5 Easy Tips to Instantly Improve your Coloring Pages

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why your adult coloring pages just don’t look as good as the ones you see online, today’s blog post is for you.

We’re going to go through five easy tips that anyone can do that will help your coloring pages go from OK to amazing.

These are simple tips that you can do with any medium and any type of coloring page.

The first thing is shading.

Now, when I say shading, I know some of you might freak a little bit and think “Oh no! Shading, blending light sources…” thats too hard!

But please don’t worry.

What I’m going to show you is not the full in-depth version on how to do shading. This is a very basic beginner’s version that can help make any coloring page look more interesting, without learning about light sources or how shadows work.

First, let’s look at some examples of what we’re talking about.

Now, let me show you how to do this.

First, choose your colours. Try to find colors that have a similar hue (learn about hues in this post) or that look like the same color, but slightly darker or lighter than each other. You can test them on a scrap piece of paper to find the best color matches.

For example, if you’re using yellow, try to match it with a darker yellow (or better, an orange or brown).
If you’re using blue, match a medium blue with a dark blue, or a light blue with a medium blue.

Instead of just adding black, the best way to do shading is to actually add a darker version of the same color. When it comes to blending your colors together, we simply press a bit lighter and we overlap them.

When you first start this, the best option is to go lighter and then come back and go over it again. So by working in light layers, you give yourself a lot more room to create a smooth gradient, and as you can see, that was actually quite easy to get the two colors to blend together just by doing multiple layers. (Watch me demonstrate this in the video at 04:00)

The lighter you can do this transition, the better the transition will be. You can use this trick in large or small areas.

If you’re wanting a more dramatic or more obvious look, you simply need to pick a bigger variety of colors. So you might use the same yellow, but maybe go more towards a darker orange or brown instead of the orange we’ve used and this time will use a darker brown.

Colors that are similar will create a more subtle gradient. Colors that are further apart will create a more dramatic gradient.

You CAN use black, especially if you are only working from a small set of pencils. But you’ll need to use it very lightly because it can quickly ruin a nice gradient, and doesn’t always blend well with lighter colors. Where possible, I always recommend using a darker version of the same color instead of black.

Now, you might be wondering why I’ve chosen brown when I’m working with yellow. Well, if we actually think about our color wheel and think about where yellow sits, a brown and even the orange is very, very close to the yellow. In fact, if you darken in the yellow and add black to it, other than being a bit more gray, you will get very similar to this brown, which is why I’ve used these.

Now, let me interrupt with a quick tip.

Shading and gradients are a lot easier to do with sharp pencils, so make sure you keep them nice and sharp and sharpen them regularly as you’re working. If you’re working with a blunt pencil, you won’t have as much control over the gradient.

When doing this with markers, alcohol markers (e.g. Copic markers) blend really easily, especially on the right paper. But if you’ve got cheaper markers or if you’ve got some that aren’t alcohol-based, they’re probably not going to be easy to blend together.

Here’s my trick – I put down a layer of markers (as my lighter color) and then use my pencils for the shading.

The thing I love about using markers and pencils together is that you get the brightness and the vibrancy of the markers, but you still get the shading possibilities of the pencils.

We don’t just have to shade with darker colors. We can also create gradients with colors that are next to each other on the color wheel, otherwise known as analogous colors.

These can great some beautiful gradients when shaded together – even in nature, like a sunset or rainbow!

In this example, I have used blue, purple and pink together, blending each of the colors together as they overlap. This page is still in progress (I started it about 2 years ago! Whoops) and so I’ll be going over these colors again in a few more layers to make the colors more vibrant.

It’s time for some highlights! And I love doing this with a white pen.

I’m not going to go in depth now on how to use the white pen in this post, but you can find my top tips here and see my review of all the different white pens I could find to choose one that works for you. Instead, I just want to show you some quick examples of how this can bring a page to life.

Here are some examples of different highlights you can do with a white pen:

If you want to learn more about using a white pen, check out this post with my top tips!

Using a black pen gives you an opportunity to add to the original artwork on your coloring pages. You can add your own patterns, details, or make a kid’s coloring page into coloring pages online for adults with some extra details.

Now, there are two important considerations when using a black pen.

First, choose a pen that has the same size or smaller tip than the lines on your page.

Some pens are thicker and some are thinner. Adding thick lines or patterns to a coloring page with thin lines will overpower the image. It is always better to use a pen that is the same size or smaller than the artwork already on the page.

Second, test your black pens on a blank piece of paper first, along with the medium you are using.

If you’re planning on using the black pen and then coloring with pencils, try that on a blank piece of paper first. Some pen ink lines will run or smudge when you go over them with colors, especially if you are coloring with markers.

