Coloring my lines - what am I doing wrong?

[tangodelta]

Hello Everyone!

I recently completed a drawing in Krita and it took way longer than I wanted.

A cookie a day... by tangodelta

I believe that this is mostly due to the way I was working on it. Getting the ink done properly was one thing, since I’m not that confident with my lines. But the coloring just spiraled of of control and took forever. As a result I didn’t even try shading (another place where I need to improve), because I really wanted to get this done in time.

my workflow on this drawing

1. When the sketch is done, I draw my lines:
   

   

2. I select the insides of the object with the contiguous selection tool (aka wand) and press insert to create a new layer:
   

   

3. I fill the selection with my color. I use a brush or the bucket fill tool. Here, for the sake of simplicity I went with the bucket:
   

   

4. I unselect the selection and move the layer below the lines:
   

   

is this how it’s supposed to be?

With a rectangle it’s easy enough. But with a bigger project I had many, many more of those layers. I admit, I was working late and probably I should’ve merged those layers but was afraid of. I went into “I have no idea what I’m doing” mode.

I would often find myself coloring the insides of the ink layer, because I would forget to insert a new layer.

Just look at this mess

alternatives I know of

I’ve been using Krita for some time and I’m aware of the colorize mask and G’Mic. I’ve never used G’Mic, but I’ve used the colorize mask in other projects. The reason why this time I didn’t use it is because recalculating the mask can take quite a while and AFAIK the algorithm runs in a single thread. This time I was using my laptop which has a much less powerful CPU compared to my PC.

Colorize Mask

Tutorial: Coloring with "Colorize-mask" in Krita

So… what are the “best practices” for handling coloring?

Other resources I’ve went over

https://krita-artists.org/t/my-colors-are-always-above-the-lineart-how-to-order-layer-for-coloring/4824/7

How to color in Krita

Hi, yes I have tried this, but get not expected results Make line in closed lineart section (t-shirt) [grafik] Then I got this result if I click on update [grafik]

Layers and flat painting

For flatting your line art there is colorize mask in Krita. check this video by @Deevad . When you get the flats done, you can split them into one color per layer by the split layer option. Which is under layer > Split > Split layer . It will give you layers with transparency lock if the option is chosen in the dialog box. then you just need to select the color layer and paint. A tip is to use “R” key to select the layer quickly. Hope it helps

HOW TO COLOR on KRITA (Basic)

[tusooa]

Colorize mask is a good thing. If it is taking too long, you can try to select “limit to layer bounds” to see if it speeds up. Or split your lineart into multiple layers and do one by one.

To work with large amounts of layers you can make groups of them so that you can sort it out better.

[tangodelta]

Thank you

I was doing that already, or trying. Looks like I kind of knew what I was doing, but… forgot?

I’m working on another piece. I want to color and shade it, so I’ll test G’Mic vs. colorize mask.