Comic Colorizing Techniques
Today, artists have a large variety of methods to bring color to their art. Markers allow artists to have solid colors that do not change throughout the picture. Colored pencils let pencil artists add color that has the same look as their pencil strokes. Digital artists have a vast array of different tools found in a variety of graphics programs that can mimic any of the effects of other artist tools. For comic artists, the most common types of tools are the graphics programs, colored pencils and markers.
Digital
Artists can use a variety of programs to color comics. Graphics programs like Adobe Photoshop allow users to select colors using a variety of tools, with the range of colors possible being infinite. Very specific parts of the comic can be colored using the brush tool. Different brush types can alter how color gets flung from the mouse on to the canvas. Single spreads of color can be completely changed using the fill tool. Using the pen tool, artists can use vectors and lines to create a polygon that can then be filled with color, creating a perfect shape filled with color. The various shape tools such as the ellipses and rectangle tool allow certain types of shapes to be created and filled with color. The blending modes allow comic artists to color without coloring over the lines. Graphic programs also allow artists to put line art on one layer and color underneath that layer. Graphics programs are the most common tools for creating comics today.
Colored Pencil
To speed along coloring with a pencil pencil and in order to also avoid coloring where you do not want to color, graphic artists sometimes trace the outer edges of the drawing where the color is not supposed to go first and then fill in the outlines with color. When coloring in, artists can create small bands, circles and diagonals that overlap. Another method is crosshatch, in which the artist creates criss-crossing lines that are really close together. This not only saves time, but also allows the artist to shade by varying the space between the lines. Artists can finally simply lay down the heaviest application of colored pencil down as possible, coloring in the spaces left by the colored pencil.
Marker
Markers can use any of the methods used by the colored pencil, but the marker is fantastic at heavy application. Marker users can benefit especially from the cutout method because markers that go outside the boundaries of where they're supposed to go are more noticeable than colored pencil marks. Markers are the more traditional way that graphic artists color, with the copic marker being heavily associated with comic art.
