First of all, you need to start with opening the sketch in your favorite graphics program. Myself, I use mostly Paint Shop Pro 7 and 8. I do most of my "work" in 7, and use 8 for the "trimmings" and finishing off an image.
So, step one, I chose this sketch (below) to colour in.
Step one: Choosing an image.
step two: getting ready to colour the first part.
Now that you have this selected, you need to make sure you have it set to "point to point" selection.
Alright, now, this is where the fun begins; you are almost ready to actually start colouring!
Step three: "tracing" with point to point selection
I find it easier to ZOOM in on the area I want to select. (the zoom tool is the one on the tool bar on the left hand border of psp7, that looks like a little magnifying glass).
now that you have an area selected, it should look something like this:
you can get ready to colour it in...
Step Four: Your first splash of colour:
Set up your flood fill tool, as shown below:
now that thats set up, go ahead and click within the pulsing outline with your flood fill too, and voila!
your first splash of colour!
*{a handy little side note, make sure your not trying to colour a grayscaled image, as it won't work, unless you copy and paste it onto a tranparent image. If anyone needs this explained, IM me and I will walk you through it.}
Now that you know how to select your area, keep following the steps to go and do each colour you want done. Make sure you do ALL of one colour while you have it set up, as "going back" to do it is hard, as you can "lose" the colour you were using...
I filled in the male elf next:
After the male and female elves bodies were filled in, I added some colours to some of the "details" of their faces, accessories, etc...
After doing some "detailing" I decided to fill in the male elf's hair...
Next, I coloured in the female elf's hair, as well as her hairpiece...
Step Five: preparing for a background...
This part can be a little tricky. We need to prepare this image to be "placed" on a background.
To simplify things, Im going to use a very simple background that I drew up of a couple trees.
But first, you need to use your selection tool, and CUT out all of the white from the background of the drawing.
The CUT tool will be found on the top banner of PSP 7. It looks like a pair of scissors.
just make your selection of all the plain white in the background image, and click the scissors tool. I usually click it about 5 times, to make sure all the background is completely cut out.
When you are finished doing that, you will have something that looks like this:
(the grey and white checkerboard means that the background is now transparent.
This is the background I decided to use to put the couple elves on...
Step Six: Pasting image to background image.
Follow these steps to put your image on the background image:
Now, right click on the background image, and when the menu pops up, chose the one that says "Paste as new layer," and you will have an image that looks like this:
Step Seven: Finishing touch. (optional)
I decided to add a finishing touch, which is a picture frame.
I decided to use "Photo Edge 01" from the drop down menu, then just click on next.
I also chose "frame inside the image" because I thought that it looked better.
and I ended up with an image like this:
Now, to buttonize it, and it will be perfect, and finished:
Voila! Finished:
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