Colouring Techniques, Digital Art

[Mera'din]

I'm curious if anyone can recommend the best method to colour sketches. I prefer pencil and chracoal but sometimes one wants colours. So, I figured the best thing would be to scan the sketch and then colour on computer. How would I go about it? Are there any easy programs that would allow me to do that? One more thing, does anyone know of those computer sketch pads that allow one to sketch like with the pencil and directly to the digital format. Something affordable of course.

[Jean]

Photoshop is a good program for coloring. Even something like paintshop pro. I have adobe photoshop 7.0, very good program. :)

[TrollocSmasher]

Yeah, I use Photoshop 7 also. There's no better program for any image editing. To color sketches, I scan in my sketch, delete all the white, make a new layer underneith and just paintbrush to my hearts content. At this point it looks like a flat newpaper comic, so then I use the burn and dodge tools to add shadows and highlights. That's how i've colored every image in my gallery. My name's Travis and my gallery is in the cartoon/anime/manga section if you want to see what I'm talking about.

Good luck and have fun.

[Madeleine]

TrollocSmasher: If you don't want to delete the white of your sketch, you can just duplicate your sketch layer, blank the lower layer and set the sketch layer's blending options to Multiply instead of Normal. That way, only the dark areas of your sketch will be visible :).

Just a hint -- it's a good way to get rid of tricky white areas without erasing, and gives a smoother edge than the color-selection.

[Mera'din]

I see... well, I personally never appreciated photoshop. I guess I should give it a try again, since you guys seem to be able to tame it. I just feel akward with it, especially when colouring because it's hard to maintain precision and it seem to require much more time then when using real life brushes and colours.

[TrollocSmasher]

Thanks for the tip, Madeleine. I use those transfer modes every day at work...I feel like a dork for not thinking of that myself. I'll definately use your advice next time.

[Shadowkiller]

It is rather difficult sometimes to get as precise with a mouse compaired to a pencil or brush. So they have these really great things called drawing tablets.. Its just like using a pencil or a brush just inside the computer.. Just a though.