Coloring in itself is a skill that many have a hard time mastering. One would think that it's simple to fill in a picture with color, but it's a lot more than just that. You have shading, color scheme, light and darkness, and many many different media to try out.

The picture at the left was colored in Prismacolor markers. Markers are good for coloring large areas. You can get a nice solid wall of color where you want it, and you don't have to worry about having to mix together the exact same color if a marker should run out. The downside is that you quite often get streaks if you don't lay the color down perfectly (this can be avoided a bit by using water based markers), and you can't get much of a 'light to dark' color effect. You also need to hoard together a large collection of markers if you plan on coloring with them regularly, because there are only so many color variations available with a small set of markers. The problem is, Prismacolors and most of the better brands of markers cost $2 to $3 per marker.. this makes it difficult to get together a set of 100 or so.

A good way to stretch your use of markers is to boost them with colored pencil. You can lay down markers as a base, and add pencil for highlights and shading. Colored pencils tend to run cheaper than markers, and the two mix well together.

This picture was done entirely in colored pencil, with no inking at all. This medium is good for a really soft look. You'll need to have either very very light pencils or a light table to do this properly though. (This picture was done on a light table.)

(A good trick to make colored pencil look like watercolor is to use turpentine. I apply it with a little paper stick (the kind you buy at art supply stores that are supposed to be for smearing graphite), but you can use stiff-bristled brushes as well. Be sure and find a brand of odorless turpentine, otherwise you'll get zonked out by it pretty quickly. Apply it in small circling motions. This will break down the wax in the pencil, and you can spread the color around as you please.)

Watercolors are also a fun medium. They take a bit longer to apply, but the end results are usually nice. You can buy them in two different forms, cakes and tubes. Cakes tend to be more translucent, and the tubes more opaque. Translucent is good for doing "soft" effects, gentle lightening and darkening of color. While you can layer the paint on with the more opaque kinds and get a nice solid wall of color. Be sure you paint on thick paper, taped down so it won't curl. (There's some good brands of nonstick drafting tape out there you can buy.) Also keep some water handy to dip your brush in, and if you can, a pallete to mix different colors. You can get a lot out of a watercolor set with some practice.

Computer coloring is fun, but not something I take much stock in. It looks nice, yes. But it's not very portable, and a lot of people with no drawing talent at all can get their hands on some hotshot fractal programs and let the computer do all the work and texturing for them. I guess I'm just old fashioned... but I've seen so many pictures done by friends of mine attacked by some twit with Photoshop and turned into gloppy day-glo nightmares.

Remember color scheme! The color wheel pictured at the right shows most of the color basics. Remember that the color directly across from another color in a wheel is that color's complement. That is, if you draw a character in a yellow shirt or yellow is a predominant color in the foreground, use its opposite on the color wheel (purple) in the background. These two colors, used properly, will make your picture look more three-dimensional. One is a warm color which pulls the objects into the foreground, the other a cool color that pulls other objects into the background. Warm and cool colors together work well like this.

Also remember to NEVER EVER EVER use grey to shade a picture drawn in color! Shading should be derived from the colors around the character. If he's standing in a field of grass in the sunshine, you might try using light green or yellow for shading. Or try using the color's complement, on the opposite side of the color wheel. Use green to shade orange, purple to shade yellow. White is a special case, you can use any color in the spectrum to shade white. I prefer matching the color with the character's personality. I use oranges and yellows for warm happy characters, purples and blues for more reserved ones, and red and green for downright evil ones.

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