my color filling tutorial for digital artwork. if you know photoshop this should really help if you want to get into coloring your own work. i'll put up tutorials for scanning, inking, and special effects later. :D
1.) Choose a color for your background layer that’s contrasting, but not distracting. Make sure it’s a color that you won’t be using much in your image
2.) To fill the background layer with the color, choose Edit > Fill
3.) Next we select the areas we want to work in. Set your magic wand options to the following: tolerance: 30, anti-aliased, contagious, us all layers.
4.) It’s a god idea to start with the skin, so create a new layer titled “skin,” and use the magic wand to select those areas on the picture. To continue adding more areas to the selection, hold down shift on the keyboard (ALT to take away).
5.) Gaps in the line art can make selection difficult. Use the brush tool to close off the openings. First an opening in the line art allows outer areas to be selected. The gap is located, and then the openings are sealed with the brush tool.
6.) To select the small, hard-to-reach areas, use Quick Mask Mode. To access Quick Mask Mode, click the Quick Mask button located in the lower right area of the Tools palette. Unselected (masked) area will now be displayed in red.
7.) Use the hard round brush tool (set at 100% opacity) to add or remove areas from the selection. Black adds to the red masked area, white removes.
8.) Use the white brush tool to remove the white portions of the eyes from the selection.
9.) This ensures that the color bleeds into the black line art—not enough to go past the lines, but enough to cover the entire section and prevent white edges. Choose Select > Modify > Expand. Expand your selection by 2 pixels (1 for thinner lines, 3+ for thicker lines).
10.) Pick an appropriate color for the selected areas and choose Edit > Fill.
11.) On the Layer palette, choose Lock Transparency to confine color solely to the areas that have been filled with color.
12.) Repeat the entire process starting from Step 2 on the remaining color layers.
