Art/coloring style advice?

[jaeehaw]

i'm interested in starting a comic sometime in the future, but i feel like it takes me way to long to finish just one panel. what's your advice for developing an art style (including coloring) that would take 1-3 hours for a panel (or even just advice for getting quicker at art)? i have no problem spending a lot of time on a detailed panel instead of just having it being very mediocre, but i don't want to take forever just to complete one page

[Rowein]

I think the key doing a color comic is the color palette and illumination. If you use a minimal color palette in every panel and put some interesting light you can make it attractive an work in a few hours.

[shazzbaa]

Some of this honestly comes from practice. It sounds like you're not speaking from experience here -- have you tried out making comic pages, for practice? That's a worthwhile thing to do!! The first pages you make probably WILL take forever, just because it's something you've never done before, but once you get the hang of it you can see which parts of the process are big time sinks for you.

Keep in mind also, that More Detail doesn't automatically mean Better Art -- it's definitely possible to have simple art that isn't mediocre! You can be specific in your choices without also going overboard -- for example, adding a bunch of fancy moulding and detail to the chairs in your protagonist's dining room doesn't necessarily make the panel better, but thinking about what kind of chairs might be there rather than just drawing a vague rectangular lump will help a lot.

Last thing I'll say is that different techniques work for different people. Some people are fastest when they're picking colours out of their head; some people are way faster using swatches and throwing some layer styles over the whole thing. Some people skip straight from loose roughs to inks which helps their drawings to be lively and fast, but for me to do that would be slower, because taking the time to draw tight, planned out pencils lets me ink more quickly. So a lot of this is gonna be, drawing some pages, trying it out, and finding out what method works the fastest for you!

[TheFalseVyper]

I agree with @shazzbaa!

Experiment with some practice pages. It doesn't even have to be related to your comic, but it will help you have a better idea about what to expect.

[jaeehaw]

thank you, this is super helpful! i have tried making comic pages in the past but they were just paper and pencil so i didn't really worry about using colors and things like that. i'll definitely test out all of what you mentioned to see what works the best for me :')

[dawgofdawgness]

Definitely, experiment with color palettes. A tree doesn't have to be that exact shade of brown, leaves don't have to be a murky green, the sky doesn't have to be light blue... Play around!

[Luminosophy]

Getting quicker... honestly just pure practice. Developing a good eye for colour takes a long time but it can be sped up with observation. When I started colour theory I used a colour picker tool to select areas of shadow and light to understand how light bounces around and reflects/ refracts so on in photos. The more you understand the easier and faster it is to slap it all together.

[Hodge]

Took me soo much experimenting. The coloring style that works for you depends on a bunch of things like the style of the drawings, time, story, mood, etc. Though if time is an issue, and you want to do detailed drawings, I recommend avoiding linear coloring. That's when you just color objects in the color you think they are (apple is red, trees are green, etc). You should always try to consider the mood, lighting, or some way to unify the colors. Granted if you do linear coloring, you can use a bunch of layers like multiply, overlay, etc. to adjust the colors (or gradient maps), but I personally had to find a way to skip linear coloring (or any coloring that involved staying neatly within lines) for my comic. Then you can even think about things like filters, textures,and . . . uhh haha sorry I could go on and on.

But yeah, there's so many different ways to color that it takes a lot of experimenting to find the method that works for you. Maybe analyze how other artists color and you'll get some ideas.

[punkarsenic]

• not every panel is a masterpiece - its about the page overall, and only selected panels should be worth the extra effort
• try a limited palette - cutting down to 2-4 colours could improve your contrast and composition, and makes colouring so much quicker
• BATCHES! instead of working on one panel start to finish, sketch 20 panels, then ink, then colour, then letter. this increases production speed overall because youre not switching task every time you get into the swing of it
• drawing fast is mostly a habit youll pick up with time - try starting your drawing sessions with some timed gesture drawings to get you warmed up, and keep up that level of intuition.
• see if you can simplify your sketches, put more of the work into the inks.

[Mari]

Keep at it. The longer you draw the faster it becomes. Not like, in one sitting, but in general.
Coloring advice;
-Palette exercises
-Make swatches for your character, so the colours are consistent and easy to get
-If possible, have each character have a colour. What I mean by this, is that if a character's colour is, lets say blue, their clothes would be linked to that blue. Doesn't mean all clothes need to be blue, or cool tones, just a thread of consistency in their clothing choices.

[MK_Wizard]

I suggest having different layers and before colouring, doing cleanup so the lines are so smooth and clean, you can use the colour fill. After that, select the coloured section individually to add texture.

[ZombieOwl]

To keep it brief:
1) Practice, but I'm sure you already knew that ;D
2) Don't get caught up in trying to make it perfect. Even if it looks perfect today, it may not look perfect tomorrow or the next week, or year... Don't spend all your energy on perfecting one panel

Good luck!