Basic Coloring

Basic Coloring & Shading of Line Art

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For this tutorial you will need:
A line art of your choice or you can use mine
below. Just right click and choose "copy"
then in PSP go to "edit, paste, as new image."

Ok, here we go!

Step One
First thing we want to do is be rid of all the white.

In the layer palette, right click on the background layer
and choose "promote background layer".
If a box comes up telling you that the image needs to be
promoted to 16 million colors, click "ok."
Using the wand tool, these settings:

click anywhere there is white. Hold down the shift key on your
keyboard and continue to click on the white areas until all have
been selected, including the inside of each petal and the center
of the flower.

Now hit delete on your keyboard a few times.
All the white should now be gone, like the screenshot below,
but it's best to double check it like this:
Deselect
Create a new layer and go to "layers, arrange, send to bottom."
Now flood fill with any color except white or black.
Zoom in closely and make sure there are no stray white
pixels. If there are, click on the top layer in the layer
palette, and select the white pixels with the wand tool,
then hit delete on the keyboard a couple of times to get
rid of them. Ok, once it's all clear it should look like this.

Step Two
There are several ways of doing this but this is how we'll do it
for this tutorial:
Choose a color you want for the main color of your flower
and set it as your foreground color.
I'm using #C9D8F1
Set your background color to a color that coordinates but is
a few shades darker...the darkest shade of the color you want to use
for the outline. I'm using #7391C7
Now since we need more than one shading color and don't want to
lose the colors as we make color changes:
Create a new transparent image, size 20x20 and flood
fill with the foreground color.
Create another 20x20 image and flood fill with the background color.

Now change both the foreground and background colors to
two other shades of the same color, shades that aren't darker or
lighter than the 2 you already have, but are in between the darkest
and lightest shades.
I'm using #A6C1EA and #B4CAEC
Now make two more 20x20 images, flood filling them with
the 2 new colors.
Keep all those small color images open but move them out
of your way as much as possible.

Set your foreground box to the lightest color of your 4 shades by
clicking on the 20x20 image that contains it with the dropper tool.
And set the background box to the darker of the 2 shade colors
you have chosen.

Ok now click inside each of the petals with the wand tool, same settings,
so that they are all selected.

Create a new layer.

Flood fill the selection with the foreground color.

Deselect.

Step Three
Create a new layer.

Now toggle the color boxes so that the
darker of the 2 shade colors is the foreground and
the color you just filled with is the background.
With your paint brush, these settings:

zoom in and start shading the petals like so:

After you have shaded all the petals.....
zoom out to see if you like what you see.
Since the shading is on it's own layer,
you can erase and make any changes you'd like.

Create a new layer.
Use the dropper tool and click on the small 20x20 image
that contains the darkest shade of the your chosen color.
On this new layer, paint over the black outline.

Create a new layer.
Set your foreground to the lightest shade of the shade
colors you have chosen, zoom in, and continue to shade
the petals some more.

Step Four

Set your foreground to an even lighter shade of your lightest
shade of color, and your background to one of the other, semi-dark
shades. I'm using #DCE7F8 for the foreground and #B4CAEC
for the background.

Create a new layer.

Using the air brush, these settings:

spray the center of each petal with the lightest shade, and then
spray a bit of the background color over the lighter
right in the center, like below.

Now go to "adjust, blur, gaussian blur" at a radius of 1.00.

Almost done, all that's left is the flower's center.

Step Five
Set your foreground color to a dark shade of the color you want to
use for the center, I'm using #D46706
And your background color to a lighter shade, I'm using #FEC200

Create a new layer

Using the paint brush, same settings, go over the center black outline
with the darker color.

Now use the wand tool and select the center, and flood fill
with the lighter color.
Keep selected!

Go to "selections, float."

Go to "effects, 3d effects, cutout" with these settings:
Vertical and horizontal 6
Opacity 72
Blur 10.00
Color #D46706 (the darker of your two colors)

Deselect

Create a new layer.

Choose a darker shade of the foreground color, I'm using #944A0E
and with the paintbrush, same settings, dot around on the center of
the flower.

Layers, merge, merge visible and that's it!