When I started looking for the best way to color Rock Garden, the first thing I tried was coloring them in Photoshop. Even with its myriad of effects, Photoshop didn't give the look I wanted. Coloring the cartoons digitally would have somewhat broken my resolve to use material and methods that are accessible to everyone, but I thought coloring was important enough to risk that. To my eye, Photoshop made them look too readymade. That was also my objection to drawing them in Photoshop.
The look I was seeking was to mimic early colorized black and white photos. If you've ever seen one, you might agree that it's unforgetable. It's about the softest use of color I can imagine. Sometimes not everything in the photo gets colored, but only certain parts. This can look especially interesting. In a way, it reminds me of drawings colored with art chalks, which I had used as a kid. I couldn't imagine any more perfect look for cartoons about everything and everyone old. Back to Walmart I went. My choices were limited, of course, to rudimentary watercolors, crayons, markers, and colored pencils. Watercolor would not work for coloring copy paper, of course. It would warp the paper too much. And markers wouldn't work, either. There's no way to adequately blend either watercolors or markers on copy paper.
I had read that it's a bad idea to color your original, and I agree with that. For one thing, you only get one chance to get it right, and that's too much pressure for me. For another, you lose the use of your original. You might want to print it in black and white some time. With the high cost of color printing, I can see why. Cartoon books printed in color cost about three times more than those printed in black and white.
Walmart carries both Rose Art and Crayola colored pencils as staple items. Serendipity was working for me on that. Both those brands have a wax base, which is ideal for use coloring copy paper. Expensive art brand colored pencils have an oil base, which tends to soak into the copy paper too much. The expensive pencils also look much more opaque and obscure all lines in the cartoon. They don't blend well on copy paper, either. Sometimes you get lucky with the first try, and so it was with the Rose Art and Crayola pencils.
Rose Art's largest box of colored pencils contains 72 colors, and Crayola's contains 50 colors. This is a pretty good palette. The Rose Art colors look more like Rock Garden to me, but I'd hate to do without either brand. It takes both to satisfy all the color requirements. As far as I know, these two brands are the most economical you can buy. I did get a box of colored pencils at the Dollar Store to try. Talk about The People's Art! They worked fairly well, but since the box contained only eight colors, that wasn't something I could use.
Several people recommended gel pens to color. I did try a few of those, but they didn't work well for me on copy paper. At one point I went nuts and ordered a huge set of expensive art pencils, plus other pencils from a variety of fancy schmancy brands. That's when I discovered that the economical Rose Art and Crayola worked much better for copy paper. It's funny how things develop, following their own peculiar course.
I also spent way too much money for several supposedly excellent sharpeners for colored pencils. Some of these are pretty expensive. They did not last at all. A few weeks' worth of use and they were toast. In the end, I bought some el cheapo sharpeners that came in packs of a dozen, the kind you can find at back-to-school time. They actually last better than the expensive ones! And when they get dull, it doesn't hurt a bit to throw them away.
Once I had settled on Rose Art and Crayola, I decided to treat myself and bought three leather pencil cases big enough to hold one of each color. That turned out to be a waste of money, not because the cases weren't nice, but because it was too much hassle to pull each pencil out of its elastic casing, use it, then put it back again. It got to be like a second job! Eventually, I put the very expensive set of colored pencils in the leather cases, and I never use either of them. I used the plastic trays from the set of expensive pencils to hold the Rose Art and Crayola ones. There were four trays. Stacking two on each side, they're a perfect fit for the sides of my drafting table. And the best part? They have exactly enough slots for one each of the Rose Art and Crayola pencils. I get a good laugh out of the fact that I spent a couple hundred bucks to get four perfect plastic trays.
In the next post, I'll get into coloring techniques with colored pencils. I know that I'm far from being an expert on the subject, but I'm happy to share what I've learned so far. And believe me, I'm still learning every day.
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