Grayscale Coloring
Techniques BLOG
TIPS, TECHNIQUES & TUTORIALS
Colorist: Christine Kowbuz Coloring Book: Beautiful Creatures This is the second instalment in my "Advice From A Grayscale Colorist" blog series. This time I interviewed a very talented and self-taught colorist and artist, Christine Kowbuz. Over the past several months she has shared many of her colorings from Beautiful Creatures with me and I became very intrigued by her coloring style and techniques. I was thrilled when she agreed to be interviewed!
The questions I asked:
First, let's start by taking a look at some of the gorgeous pieces Christine has colored (the horse above is hers as well!). Then, we will dive into finding out how she achieves these incredible results! Below you will find a collection of over 20 grayscale coloring video tutorials from a variety of creators. I thought it would be helpful to have them all in one place as a reference when learning how to color grayscale. I will make a point of continually updating this post when I find or create more grayscale coloring tutorials. If I've missed any, please let me know and I'll add them! I've grouped the video tutorials into three categories: Coloring Grayscale with Colored Pencils
TOPIC: Coloring Grayscale with Faber Castell Polychromos: A Butterfly & Flowers Speed Coloring Video Creator: Peta Hewitt Duration: 13:40 Synopsis: In this beautiful speed coloring tutorial, we learn some wonderful techniques that Peta uses when coloring grayscale. Techniques include: selecting your colors, using black over grayscale, creating a soft out of focus effect vs. a sharp in focus effect, using the grayscale to guide us in terms of where light and shadows should be, and more!
Colorist: Jones Flores
Coloring Book: Beautiful Creatures
There are so many amazing colorists with all kinds of incredible coloring ideas and techniques to share. I thought it would be fun and helpful to start an "Advice From a Colorist" series of blog posts where I find a colorist that impresses us with their incredible talent and ask them to share some of their most unique coloring techniques. These are techniques that work wonderfully for grayscale coloring but can be applied to any kind of coloring.
Lucky for us, the very talented colorist Jones Flores is going to share some of her coloring techniques with us! Jones is a self-taught artist who believes art is an unspoken language that touches not only the mind but the heart as well. Specifically, you will learn:
Let's get started... Although grayscale coloring is becoming quite popular, it's still very new to a lot of people and somewhat unapproachable to many. A common response when someone first sees a colored grayscale image is to think "I couldn't do that!". The extremely realistic result one can achieve with grayscale coloring can look unattainable when in actuality it's much easier than giving depth and dimension to a coloring of a regular line drawing. I thought it would be worthwhile to interview a whole range of colorists regarding their grayscale coloring experience in order to give those considering it some insight into the experience & process, hopefully encouraging them to give it a try! For those that are already coloring grayscale, I think you'll find the grayscale coloring tips from these colorists quite helpful. I asked 14 colorists (including myself) to provide a grayscale picture they've colored and answer these 4 questions:
I've also included two practice grayscale pages for you to download and try. You will find those at the end of the post. I hope that after you've read everyone's grayscale coloring tips you will print out the practice sheets and give grayscale coloring a try, if you haven't already! "Grayscale coloring acts as a guide so it's almost impossible to mess up! You can be as realistic or as abstract as you like...I colored blue flamingos with a purple sky!" Which was colored with which? Prismacolor Premiers vs. Faber Castell Polychromos Tiger from the Beautiful Creatures grayscale coloring book For a long time I've heard many wonderful things from the coloring community about both Prismacolor Premier colored pencils and Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils. I've had some Prismacolor Premiers for a while (which I love!) and recently was fortunate enough to also get a set of Faber Castell Polychromos pencils (which I also love!). Once I had both, I decided it was time to conduct a head to head test!!
In this post I will:
I recently discovered how wonderful coloring grayscale with colored pencils over water-based markers can be! I suspect it would be even better over alcohol-based markers but that is something I haven't tested yet and will have to wait for a future post :-). The marker serves as a great base of color that can add some richness and depth to your image. If the marker color is light enough then the grayscale details will show through making it easy to figure out where and how dark or light to go with the colored pencils. I completed the bear above using this technique. The bear has a ton of fur detail that would have taken me hours to do with just colored pencils. By coloring the entire bear (except the eyes & nose) and the background with Tombow Dual Brush Pens I was able to get a base of color and then just focus on enhancing the detail with colored pencil. I found that I did not need to be too precise with the colored pencils. Overall, it made the process faster but still really enjoyable and I achieved a more vibrant result thanks to the color coverage from the markers.
In this post I'm going to walk you through my step-by-step process of coloring two different pictures using this technique and what my key learnings were. One I colored with Staedtler Triplus Fineliners and the other with Tombow Dual Brush Pens as well as Fineliners for the smaller areas. In both cases I used Prismacolor Premier colored pencils over top. Colorist: Ann Reid Coloring Book: Beautiful Creatures Today I will be providing you with a step-by-step grayscale coloring tutorial done by a very talented colorist, Ann Reid.
There is a wonderful Facebook coloring group that is focused on coloring pages from the Beautiful Creatures coloring book. It is full of amazing colorists from around the world (join us!) that range from novice to expert colorists. We all share our work and provide each other with tips, tricks and encouragement. Ann is part of this group. She inspires all of us because of (among many other wonderful qualities) her incredible talent. Every person in the group looks forward to seeing her next creation. She is able to capture every single detail with such amazing precision. She achieves that hyper realistic result that so many of us are striving for when coloring grayscale. The dog above and the four stages below were all completed by Ann. As you can see, she truly brings the image to life! Amazing! Coloring Book: Beautiful Creatures Colorist: Nicole Stocker When coloring over grayscale you are using the gray as your guide. Where there are dark grays you use dark colors, where there are light grays you use your light colors. Then seamlessly blend your lights and darks together with medium colors. Derwent Inktense pencils work nicely for this style of coloring (provided the paper can handle it) because you can apply your color and then blend it all so nicely together when you activate the pencils with your watercolor brush. Specific techniques used in the following time-lapse video:
Mediums used in the following time-lapse video:
Coloring Book: Beautiful Creatures Colorist: Nicole Stocker Here I tried coloring over the grayscale cow with oil pastels and then blended them with baby oil. The key thing I learned was that you don't have to be too precise with the pastels because you'll be filling in the spaces when you blend with the baby oil. What is important is that you capture the highlights with your light pastels and the shadows with your dark pastels, then use a medium color pastel to fill in. Specific techniques shown in the following time-lapse video:
Mediums used in the following time-lapse video:
One of the wonderful things about coloring over grayscale is that you can be very creative with your colors and still get a really realistic result. As long as you follow the guidance of the grays when determining where and how dark or light to color, you'll be able to get a realistic result. Here are a few examples: Coloring Book: Beautiful Creatures Colorist: Jones Flores Coloring Book: Beautiful Creatures Colorist: Nicole Stocker |