View Slideshow [4]

Pic.4 Completed artwork on transparent background

• Pic.3 Outline with colour and texture applied
• Pic.2 Outline on transparent background
• Pic.1 Scan at 300dpi Grayscale

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I am often asked the process by which I take a traditional line drawing, and then add colour, texture and compositional treatment to it. This post goes through basic scanning and line preparation for a 'print-ready' illustration. It's quite basic stuff but hopefully a few of you may find it useful. OK. First of all ...

Scanning

1. Place your drawing in the scanner, then "File > Import >" and choose your scanner
2. Change you settings to "Grayscale" and "300dpi"
3. "Preview" your scan
4. Crop the drawing using the marquee leaving a decent amount of space around the drawing
5. Click "Scan"

In Pic.1 of the image slide show, you will see how my drawing of a seagull looks at 300dpi Grayscale.

Preparing your artwork for colour

Next we prepare the drawing for adding colours and textures etc.

1. Double click on the background layer in the layers tab and create a layer (I will name my layer "outline"). This means the image is no longer flattened.
2. Next we want to make the lines of the drawing as clear as possible, so we then choose "Image > Adjustment > Brightness/Contrast"
3. Click the "Use Legacy" box if using Photoshop CS3, and also ensure "Preview" is ticked
4. Adjust the levels of brightness and contrast until your drawing has a definite black line against a white background (you don't want the line to be too sharp though). Click "OK" when you are happy.
5. Click the "Channels" tab (next to "Layers" by default) and then hold down ctrl/apple and click on the Gray channel - this will select all everything other than your line. You will notice the marquee around your drawing.
6. Press delete once and you will now have a line drawing on a transparent background.
7. To ensure the line is solid black, we now click the "Layers" tab, lock the transparency by clicking the transparency box next to "Lock:" (you will see a padlock appear on the layer).
8. Then choose black in your colour selector in the main vertical tools bar, and then "Edit > Fill > OK", with preserve transparency set.

In Pic.2 of the image slide show, you can see my gull drawing as a transparent layer.

Adding colours and layers and stuff

With the transparency locked you can fill your line colour in any colour (you will need to change your image mode to cmyk or rgb first though: "Image > Mode >"), and also paint different lines of the drawing in different colours (see Pic.3 of the image slide show to see this).

Next you simply add new layers in the layer tab, and ensure they are beneath the "outline" layer. You can then use the brush tool to add colour to your work. I recommend that all colours are added on separate layers, so you can easily remove/edit layers of colour easily should you need to.

Using different opacity settings on each layer is useful for creating highlights, shadows and other useful effects.

Pic.4 shows my finished sea gull. It is used as part of a larger illustration I have designed (see related work below).

Hope this has proved helpful :)