Step 1:
This technique works best with lines that have no graytones or anti-aliasing, where the image only contains black and white. That's because it involves using the Magic Wand Tool, which works much more simply if you don't have to worry about tolerence settings. Here's a close up image of two shapes to show you what I'm talking about.
You can see that the shape on the left has gray pixels on its edges to make it look more smooth, while the one on the right is only black and white. I don't have any good examples of this kind of lineart on my drawings so for this tutorial I'm going to use a section of an image drawn by Adam Warren for an Exalted cover. I had nothing to do with the colors for the actual book, but I did manage to win the coloring contest that was held to help promote it.
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Step 2:
Use the Magic Wand Tool and click on an area of black to select all the lines.
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Step 3:
Create a new layer above your lines layer
and push the Add Layer Mask button.
This creates a layer mask that will restrict color to the area you selected. Be sure when you color on that layer, though, that you aren't editing the layer mask instead.
Editing a mask is really handy when doing things like photo manipulation (if you cut something out of a photo using a mask you can add it back in later if you want), but not for coloring lines. |
Step 4:
You can either color the drawing or the lines now. I'm going to add the drawing colors first because I know I'm going to make some of the lines white, and that's easier to do as a last step.
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Step 5: I now color the lines I want to on the layer that has the layer mask. Since the lines don't have any anti-aliasing I prefer to use the Pencil Tool instead of the Brush Tool for this.
And there you have it, magical hair. If you'd like to see the full, colored drawing it can be found in my deviantART coloring gallery here. |