Photoshop Fun - Colouring Illustrations with a Hand Drawn Feel

1. Introduction: Do you have a passion for drawing? And if you're anything like me, you do go wrong on the phone in meetings and even wants watching the TV. Does this look familiar? I particularly love digital illustrations that have a hand drawn feel. My favorite of the ones where you can still see the pen instruments that make the drawings have unique energy. I'm going to show you how to cover the Handwara light with audits. Wickedly imperfections. So if you'd like to know how to get from this to base, this class is figure. 2. Scan and prep your artwork: when you come to scan your drawing, follow the rule of thumb. Always scan 300 DP I So now that you've got your image scanned in at 300 DP, I we need to clean it up. So you can see from this image that there are some blacks, smudges, things that have been on the scanner screen. Probably we're gonna need to take those out. And then if we go right in and have a really close look, you can see that around each of the dark lines. There's some graying, and we're going to need to take those out as well. Then we're going to go to image adjustments and down to hue and saturation. Now, if you see we have three sliders, the middle one is saturation. I want you to take that away down to the left. What that does is makes the image black and white rather than have any color in it at all. Now we're going to use levels. If you want to do this far, the menu you need to go to image adjustment levels well. There's also a neck short cut, which is control L on a PC and command l on a map. Now we're in the levels palette. We're going to use the white eyedropper tool on the right. The I drop, it'll alters the total value of whatever it touches to white. Also, anything else in the image which has a tonal value, the same or lighter would also changed a white. So you can see this is a really good way to start cleaning up your image. If I touch this great docked with the white eyedropper tool, you can see a lot of the great dots then disappear. If we see men, we can see that most of the gray areas have disappeared and we've got mostly just black and white now. But there are few remaining dots that we might need to sort out. I'm going to use the slight bus to try and fix this great opt. I'm moving the right hand slider bar to the left. Which things to make it a little bit paler. Andi, I'm adjusting the middle one as well. You can play about with these Andi, just see what difference it makes to your particular design. Now, if you have any particularly stubborn areas that just went seem to shift with the levels just taken, I'd drop on the white background and then painting for it with the brush on. This is finished cleaned up. Piece of artwork ready to cover. 3. Starting out with Quick Mask Mode: all masked fighter shot could be really useful there. Used to make selections from an image, they decide which areas will be shown and which will not. Quick mask mode works in just the same way, and you can quickly edit selections using tools from the tool palette. Basically, black conceals and white reveals. Let's take a look. We're going to move our artwork into a new document. I'm planning on making this into an April print to send online, So I'm choosing an A four document size at 300 DP. I and I'm making sure it's RGB color. This document is where we're going to be making the final piece. So to copy over your drawing to the new document, draw roughly around the image with the last suitable to select it on. Then make a copy. You can either go toe edit copy, or you can use the shortcut control. See for PC and command. See on a Mac now again to get back to our new document and put quick mask mode on. I want to make a new layer. So pick are the new layer button from the layers palette and then click the quick mask mode button, which you can find at the bottom of the toolbar. The shortcut for this is pressing the letter Q. On the keyboard. Now you'll notice when you click this, the colors go to gray scale. And that's because in this mode, if you paint black on, the image that will be once elected on Dwight will be selected. When you enter quick mask mode, you'll also notice that the layer that you have selected on we'll go to read. And that is another sign to say that you're now in quick mask mode and ready to work. So now paste your drawing into your new document, either by going to edit paste oh control V for PC or command. Fate from a You're Drawing will appear in red meaning again, but it's in quick mask mode, dese electoral selection by pressing control de on a PC or command his reminders of the last. So I image is still in quick asked mode, and what we need to do now is come out of it so you can do that by just simply pressing que on your keyboard. Make sure your move tool is selected before you do this. Now you can see that, um, there has been a selection made, but actually, I can tell because of the marching ants around the outside of the document. Um, that, actually, what has happened is it is selected everything except my drawing. So what we're gonna need to do is invest that there are two different ways to inverse a selection. You can either go to select inverse, or you can use the handy short cut, which is shift control. I when a PC or shift command I on a map. So now we want to fill the selection of the solid black color on the quick way. To do that is to make sure you got black selected on then press option delete. That's for Mac out. Backspace is the PC, and your selection will be filled with your black color. So now we want to really go into our drawing and make sure there aren't any little pieces we'd like to remove more active. Um, there would go to use a mask in order to do that. So go over to the bottom of your layers, panicked and click on the mask to on that will have a mask to your leg. This is a nondestructive way to make amendments to your artwork. Basically, the last 61 talk on by painting it black or white. On the surface, we either conceal or reveal what is Anthony. So remember, black and seals on Dwight reveals. So basically, I'm concealing parts of the image by painting black on the masculine. So I'm gonna go through the whole drawing quite close up to have a look. If there's any