If you want to play and really draw the attention to one area of your drawings, selective coloring is a very efficient and fun technique to try.

You can leave most of your drawing black and white or monochrome, then just add a touch of bright color in selected areas.

Supplies list:

• mixed media or watercolor paper (hot press so there is not too much texture and you can draw easily)
• waterproof marker
• graphite pencil and eraser
• Inktense crayons or watercolor pencils or watercolor

Inktense crayons are a bit like watercolor pencils, their color becomes more intense once brushed over with water

Here is an example of selective coloring with a contour drawing.

You can work from life or from a reference picture, here I used the black and white version of a picture of my daughter.

I recommend you work with pencil first,  especially on portraits so you can make as many corrections as you want to before adding ink.

Keep the drawing very simple, basically just a contour drawing and you can decide later if you want to add more details in certain areas.

When you are satisfied with your pencil drawing, you can go over it with a ball point pen, dipping pen, marker or a fine liner. If you are going to use water later on for the selective coloring, make sure that your pen is water-resistant.

You can then erase your pencil lines.

You can then decide if you want to add more details in some areas. Here I am adding some circular designs on the top.

I did draw the outlines of the designs with pencil and filled them only in the areas where they were not hidden by the hair.

In this case I want to add selective coloring on the hair so I am adding more details to the hair.

Drawing hair can be a bit tricky, but you will get nice results if you go line by line following the direction of the hair.

You have many options to add selective color to a drawing but in that case I chose Inktense pencils. They are like watercolor crayons and you get an intense color when you wash over them with a brush.

I am a Blick Art Materials affiliate and I receive a small compensation for sales. That does not effect in any way the cost of the purchaser’s order but it helps me keeping the content of this blog free.

Derwent Inktense Blocks Watersoluble ink blocks that bring a new sense of freedom to the drawing and painting experience, Derwent Inktense Blocks can be used dry or wet. Dry, they deliver pure, vibrant color. When wet, they create a translucent ink-like paint that can be worked over when dry. – Set of 12

Go over the areas you just colored with a clean brush and water.

You can still see the marker lines and texture underneath the color.

The finished drawing.

Here are some other ideas of selective coloring

Simple contour drawings with selective coloring

These 4 drawings are part of the Big Picture, a collective art project open to anyone anywhere in the world.

This drawing has been uploaded in the Big Picture Art Project, you can see it here.

This drawing has been uploaded in the Big Picture Art Project, you can see it here.

Drawing by Charlotte Pelissier: This drawing has been uploaded in the Big Picture Art Project, you can see it here.

Selective coloring on life drawings

 

A bit of color on the background and the hair

Selective coloring on the background and the hair

India ink painting with a touch of red watercolor

See a step by step demo for this Indian ink painting with red watercolor here.

If you made some drawings with selective coloring, you are welcome to upload them to the Big Picture Art project, it is free to participate and open to anyone anywhere in the world.