Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hello and Welcome to my thread. I am seeking advice on Coloring and well Line Art . I can draw well on paper and I am not that bad freehand (or mouse.Pic) but howeve my coloring kinda stinks sweatdrop gonk here is a brief example.Pic I know that you change the contrast to make the lineing look darker but making them look smooth and more bold is a problem for me. Also if you can't really tell buy the coloring I don't know how to use layers. Any constructive advice would be appreciated. I have been refered to several tutorials however they haven't really gone into depth of what I have to do I can use either Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro 7. Thanks for you time I will be checking back.

Lyviathon heart

I really didn't know if you liked for members to quote or not but I never really thought of using a felt tip pen that would be something a member could do is set up something like "Things Begginer's Need To Know About Art". I myself am not a begginer I have been drawing forever but never really thought of taking my art in such depth I guess a person must spend time on their pic in order to achieve success. 3nodding

I personally don't mess with photoshop when it comes to my drawings. I usually trace over them in Illustrator and color in there. Gotta love vector drawings! I know Illustrator wasn't a program you listed, but I think it's worth checking out. Just know though that you won't get exactly the same coloring effect as you would in Photoshop.

For the lineart, pehaps try inking with thin pen (I like Sakura Micron and brush pens), and erasing pencil lines afterwards. The thing with Micron pens is, they are very thin so lines won't come out thick. Just be careful not to press too hard (some people do, and it breaks the tips).

When scanning, try a higher resolution. It makes for better quality lineart (less pixelization, smoother when resized).

For making the lines dark + smooth, I like using the Levels adjustment (Adjust --> Levels), and tinkering with the sliders until the picture looks good (with as much black + white as possible). Any left-over black specks, you can get rid of with a white brush, or with the despeckle tool (adjust --> noise --> despeckle or remove noise?). Then turn your background layer into a full raster layer (selct the layer, go to Layer --> promote background), and set the mode to Multiply (layer --> properties).

Then, all colors should be applied on new raster layers made underneath the lineart. As long as the lineart is on multiply mode, and colors are on new layers underneath, you lineart will always be on top of the colors. If the lineart is not on multiply mode, all you will see is the lineart.