Alternatively, you can add the black lines at the very end after you’ve done all your coloring.

In some coloring pages there will be obvious opportunities  to add textures – for example, if you’re coloring someone wearing a dress, you could draw a fabric texture on the dress.

Wood, glitter, stone, bricks, fur, skin, hair, glass, water, metal, gold… there are so many different textures that you can add to your coloring pages.

I have put together a YouTube playlist and a Pinterest board to help you with this because there are endless opportunities for different patterns and textures.

Some textures are a lot easier than others to create. Some of the tutorials you’ll find online will be too advanced for you until you’ve had a chance to practice the basics and learn new skills along the way.

But there are a lot of easy ways that we can create cool effects as well.

We can also use other mediums to create fun textures to bring our pages to life, like gel pens, metallic markers or glitter.

You can even use other mediums that aren’t traditionally made for coloring pages, like eyeshadow, coffee grounds, or watercolor paints.

In this example, I used a glitter eyeshadow and just brushed a light layer on top of my coloring page to make the words sparkly. (I just used my fingers but probably should have used a brush!)

Here are some other texture tutorials you can try:

• Galaxy background (with pencils)
• Watercolor effect (using Crayola markers)
• Coloring hair (digital coloring with Procreate)
• Coloring skin (pencils or markers)
• Coloring fur (with pencils)
• Drawing gemstones (with pencils)

There are also plenty of tutorials on Pinterest and YouTube from beginner to advanced, so you’ll be able to find something for your skill level and give it a go. I challenge you to try something new!

And as you try more and more different textures, it will get easier and easier, and you can start trying things that are a little bit more complicated.

If you know me, it’s probably no surprise that my final tip is to use a color palette!

When choosing colors that look good together, you have a few options:

First, you can learn to use the color wheel – like this video shows you!

Or you can just ‘wing it’ and pick colors and hope for the best and look. Some people just have a great eye for what looks good and what doesn’t. In my experience doing this, I end up reverting back to the same colors over and over. (And I can tell which colors I use a lot, because they on my shortest pencils!)

Finally, you can use a color palette!

Color palettes allow you to find new colors that you haven’t tried before.

(These are some examples of color palettes from The Color Catalog)

Tip: When choosing a color palette, you don’t have to match the colors EXACTLY. Color palettes are a STARTING POINT. There are no rules that say you have to use the exact colors from the palette, or only the colors from the palette.

In this example, I have used the general inspiration of this palette to create this page. You can see I’ve used the pinks and yellow but I didn’t use the orange (I couldn’t find a close match so I decided to remove it). I then found the green and I decided to pick both a light and a dark green, and I chose a teal instead of the blue.

If you are using the Color Catalog, you can find a palette based on a color or keyword. For example, you can search for “forest” color combinations if you are coloring an image based in a forest. Then you can choose the palette that gives the mood or vibe you are wanting to create in your picture.

Once you’ve chosen your 5-6 main colors from your color palette, you can get a bigger variety of colors by using some of those things we talked about in our first tip –  find a darker and lighter version of each color so you can create your own shades and gradients, to make your color range a little bit bigger.

So I just wanted to show you one final picture where I have taken all of these things we’ve talked about and I put them together.

Now, you might look at this and think “that looks too advanced”, but let’s just break it down:

• I’ve used dark blue and light blue gradient / shading on the words.
• The background is simply a dark blue, blended into a medium blue, and then into white.
• I used a blue pen to add details in the butterflies wings. Then slight shading when coloring them in.
• There are a lot of white highlights. Lots of dots on the hair and background to add a “sparkly” feel. A few stars too.
• The hair has been done in 2 steps: First, I choose a dark and light color and picked areas I thought would naturally be darker (areas that are hidden from light) and areas that would stand out. This was a bit of a guessing game, because it was my first time coloring hair! I did this with Copic markers. Second, I used a pencil on top of the marker to draw lots of fine lines (very lightly!) to create the hair texture.
• The face is probably the hardest part of this picture, but essentially it involves the shading technique, with a little more guidance. Use a photo of an actual face or tutorial to work out which areas of the face should naturally be darker, and which areas are lighter.
• And finally, I used a color palette to help me decide on the blue in the background and butterflies of this photo, because they worked well with the browns and skin towns.

At first, this coloring page might look a little bit more advanced. But when you break it down into steps, it’s achievable even for a beginner.

You’ll get there if you just keep practicing, work on implementing some of these beginner coloring tips, and stretch yourself a little more each time you color.

I would love to see what you create from this guide, so please pop over to my Facebook group and show me what you’ve colored!