#1 Adult Colouring Tutorial – How NOT to make a colourful mess!

Colouring fans have asked me how to manage colour better. “I just make a mess” is a comment I hear or read. Using my cute bunny free download, I’ll demonstrate how I deliberately direct colour for balance & colour harmony.

I have decided to make a series of helpful mini adult colouring tutorials to answer and excite those who love colouring in. I encourage you to invite your friends and family to take a look – and keep an eye on my Youtube channel!

My tutorials will be about having FUN and resolving any blockage that may spoil the enjoyment of this creative activity.

Before we start make sure you sign up to my blog newsletter so you don’t miss a post: HERE

Done that? Okay, now let’s get to it!…

Rules for colouring in…

First rule is – THERE ARE NO RULES! Please don’t spoil the joy of colouring in by putting pressure on yourself to perform! There are no rules – just experiment – be brave and play!

The tutorial below is thoughts out loud for you to read. I share only for you to borrow – or not. they are ideas that may help you understand a little about distributing colour not colour theory 101.

ENJOY your colouring tutorial and chillax

1. Set up…

First: Download and print your free colouring page

For this colouring tutorial I began with markers and printed on copy paper. Copy paper isn’t my first preference but it’s inexpensive and most likely what you will want to use so I am going with that. The markers I am using are Bic brand and I find they go on smoothly. Again, most likely something you may have in your kit. Use what you have (pencils or markers) but one I would stay away from is connector pens. I do not like connector pens – I repeat – I do not like them at all! Do yourself a favour and pass them back to the kids or throw them in the bin! They show up every line and often pill papers. Why spend all that time on your colouring page for lesser results?

Make sure you have something dispensable and smooth like a magazine under your page to catch the ink bleeding through.

2. Making a start with a tickle, tickle…

Pick one colour – any colour. It doesn’t really matter but I prefer to go with lighter colours first. There are reasons why I do this which I will explain later. I chose a lime green colour to begin.

YOU NEED TO WORK SUPER LIGHTLY with markers and copy paper. I literally tickle the paper lightly with very little pressure at all. The markers bleed out so you have to control them by using next to no pressure. I lift the paper in one hand as I tickle the paper with the marker in the other hand.

We we want to distribute the first colour around the design evenly. When you deposit colour evenly, it helps balance the overall appearance so work the illustration all over as you go rather than from one central point. If you want to draw attention to one area, you can deposit the colour into a localised area and nowhere else, drawing your eyes to the difference.

3. Liberate yourself with some doodling…

Pick another colour you think will work with the first and again colour in individual areas picking your spacing as you go.

As you colour sections watch to see if the section you are about to colour will touch another of the same section. Try to avoid this if you can or it will look like one larger segment. That may or may not look even – you decide.

You’ll see here I started taking liberties with the illustration. Instead of colouring in the cloud, I wanted less blue so I did swirls of blue instead. I them used a darker blue to draw dots over the swirls. Have some fun with some of the shapes as you go. I have some shading in mind for the face so I coloured it this way instead.

Illustrations are not written in stone – they’re just lines – no rules!

Doodle  away and play with the shapes as you go.

On the butterfly I did an outline inside the wing for some blue instead of fill in with blue. I did this because I wanted to reserve the butterfly for another colour but still ties in the colour blue.

I was undecided about blue on the ground but in a later stage I added blue to one of the strips on the ground too.

4. Opposites are attractive…

Now we can look for a colour that will ‘POP’ against the first two. The green and blue are pretty harmonious but when i puts a purple against it we start to see the colours bounce off each other.  Purple is made from red and blue, and so wee have now introduced red into the mix (disguised as purple for now). I did nothing fancy with the purple except colour in as many sections as I could to make it work evenly with the first two colours.

I think this combination works so I could do 2 things at this stage:

1. work different shades of one the same colours; blue, green or purple

OR

2. add another colour with red in it but similar in tone (lightness)

I decided to add pink because the purple was almost a pink and I had tested my markers on paper before and noticed i had a similar colour I could use.

At this stage I am also thinking about how many remaining section I have left and how many colours that allowed for (so they don’t touch too much) *Note: Don’t stress about this as you can always go back and add some of the original colours. I was being extra careful as I knew this was a tutorial and I needed to capture the images with all the colours completed at each step. You don’t have to bother with this 🙂

5. Light and dark working together…

My son picked this dark purple earlier and insisted I use it. It was a good colour but it is dark. This is the stage I wanted to bring it in. Now we are using tonal contract (a darker colour against the lighter colours) to make another ‘POP’ Notice how the illustration really comes to life now?

Again, I looked to distribute the shapes evenly though my options are narrowing. A bit more ‘doodling’ on the ground and by adding the grass – burnt grass?

I ignored the lines on the side of his head as I coloured in half round shapes, taking liberty with the lines again.

I also ran over the eyes and antenna tips with the dark colour to lift out a few important details.

Whose the boss of your colouring? YOU!

6. To white or not to white, that is the question…

We have an option here to leave some white space or not. You don’t have to colour in everything with…colour. You have the option of leaving some areas white or using black.

As my colouring page is in sepia (not black line) I am avoiding black. My darkest dark will be the line and the dark brown-purple. But I will leave some white in the face. Remember what I said about loacalised colour in one area drawing attention. In this scenario I want you to look at his face. It isn’t so easy with all the white space around the rabbit but it will help draw the eyes to his face.

I left a few small places white but filled the rest in a dark pink.

Now for a little shading…

7. Shading and a little extra…

You could stop here (or even the stage before this but I wanted to do some shading to push this even further for the tutorial.

Markers are not that friendly when it come to shading. I prefer to switch to pencils for this stage. Using darker versions of the colours I picked the areas where I wanted to create a gradient effect; particularly the in the face.

Lately, I added a bit of white back in with a white ink pen.

This is the end result.

Check out Positively Quote Colouring Book

Adult colouring books by Kayleen West

 

Above: A 20 second video of me using the pencil on the ear. To show you how simple the fur shading is.

Below: Close up the face and final details.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

 

Get Your Free colouring pages!

For a limited time, this little fella will be available to download for personal use. I’ll keep the free colouring pages up for a time as space permits. Go grab your bunny and join in on the fun!

I encourage you to share photos of  you colouring on social media. Please let me know. I love when the free colouring pages are appreciated. It will inspire me to do more.

DOWNLOAD THIS COLOURING PAGE