Showcase and discover digital art at yex

Follow Design Stacks

Subscribe to our free newsletter to get all our latest tutorials and articles delivered directly to your inbox!

Tracing and Colouring

Tracing and Colouring

Finally you can grab your scetches and doodles, because this tutorial will teach you how to do lineart and color it at the same time. No rubbish with vector-shapes that takes too much time. Just simple lines which will make your drawing/cartoon look better!

In this tutorial, I will teach you how to trace your drawings in photoshop and then give them a nice color!

  • Note:DO NOT USE, REPRODUCE OR PUBLISH THIS IMAGE FOR COMMERCIAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE! THIS IMAGE IS A DRAWING BY ME AND IS VERY WELL-KNOWN BY A LOT OF PEOPLE. IT’S ALSO SHOWED ON MICKM.COM-MERCHANDISE. IF YOU WILL RIP THIS IMAGE, YOU WILL HAVE A LAWSUIT UP YOUR ASS 😉

    Step 1 Open your drawingin photoshop;

    Tracing and Colouring

    Note: TRACE AND COLOR YOUR DRAWING ON THE SAME SIZE YOU OPENED IT IN PHOTOSHOP. LARGE IMAGES WITH THICK LINES WILL LOOK VERY NICE ONCE DOWNSCALED!

  • Step 2 Then, select the Brush-Tool and set the size of the brush to a size that would be suitable for your lineart.
    Then select the Pen-Tool and make sure you got the following settings:

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 3 When you trace the lines, you don’t want to witness that all of a sudden, you can’t continue because you only have 1 line at your disposal.
    What then to do is simple. Just draw a random line and when you’re done, press ESC on your keyboard. That way, you deselect it, allowing you to make a new path.
    This is shown in the images below!

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 4 Then select the Pen-Tool and make sure you got the following settings:

    Tracing and Colouring

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 5 When you got a nice path, or multiple paths, Right-click and a menu will pop up.
    Use that menu to give the path some lines!
    Press escape once more to remove the lines!

    Tracing and Colouring

    Tracing and Colouring

    Tracing and Colouring

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 6 Use the Brush-Tool at a desired size to color the different layers ON A NEW LAYER EACH!

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 7 Then add shadow by making selections with either the Pen-Tool or the Polygonal Lasso-Tool, and fill them with black.
    Then group them with the origianl layer and lower the opacity!

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 8 Use a normal brush and brush little hairs (if needed);

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 9 THINK when you shade, because the sun can only come from 1 direction!

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 10 Finish the shading;

    Tracing and Colouring

    Tracing and Colouring

    Tracing and Colouring

  • Step 11 And now you see the transition of lineart into grayscale coloring (often used by Animators/Designer) and finally the finished product!

    Tracing and Colouring

Author        :  MICK MOOLHUIJSEN 
HomePage : 
http://www.mickm.com 

Comments