Art Development: Applying Colour to Grey-Scale Sketch in Gimp

So, the grey-lead pictures on different backdrops were kind-of okay, but what if I wanted to have colours? I’d read somewhere that some artists used a grey-scale drawing to give them an idea of shade, so I decided to use my Rosebuds on Colorized Backdrop – Saturation 6 as a base.

Here’s what I did:

1.      Imported the image I wanted to use.

2.      Saved it as Pink Rosebuds on Colorized Backdrop-Saturation 6.

3.      I selected the brush icon (9th symbol down in the left column of the Toolbox dock)

4.      I didn’t want a heavy mark, so I chose something that looked a bit fuzzy—the first blotchy symbol in the 9th row of the ‘Brushes’ dock.

5.      I also wanted to be able to see the grey-scale through the painting I did, so I went to the Tool Options box and changed the Opacity slide bar to 43.9

6.      I didn’t want the brush to be too big, so I changed the size to 20.00.

7.      I left the other options as they were. There will be time to discover what they do, later.

8.      I then clicked on the colour box at the very bottom of the Toolbox, and chose a nice shade of pink (HTML: ce83c7)

At first I couldn’t see what I was doing, so I changed the Opacity up to 62.2. Still nothing seemed to happen. I happened to glance over at the Layers-Gradients dock and noticed that the Background layer was highlighted. Since I was trying to work on the Dropped Buffer layer, this seemed wrong, so I clicked on the Dropped Buffer layer and, hey Presto, I could now see the marks I was making.

TIP: Make sure the layer you want to paint is highlighted! (You more experienced Gimp artists can pick yourselves up from the floor and stop laughing, now, ‘kay?)

Once I had the ability to make marks on my drawing, I started out by tracing the darkest lines (still using the 62.2 Opacity and the fuzzy brush). This took awhile.

TIP: Make sure you stop and start, so that your line length does not get too long. If you make a mistake, you can hit Ctrl Z, but you lose the whole line and not just the bit you messed up. If you do shorter lines, you don’t lose as much when you make mistakes.

TIP: It’s also important to keep in mind which part of the drawing you need to be in the colour you are using, otherwise it’s hard to make suddenly pink leaves, green. It’s also heartbreaking to have to undo all the bits you’ve so carefully made the wrong colour.

After a bit, I realised that the outlining, while helpful wasn’t really enough, so I stopped and took another look at the picture. I’m a bit slow, so it was only then that I realized I should be changing the shades of pink I was using to correspond with the shades of grey I was seeing, and that this wasn’t done by colouring over the grey-scale with the same shade. Well, duh! At this point, I’m kind of thinking how much easier this is with coloured pencil or paint on paper, but I like the idea of not having to start over every time I screw up and can’t erase or paint over the picture effectively, so I decide to make the darker shades of grey a slightly darker shade of pink (HTML: c970c0). And then I work the darker bits in c669Bc. It’s not dark enough for the outlines and deepest shadow, so I use a bit of a25d9b, increase the opacity to 69.5. For the outlines, I decrease the brush size to 15.00. When it comes to the lightest part of the flower, I switch to a lighter shade of pink (HTML: e8a8e1) and start work with a slightly bigger brush (36.43).

TIP: The brush size can be changed using the slide bar as a slide bar, or by highlighting the numbers and typing in the brush size you want.

TIP: You should also check out if the brush size looks right for what you want to use if for. You can do this by moving the pointer over your picture and seeing where the brush outline sits. If it’s too large or small, you should adjust it until you’re happy with the area it covers.

In the meantime, I’ve spent about an hour on the pink, and I need to move onto another task for the day. Here’s what the picture looks like so far.

I’d say it needs a lot more refinement. Next week, we’ll move onto the green leaves and stems.