Stepping Up from Flat to Shaded Coloring (Tutorial)

 

These past few months we’ve had a lot of great tutorials here on Cleverpedia, and I am psyched to unveil another great tutorial for you guys today! Today’s post is all about adding dimension to your coloring, and upgrading from flat spaces to spaces shaped with tone and color.

Our teacher today is Heidi Berthiaume from Vintage Coloring! Her Vintage Coloring line of coloring books curate brilliant collections of artwork by 19th and early 20th century illustrators.

One of her books in particular that I think you guys would enjoy is this collection of the artwork of Percy Billinghurst, a painter and illustrator from the late 1800s. His most famous work includes the book illustrations he created for A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine. The fables feature animals of all kinds, as you can see in the sample images below from Vintage Coloring’s book The Art of Percy J Billinghurst, Vol. 1:

The book includes 20 full-page and 20 half-page illustrations printed on one side of the page. The book is printed through CreateSpace, so the paper is on the thin side, but you can protect the pages below with cardstock to prevent any bleed-through.

If this book appeals to you, just click on any of the images above, or click the button below to add it directly to your cart on Amazon!

So now it’s coloring tutorial time. I’m going to hand things over to Heidi, to teach us all about moving from flat coloring to dimensional coloring!

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I ran a coloring meetup for two years and one of the most common questions was how to do “shading” – basically how to create a coloring page that was more than just flat colors, where there is a gradient from light to dark within an area. Shading is a way to make a coloring page look more like the way we see things in real life (even if you are coloring a dragon), because we live in a three-dimensional world, where there are highlights and shadows all around us giving the world interest and depth.

I consider all colorings creative, as you are making something that did not exist before. So it’s entirely up to you if you want to use flat colors, or a little bit of shading, or go all out and give everything a highlight and a shadow.

For my tutorial today, I’m going to show you the same illustration in flat colors and with a bit of shading – and by that, I mean I added a shadow, or a darker version of the core color. This is a simple way to add interest and some depth to your coloring.

For this demonstration, I used Copic markers on copy paper, though you can replicate what I’m doing with any coloring tool as this is about the colors, not what you are coloring with.

If you’d like to use the same illustration I did, you can download it for free from my Vintage Coloring website right here!

Flat Coloring Example

Here’s that illustration colored without any shadows. This means I used one color per space, and there aren’t any gradients. It’s simple, easy, and fast (something I sometimes want from my coloring time).

Shaded Coloring Example

Now I’ll walk you through how you can add shadows to give this illustration some depth and make it (to some), more interesting. It’s your coloring – do what makes you happy!

I’m going to use a single light source that I imagine to be just beyond the edge of the frame, outside the window, high to the right. This means the light is falling onto the objects from the right, so the shadows are going to be on the left and below.

Objects in front often cast shadows on objects that are behind them. This can get a little mind-numbing, so I go with a stylistic approach and put in the ones that I feel will add to the coloring without overwhelming it. I’m not trying to make this as realistic as a photograph.

Here’s the final shaded coloring so you can see what we’re heading toward:

How to Do Shaded Coloring: Step by Step

Okay, it’s time to walk through all of the steps I took to end up with that image above!

1. Coloring the Pots

Starting with the pots, I lay in my core color down from the right corner of each object. Then I add a darker version of that color up from the left, and blend out the middle a little.

The more contrast you have between your light/core color and your dark/shadow, the more dimensional an object will look. I prefer less contrast for a softer look. Experiment a bit and find out what you like – it may even change depending what illustration you are coloring.

2. How to Color Plants

Now for the plants. I put in my core color, guessing my way around where I think it should be, mostly the tops of the leaves and the right side of the stems. Again, not going for super-realistic here, just a suggestion that these guys have some form to them.

Then I added a darker green everywhere else.

Coloring the Sky and Wall

The sky is all the same color, despite what it looked like when I took the photo.

The wall is also a single color… with the addition of a line of darker color to the left, of the left side of the window frame. This is one of those shadows that is being cast on a behind object (the wall) from an object in front (the window frame). No big deal if you don’t do this one – it’s still your coloring.

4. Coloring the Ledge and Dishes

For the ledge, I laid in a very thin line of core color at the top of that area, then darker color to fill in the rest. You could go all one color here if you wanted, since our view is straight on, so you technically aren’t seeing the top of the ledge where the pots are sitting. I liked this look, almost as if it had a beveled edge, so that’s what I did with it.

I did the same thing I did with the dish under the pot – thin core color on top, darker color to fill in the rest of the area.

Here’s a comparison of the flat coloring (left) to what we’ve done so far on the shaded coloring (right).

5. How to Shade a Face

Complex objects, like faces, have multiple areas of shadow. It’s up to you how many, and how dark, you want to go.

I colored in the core color, then added shadows on the left and downward. Then I did a lot of blending using the same core color over the shadows to soften all the edges between the core color and the shadows.

6. How to Shade Hands

Same colors for the hands. I added shadows for each hand, as well as for her knuckles.

7. How to Color a Dress

Objects on objects, such as her dress on her body, have shadows unique to each object. There are shadows in the folds of the fabric of the dress, and shadows on the dress cast by her arms. As you can see, I did a lot of blending here to get back to a softer look after putting the shadows on the core color.

8. Coloring the Final Details

For the rest of the image (banket, table, spool, pin cushion in basket), it’s the same thing we’ve done up to this point – core color on the top/right, shadows color on the bottom/left and to indicate if an object is behind another object.

I only put a thin shadow under the table top, while the blanket had a few folds, so it had more shadows. Then I added a shadow to the dress to show it was under the blanket.

Here’s a comparison again of the flat coloring (left) with our finished shaded coloring (right):

The little bits in her hair, the seat, and the spool on the table are all flat colors, though there’s a bit of shadow on the pin cushion basket. After I colored the rest of the wall, I added a thin shadow under the window ledge as well. Then, as I was adding my signature to the seat, I also added a bit of shadow on the seat at the edge of her dress, to show the dress was in front of the seat.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is a very basic example of how to use shading in your colorings. If you really get into coloring objects realistically, there’s a lot more to it than what I’m showing here, such as highlights, center light, halftone, reflected light, occlusion shadow, etc. You don’t have to go that far, unless you want to.

Remember, it’s your time and your coloring. Have fun with it!

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Heidi Berthiaume, AKA Curator Prime of Vintage Coloring, publishes adult coloring books of bygone art from the 1800s through the early 20th century. She also creates designs featuring the art of contemporary illustrators as Not Very Vintage Coloring Book PDFs which can be purchased in the VC Bazaar. Vintage (and Not Very Vintage) designs are available on apparel and home accessories in her Threadless Artist Shop. Heidi is a Copic Certified Designer living in north Texas whose personal adjectives include Artist, Colorist, Author, Fan Music Video Maker, and Introvert.

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