avoiding constant erasure.

Nice sketches, btw.. If you want me to take a crack at it when I get home, I can give it a whirl..

[Evil]

Yeah. What LGM and Boyd said. However, I like to use the polygonal lasso tool and then dump in color. Its a lot cleaner then using just a brush or freehand lasso tool.

[LGM]

Yes.. And that's why you're inferior, evil

[Evil]

Damn tootin. 

[Phemar]

Ink it with fineliner, scan it as ink drawing and scale it down:



Fix it up a bit:



Now color!



Now this beegee is still far from finished...

[jannar85]

Well.. Mulitply works in most cases.
But let's see... You might want to paste it into PSP or PS, go to adjust contrast/brightness, then set the brightness to about -58, then the contrast to 64 or something. Now the picture has been darkened, and the lines are better visible. Now, go to edge then trace contour. You might wanna play more around with the contrast/brightness to get a crisper image.

But I would just use multiply on a gray scan, then colored it.

Anyway, hope that helped.
And btw.. Nice sketches!