Colouring Challenges!

Do you often get bored of colouring in the same way and wonder about other techniques to give interest and individuality to your finished pages? Welcome to the ultimate list of colouring challenges! Here you will find an abundance of ideas to change up your colouring and try new things. Without further ado, let's get started! I will include photo examples of my own colouring where I can.

1. Sectional Colouring

Draw shapes on the illustration and only colour inside them. Alternatively, colour everything outside of the shapes in greyscale, sepia or black it out completely. You can even do a day/night contrast like I did with the owl- there is lots of ways you can use this technique. Different types of shapes, diagonal lines that alternate between colour and black & white: it's totally up to you.

2. Use only one colour family

As shown in my picture from Dagdrommar, I used only shades of green to colour the entire picture. This gives a multi-tonal effect that makes use of the spectrum of different tones you find in larger sets of pens & pencils, and also takes the often difficult decision of choosing a colour palette out of the equation.

3. Pointillism

Pointillism is the art of using dots to colour your entire picture. It sounds tedious and time-consuming, but it's actually lots of fun! The trick is to make the dots darker & denser in shaded areas, and lighter/further apart in brighter areas. As you can see, the effect works really well and gives extra texture to the illustration.

4. Crosshatching

This technique is very similar to Pointillism in that it renders your illustration rather than colours it. Draw lines over the image, making sure the lines are further apart in lighter areas and closer together in areas of shade. You can then crosshatch over the top with lines in the opposite direction, in areas which are particularly dark like the apple of my lady's cheek and the top of her hair.

5. Use flag/team colours!

This just happens to be an image of Italy that I coloured with the Italian flag colours, but you can colour any image using the colours of your country's flag. You can even Google to find out what the crest for your City looks like and use those colours. If you have a favourite sports team, use the colours of the kit or the mascot. If you want to get nostalgic, use the colours of your school uniform!

6. Blend into white

You don't always have to blend into another colour for it to look good; the white of your page can work just as well, if not better. In the image opposite, I blended each colour out into white by using lighter & lighter pressure as I came to the centre/edge of the area. This technique gives the picture gorgeous shine and really makes it pop in a metallic kind of way, particularly as seen on the bug in the middle of the page.

7. Use a limited palette

You don't always need to use every colour you have to make an illustration look good- less is sometimes more! Try working with just two colours and see what you can achieve, I often find the less colours you use, the more an image stands out.

8. Go Galaxy!

Sometimes illustrations have wide open spaces that you have no idea what to do with. Sometimes there are prompts on the page asking you to fill the linework in with doodles- but what if you can't draw like me? Add a galaxy instead! This technique is surprisingly simple and I explained it step-by-step here.

Alternatively...

9. Go Gem!

Gems look amazing! Problem is, I see a heck of a lot of comments on groups from people who feel this technique is out of their league. Believe me, it's not! It's actually fairly easy as long as you have the golden tool: a white gel pen! Here are a couple of tutorials I made: one two, and here's a really great YouTube channel which teaches you how to colour all different types of gemstones.

10. Rainbow

The colours of the rainbow look so good together because they naturally blend into one another. Change it up by using different shades of the rainbow colours, so you could use more unusual tones like pastels or neons to create a unique rainbow that is unlike the standard.

11. Add a background

A background can really set off your colouring, and there are lots of ways to achieve them but my personal favourite is chalk pastels. You can buy them cheaply from lots of art stores & online, and they provide a natural seamless blend that looks lovely and soft. PanPastels are more expensive and have brighter pigments for a bolder look.

12. Go against the norm

Green leaves? Blue sea? Pah, normal is so last year. Mix it up by using unconventional colours, making your coloured pages look magical and ethereal like you've stepped into a twilight world where nothing is as it should be.

13. Add details

If you can draw, why not add extra things into the illustrations you're colouring? Even if you can't draw, everyone can trace! All you need is a printout of what you want to add and a light underneath to make it visible through the colouring book, explained here.

14. Use a Colour Wheel

If you can never decide which colours to use or don't know which colours go together well, use a colour wheel. All you have to do is select a colour to start with and the wheel will find you several other shades which complement or contrast the first.

15. Use pre-made palettes

Design Seeds is a super useful website which has pre-made palettes for you to choose from. You can start with a certain colour, or browse their colour collections for ideas.

Other ideas I haven't yet tried are:

• Colouring the whole picture in greyscale with only one piece in colour, eg. a grey heart with a red rose in the centre
  
• Colouring lightly around the edges of the image to create a glow effect
• Colouring a picture using every single art supply you have: paints, markers, pencils, pastels, etc.
  
• Colouring a picture with ballpoint pens
  

I hope you've enjoyed looking through this mega post and picked up some ideas for your future colouring projects! Please tag me on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram so I can see how you've interpreted the techniques.