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Coloring your drawing can be a simple process. First you start with the flats. You may want to put each color on a separate layer so that is easier to select it later on. Ignore the fact that I did not do this for this tutorial. For a complex drawing I can have as many as 80+ layers running at once. If I make a change I don't like on a new layer I can just delete the layer with no harm done. If I am drawing anything in I put it on a layer above and then merge it down when I like it.

Your lineart should be transparent. If this concept confuses you, read this tutorial.

You want to get a locked copy of your lineart on the top layer, an unlocked copy of your lineart under that to color on, and a background beneath that. You lock the layer by clicking on that square next to the word 'lock' on the layers palette. (Be sure you click on the layer that you want to affect.)

1. If your lineart is made up of closed shapes (like most of mine) you can select each area that you want to color by pressing (W) and using the Magic Wand.

Once you see the marching ants around your selection go to select > modify > expand > 2 pixels. Expanding by this much should help you fill the area cleanly so that there are not many areas that do not get filled in. If the marching ants annoy you, you can toggle invisibility by hitting CRTL-H [Command-H on the Mac].

Now you can fill the selection by hitting Alt-backspace, and deselect by hitting Ctrl+D [Command+D on the Mac] Do this for all of the flats. If there are some blank areas left, just color them in with the paintbrush tool. But what if your lines are not perfectly closed?

2. If your lines are not closed, you can use the Pen Tool (P) to smoothly select your areas by hand. If the pen tool confuses you, read this tutorial first.I used this for the eyes since they were not closed shapes. If you are coloring a scanned pencil sketch (As I explained in this tutorial.) there is a good chance that you will use this method a lot. Once you select it with the pen tool and have a closed path, right-click > make selection. Now you have a nice little selection to fill with color just like I did in step 1.

Below I have filled in all of my flat colors and I am now ready to shade her if I want to. I changed the eye colors a bit by selecting them and going to image > adjust > hue/saturation and will probably change them again after I lay down some shading. So far here are the flats:

Next tutorial: Cell shading.

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Coloring: Basic Flat Colors