Digital Coloring Tutorial

Color can help bring clarity to busy black and white image while also making it much more dynamic. Digital colors provides a way to quickly experiment with color palettes without potentially ruining what would otherwise be a good drawing and deliver a final design product that would look great on t-shirts, buttons, tote bags and virtually anything you can print an image on. I like to approach this process as simply as possible thereby increasing the chance of the sum being greater than its parts.

The first thing I do is scan my drawing at 300 dpi on the black and white setting. I like to have a high-contrast raw  black and white scan as it leaves the most wiggle room for editing contrast, vectorizing, and clarity when printed. I take the scan over to Gimp Image Editor  which is a free open-source software equivalent of Adobe Photoshop and boost the contrast high enough to create a purely black and white image, leaving only the darkest areas of value and lines. I then export that image as a .PNG with no compression.

Next I take that exported image over to Inkscape which is a free open-source vector graphics editing software equivalent to Adobe Illustrator. I import the image and hit "Resize Page to Selection" under the "Edit" tab so that way my workspace is the same size as my black and white image. Make sure your image is selected (there will be a dotted-line box around it) and under the "Path" tab click "Trace to Bitmap." A menu will pop up with a preview image on the bottom. Under this new menu select "Multicolor" tab and tick the box that says "remove background." This step is important as it will ensure there is a transparent background to the drawing. Click the "Apply" button at the bottom. If you have a really complicated drawing, you may have to play with some of the settings until you get the results you want. I'm sure theres an exact science to that, but I don't know it. I just try it until it looks right to me. After it's traced, be sure to click on the white background to select your original imported image, and hit the delete key.

After vectorizing the image, I Save As a .SVG file which can then be opened in gimp at whatever resolution and size you desire. Opening it Gimp shows the drawing now with a transparent background (the checkered pattern). On the bottom right of the screen under your layers, select the "New Layer" buttom (rectangle with a plus sign) a new menu will pop up and on the bottom where it says "Fill with:" hit the drop down box and select "Transparency." This will create a new transparent layer that you may need to move below the drawing layer. Once done, you can easily start digitally coloring your drawing. I'd suggest keeping a simple color palette of 4-5 colors, with each color having its own layer. Try not to render too much value with color and allow the black and white drawing to do that work. You simply want to add an element that is eyecatching but not overpowering your composition.