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Photoshop CG Colouring Tutorial

This tutorial is pretty straight forward and simple. I'm sorry I haven't made these tutorial webpages particularly pretty. They are just good enough to get the point across. This tutorial assumes that either you've drawn it on the computer or you've already scanned it in and retraced the drawing onto a new layer.

Step One

Here we have your drawing as it's own layer. It can be done however you want really but fyi I usually keep the black lines as one layer, and have a background layer beneath it filled with white. All layers are in normal mode.

Step Two

Create a new layer. Name it whatever you want, but I find it helpful to name it either the colour you plan on using. In this case I named it "tan." Set the layer mode to Multiply. colour in with the brush tool everything in the picture you want to be that particular single colour. Remember that for this to work properly, the layers with colour must be ontop of the layer containing your outlines. Tip: Don't worry about colouring outside the lines. Just colour in first and go back with an eraser and have at whatever you don't want. Once you've got several colour layers, you want to make sure that none of the colours are overlapping (unless wanted). Zoom in to be exact and use a small brush and eraser size for detailed areas!

Step Three

Continue doing the same for the other colours. Here I've made a new layer this time named hair, again set to multiply and coloured in. (Note: Click for More on Hair)

If you want, you can colour in a background too.

Step Four

Now we will want to deal with shading. There are many many ways to do this but I will just lightly touch on the easier ways of doing shading and highlights. Create a new layer and make sure it is on the top. Set the opacity to about %30 or so. Then using a brush colour in with black the parts you want to be shaded. Because the layer's opacity is set to 30%, the black is semi transparent.

You can use different layer modes on this layer for different effects:

Using Multiply Using Overlay

Step Five

Highlighting is the counter part to shading as they both deal with value and thankfully are done in similar ways in photoshop! ;) Create a new layer (set opacity to about 30%) and now choose white as your brush colour. Like before, colour in the parts you want to be highlighted.

You can used different layer modes on this layer too:

Using Normal Using Overlay

Step Six

Alternatively, use the dodge and burn brushes on each of your colour layers. I'm not going to go into depth about it because I encourage you to just experiment with it yourself. Again, this is one of may ways of CGing your drawings. It takes a bird the courage to leap out of it's nest to learn to fly, especially when Momma Bird is too lazy to kick the kids out. Good luck and have fun.