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Hello everyone!

In the tips this month I bring some tips for coloring without lines quickly.

These are the methods and tools that I use and I hope they are useful to you.

 

Generally, in this type of illustrations, the appeal lies in the textures, colors, shapes and patterns, unlike inked drawings. So you have to take care of the neatness in these factors.

I will address some of these basic concepts and tools that will help us using a simple drawing as an example.

 

The importance of contrast

In lineless coloring it is important to consider contrast because unlike inked illustrations we do not have a marked boundary between one object and another.

 

We commonly refer to the contrast in the difference in illumination intensity in the values of an image. Although we can also say that the contrast means a notable difference between one thing and another. (Like shapes and color)

 

A low-contrast composition tends to look flat and difficult to understand.

 

Contrast of values

Tonal values are the basis for contrast. Their extremes are black and white, which, mixing it in different proportions, we obtain a wide range of different intermediate grays. While closer to white, we speak of high values and conversely if it is closer to black we refer to low values.

A contrasting image will have different values from each other, high versus low to highlight the shapes.

In addition to the hierarchy in these values, for example, the values of this example in the background are very similar and high, while the star shape in contrast has low values.

• A very useful trick to take care of our value scale in our color illustrations is to make a gray correction layer.

For that we go to Layer> New correction layer> Hue / Saturation / Luminosity> We lower the Saturation to -100

 

In this way, showing and hiding the layer at the beginning of all our layers we can see the contrast between our composition and the background when choosing our colors. Although there are also artists who decide to color in gray and then replace.

Tonal Contrast and Saturation

Not all contrasts are valued. Although we can have an image with very similar brightness values, the contrast can also be given by the color. The tone is the main characteristic of a color, it is like its tint. And saturation is the degree of purity of the color.

To give tonal contrast we can use complementary tone palettes, warm tones next to cold tones or highly saturated tones to highlight figures. In this way we will have images that can be seen to be very similar, but with very contrasting tones.

Contrast of shape and texture

Within the contrast we will also find the shapes and the texture. The shape can also speak of contrast when we use it to distinguish one element from another.

For example a geometric object next to organic figures, squares versus round, large versus small, horizontal versus vertical shapes, etc.

 

In addition, highly textured illustration abounds in this type of art that we can use to our advantage to further distinguish the different objects, providing particular patterns for each one.

 

Sketch

Next I will show my step by step which technique I use to color.

 

I used a 20 x 20 cm canvas at 600 ppi but you can use whichever you like best.

 

For our sketch it is not necessary that our lines be detailed, everything will depend on how you work.

We select in layer properties the icon> layer color so that it is in light colors.

 

Quick coloring

We will make a new layer below our sketch layer and use the lasso fill tool.

 

It is found in the Shape> Direct Draw> Rell tool. With bow

 

This tool allows us to color large areas at once without the need to create selections or fill with another tool, it helps us to think in shapes and forget about the line.

I recommend raising its stabilization a lot so that the line is cleaner.

 

Trace each element on separate layers.

 

 

 

• In case you don't like a color you can easily change it by selecting the Lock transparent pixels icon. To recolor with the paint jar or a brush. You can also head over to Edit> Tonal Correction and play around with the color modes.

Perfect textured edges

One way to create highly textured and clean edges is to convert the shapes already created with the lasso to vectors.

 

For that we will go to the layer of the shape and with right click we will duplicate the layer. And on this new layer we will right click again and Convert layer> Type> Vector layer> OK.

 

With the Operation> Object tool

 

We select our lines on the canvas and in Tool Properties we can change the color, thickness and type of brush of our line.

 

Once we add our textured border, we right click on the layer and select> Merge with layer below.

 

 

 

• Of course you can also add your textures by hand with each brush if you prefer, but this technique saves us a lot of time when we have large figures.

Details and patterns

To add details and patterns in our shapes we will create new layers above the layer of the objects that we want to texture.

 

We select the button to adjust to lower layer. In this way everything we draw here will not exceed the edges of the object in the lower layer.

 

Another way to add texture if you don't want infinite layers is to lock transparent pixels and directly texture the elements.

 

In this drawing use a pointillism airbrush.

Shading and lighting

And finally, a way to highlight our elements is the shadow and the lighting, creating suggested but not complete contours.

 

Shading can be an infinite theme, you can use the one that best suits you.

For this simple object with the same layering technique with adjustment to lower layer we can add shadows and highlights.

 

For the shadows I usually use cold colors with textured brushes, multiply combination mode and lower their opacity.

 

And for the light I use a warm light color in Soft Light or Strong Light combination mode.

 

• If you have several objects in different layers, but we want to add a single shadow to several at the same time, you must group the layers in a single folder and on this folder add the layer with adjustment to the lower layer. This also works for any color filter or paper texture you want to add.

 

Final

And ready! You can use these techniques on much more complex objects and compositions, I hope these tips will help you.

 

★ See you soon and thank you very much! ★