Digital Colouring Notes

When digitally colouring comics I find myself making lists of mental notes of what to do. If you colour your comics digitally you may find this interesting. The example page is from as yet unpublished episode of Chuffin' Billy.

Preparing Line work
Affinity 3.0 has an ‘Erase white paper’ function which creates line work on a transparent layer. Photoshop and Krita can do this but I can never remember how to make it work without research, so a one click method is ace.

Monotonous Flats

Creating ‘Flats’ helps isolate colours so you can select areas to work over. Colour in figures and anything important in the panel. Apply the general base colours beneath the line work. Apply colours on separate subsequent layers below, this gives you edges that you don’t have to be careful with, making it a little bit quicker to colour.

Use the Lasso Tool + Ctrl to select areas to fill with Flat Colour. It’s quicker than picking at corners with a brush after missing pixels with the freehand version. Do all the colour tones on the page needs. This is not a creative process but dull work of select, fill, tweak, erase and then move on. Concentrate on foreground characters.

Switch between Brush and Eraser. I do this bit freehand rather than use the Flood Select Tool. I try not to use the Undo button. If I make a mistake I Erase/Brush over it. This feels like ‘keeping the mistakes’ as part of the process, like in real life art.

Use muted colours (Pantone CMYK Uncoated has a very useful muted section towards the bottom of the palette). Keep the pen moving. Use keyboard shortcuts where possible for speed and keep changing the size of the brush tip while working. I find this makes the work more engaging.

Highlights and Shadows
Use Highlights and Shadows to pick out details in the panel. Place Highlights above the Shadows layer to keep them ‘Highlighty’.

Highlights Layer = 50% Screen Pale Yellow
Shadows Layer = 50% Multiply Blue Grey

I tend to use a soft brush like the Gouache Mixing and Fading brush for a painterly style that matches my ink line work.

Flatten the page

Each page gets to a point where I am not doing anything creative, just colouring in-between the lines. That’s where I stop and flatten the image into one layer. This is scary and stupid but it shows commitment.

Texture Layers
Apply textured layers at low opacity over the Flattened page. This introduces an element of randomness into the digital art. Burn/Dodge areas that need it. Sprays and Spatter brushes are also good for this. Be careful not to overdo this though. I recently found Shadows/Highlights in the Lighting section which can be used if an detail has got muddy.

I am not a professional colourist but these are the tips I would recommend when attempting to colour a comic page of black and white line art.

(This post started off by me saying "I make mental notes as I go", on this occasion I noted things down as I went, 'colouring' them off as I wrote the blog.)

Page details of the finished colours from most of Chuffin' Billy The Embuggerance Engine Part 2 can be seen here.

#DigitalColouring #Process #Affinity3 #ComicArt