Yesterday I got started on experimenting with ways of colouring my images, and possibly using the textures I made last week.
I've cropped in on areas of the image I made for page one, and experimented with colouring them in Photoshop and Illustrator:
(Left to right, top to bottom)
- In this one I used a limited colour palette of 5 shades of brown, along with a pop of red on a few elements. I also used the textures in this example (the textures are more visible in photoshop than in this lower resolution example), first colouring the textures and then using layer masks to apply them to the image.
- This is the most complicated of the techniques I have tried, applying different colour to line work and not just to the empty spaces in between. This technique is very time consuming but I do quite like the result as having al the line in one black or brown can make the image a bit too dark. I'm not too keen on this specific colour scheme (I think its a little too bright for the subject matter), but I think the technique would work if I applied one of the other palettes to it. I'd also like to try adding the textures to this to see how that looks.
- In this one I used very limited colour, just 4 colours applied to only certain areas of the image. This is useful for accentuating certain elements of the image, but I'm not too keen on it overall as I think the full colour is more effective, especially as this is intended for children.
- This is my favourite of the techniques at this stage, I coloured it in Adobe Illustrator so the effect is much neater and smoother. I think the colours here are the most effective, as there are enough colours to make each element stand out on its own, without being too much.
Ideally I would like to try and combine the techniques used in examples 1, 2 and 4. The textures in example 1, the coloured lines in example 2 and a colour palette similar to that in example 4.
I will be trying this today and continuing to experiment with alternative techniques during the week.