little pieces that I'd like t hide and conceal, I don't want to change it too much because it's meant to look hand drawn. So I'm not gonna take too much out. Let's speed this up a bit. 4. Get your image ready to colour: So this is the part where you'll need to plan out your color choices. Here's one of my finished color ways for this piece. I didn't choose the colors right at the start, but what I did think about was which areas would be a single color. The reason you should do this is because we will be breaking down each part of this illustration into separate leads so that it is easy to color them separately. So take this fish. I decided that the whole fish would be orange, but that it's bubbles would be a different kind of. So when we look at the last planet, you can see the fish is on one man and the bubbles one another. What this gives us is an option to easily change each one of those colors without affecting anything else. And it means you can easily work on color in your design until you're happy with the results. So let's start breaking down. Our administration said I was going to learn how to break down your illustration into lots of different layers. Don't worry if this seems like quite a long process, it fast honestly, after a couple of tries, you'll be flying through it. So what you need to do is take your last suit, you'll and choose an area that you want to draw around. Two separate. I've chasing his hat. Now the important thing to note when you're drawing rounder shape is that you must draw around in such a way that it makes sense within the drawing. So therefore, here I'm no, including any of the edges of his hair, just the at one of the hat. Once you've done that, we're going to cut that part of the illustration away on. The shortcut for that is control X on a PC or Command X on a Mac. And then we're going to paste his hat into a completely separate layer. And we're gonna do that by going to edit pay special. I'm paste in place now. There's a really good short cup for this, which I use all the time on a PC. It shift control, be on a Mac it shift. Command fee on that will place it in exactly the same place as it was before. Just on a separate land. It's good to try and be organized in your workspace, so what I'm gonna do here is name that new there, and I'm gonna call it hat and then tell it off. Which will mean that we can only see the parts of the illustration. We've yet to put on separate layers. Let's run through that process again. Grab us A. To go around the area that you want to select. Hit control Excell Command X to remove it and then shift control V to paste it back in place. But on a separately, if your workspace tidy and name that let and then turn it off and go back to the previous life. And here's your step by step reminders. Okay, so now you've got the process. Let's speak this up. - So let's organize are less. Take all the layers that correspond to the captain and then put them in a group folder. Name the group. I'm naming mind, captain. And then all those layers and files are organized. Try and do this for each area of your artwork. - Now turn your legs back home so that you could see your image in all its separate pieces. - Lastly , don't forget to save your files. 5. Colouring Fun: So finally we got to the fun part. Let's color are illustration So I'm going to show you two processes to color your illustration, and the 1st 1 uses sorted color. So this is useful when you have a part of an illustration that you want to be a single solid color. Click on the layer that you want the color to effect and then come down to the bottom of the layers palette and click the circle, which has a black half in a white half. Go up to solid color, click and then choose the color of your choice. Don't be alone. I know the whole campus has gone red, but we can fix this for the clipping mask. Now for the clipping mouse to work, the solid color there needs to be above the illustration. There on your keyboard. Hope down your bolt or option key and hover between the solid color. There on the illustration. There, underneath on what you see appear is this little arrow, which is pointing to the illustration There, that means is about to apply that Connor as a clipping master the layer below Andi, There it is now just that part of the illustration is in red, so that's already handed. Tip. If you just want to use a solid color in one particular area, the next color technique I'm going to show you, produces a more natural effect. Now, if I just took a brush and try to draw over the surface of my line work, it would make a pretty horrible mess. But if we look the transparent pixels of that there, we will only be coloring on the black line, and therefore we can use the brush more naturally. So to do this, we go to the top of the layers palette and next to the word look, we see a little grid like shape. Click on that, and a look appears on the now you're working on. Not that means, but everything that is transparent in that layer cannot become. It on is looked down and that just leads are black line work. So if we go in and color freely on that, they're the only thing that was going to be counted. Is the line work on this in itself just gives you more freedom. I can use all my favorite brushes and favorite colors in a more natural way. My favorite thing about it is that it makes shading your administration really simple and easy for May. Working like this feels really natural, as if I was just picking up a colored pencil and drawing on paper. I love this technique. It's so much fun. I'm going to be painting a few things, this blue color. So it's an idea to take a note of the number at the bottom. Just copy it and then you compare aced it into any other existing color solids. I'm making a solid color for the boat selection. I'm making this in a completely separate layer below the boat line. Work two tied it up. I'm just deleting parts of the color that I don't need. 6. Final Thoughts: Well, congratulations. I hope you've enjoyed the project. You've learned loads of techniques along the way, and you'll be able to use them in lots of different projects in the future. And I would simply love to see what you've made. So don't forget to post it in the class project gallery. See, that's time.