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.
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.
Originally from France, I have been living in North Vancouver, Canada for the past 20 years.
My work has been collected and exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally. I am also part of the Art Rentals and sales program of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Many of my paintings have been published in Art books and magazines (Artist Magazine, Watercolor Artist Magazine, Acrylic Magazine, International Artist Magazine). I wrote 2 art instruction books with North Light/F+W Books.
I have been writing for the last 5 years for my blog: paintingdemos.com, that has a mailing list of about 10 000 subscribers and about 20 000 visitors per month.
I am an active member in the community, as a co-founder of the North Shore Art crawl, a co-founder of a weekly life drawing group, a board member of the North Vancouver Arts Council, and have been invited as a juror for public art, art grants and juried exhibitions. You can read more about my collaborations here.
Hi Folks, not ben doing any art lately disappointingly too many important sidetracks. However, I like the idea being suggested for the mural of drawings so with a little luck & determionation I am aiming to send in something to add to the plan. Good luck enjoy your messages & workshops so thanks for sending them. Kind regards Rob.
Comments (2)
Rob
Hi Folks, not ben doing any art lately disappointingly too many important sidetracks. However, I like the idea being suggested for the mural of drawings so with a little luck & determionation I am aiming to send in something to add to the plan. Good luck enjoy your messages & workshops so thanks for sending them. Kind regards Rob.
Sandrine Pelissier
Thanks Rob ! We can’t wait to see what drawings you can make for the mosaic 🙂