How to change background colour and colour of pencil drawing

[bethanie]

Hi all!

For a bit of context before I ask this, I am an illustrator and use graphite pencil, so everything I do is black and white. I would like to take my black and white pencil illustrations and select the whole of the pencil markings and change the colour of them to anything I want. I would also like to change the background/underlay colour from white to any other colour.

I'm sure this is actually very simple but I can't figure it out. Something to do with layers... 

Also, I don't want to go around and select my drawing, I want the whole of the drawing (where any white shows through) to be changed to the background colour. 

 

I've attached one of my drawings as an example. E.g how would I make the background light pink and the drawing red? I've also attached an example of what I mean from another artist. 

 

Hope someone can help! It would revolutionize my work if I knew how to do these two simple changes. Please let me know the idiot proof step by step if you know. 

 

Many thanks

Bethanie

 

 

[h_d]

Assuming you mean in Affinity Photo, here's one way.

Add a Channel Mixer  Adjustment, choose the Green output channel and adjust the green slider until you get a pink background:

Now add a Recolour Adjustment. Your background will change colour temporarily, but drag the Recolour Adjustment below the Channel Mixer Adjustment in the Layers panel and all should be well:

You can now use the sliders in the Recolour Adjustment to set the colour, saturation and lightness of your illustration:

I expect there are other ways too..

Cheers,

H

 

 

[bethanie]

Hi H

 

Thank you so much, I can't wait to get home and try this out later! So kind of you. 

 

Many thanks

Bethanie 

[Dazmondo77]

Theres a few ways to do this, although my favourite would be to use blend ranges to knock the white off to transparent on the image then use the the image as a mask which gives you loads os flexibility for altering colours on the fly:

 

[bethanie]

Geez that looks complicated!! Thank you so much for the video, maybe if I do it a tiny bit at a time I will grasp it. 

 

[bethanie]

I played around with it for ages last night, doing different colours using the channel mixer adjustment and the recolour adjustment layers; but I find that I can't actually get the range of colours I want, I'll attach the images later to show you what I mean. What do you think is the simplest way of changing a selected part of the drawing but getting any colour you want? I thought there was a tool with the whole colour spectrum...

 

Many thanks

B

[Dazmondo77]

1 hour ago, bethanie said:

Geez that looks complicated!! Thank you so much for the video, maybe if I do it a tiny bit at a time I will grasp it. 

Once you've had a mess around with it, it's not at all complicated and also opens up loads of other options - for instance colouring different elements within the drawing:

 

[bethanie]

Hello! I'm sorry I don't get how to do a rectangle for the base background colour...

I've attached a screenshot of what it looks like when I load the image initially and am ready to start. What's the first step? Still not sure how to use the full spectrum of colours. 

Below are what I came up with yesterday by messing around with the channel mixer and recolour layers, but still - limited range of colours, all fairly garish.

 

Many thanks

B

[Dazmondo77]

I think these look great 👍