Coloring Doodles with Paper

and playing with the Twirl filter

(Don’t miss the coupon at the bottom of yesterday’s post — I’ve extended the expiration date so it doesn’t expire until tomorrow! And join me for a speed scrap tonight at 9 pm Eastern in my BlogFrog forum!)

Last month I wrote an article for The Daily Digi with some nifty tricks for bringing color to your doodles. I mentioned at the end of the article that you could clip paper to the colors to add texture, but I figured a step-by-step wouldn’t hurt. You may find it helpful to read the first article to familiarize yourself with the process before continuing.

Coloring Digital Doodles with Your Digi Scrap Papers

1. Drag a doodle into your layout or document. (For the sake of simplicity, my layout only shows the doodle I’m working with, a lollipop from Digital Stamps: Movie Theater.) I left my doodle black, but you could use the tips in the article at TDD to change the color of the doodle if you wish.

2. Select your Magic Wand tool and click inside the area you want to color first. I clicked inside the candy party of the lollipop. Then go to Select > Modify > Expand … this expands your selection to ensure there won’t be even a pixel of transparency next to the doodle line.

3. Choose a small number — 2 pixels works well.

4. Create a new layer UNDER your lollipop layer. Use ALT+Backspace to fill the selection. Hit CTRL+D to deselect. (We’ll be clipping a paper to the color fill, so it doesn’t matter what color you choose — mine is white because that was the active foreground color.) Repeat steps 2 thru 4 for the next area you want to color.

5. Create another new layer UNDER the lollipop layer and use ALT+Backspace to fill the selection. Hit CTRL+D to deselect. (I only have 2 areas to color in this doodle, but you would repeat steps 2-5 for each area that needs color.)

6. Drag a paper onto your layout directly ABOVE the layer you want to clip it to. I dragged in a white paper to clip to the stick layer, so my white paper is directly above the stick layer in my layers palette. (To clip in PSE, use CTRL+G. To clip in PSCS, use CTRL+SHIFT+G.)

7. Drag the next paper onto your layout directly ABOVE the layer you want to clip it to. I chose a blue striped paper to “color” the candy part of my lollipop. (Both papers are from my new collab with Lyndsay Riches, Now Playing.)

*Note: If you have more layers to color, you would continue pulling in papers and clipping them to the various layers until your doodle was colored. I’m now going to show you how you can modify the paper.

Manipulating Digi Scrap Papers with the Twirl Filter

1. Adjust your paper as necessary. I wanted my stripes smaller, so I resized the paper … and rotated it so that the stripes were going a different direction.

2. With your paper layer active, go to Filter > Distort > Twirl.

3. Change the number in the box … bigger numbers create more twirling/swirling. Negative numbers reverse the direction of the twirl.

Below you can see 2 examples, one at 150 degrees “twirl” and another at 337 degrees. As you can see, the twirl effect on the second image is greater.

4. Move the paper as needed. I played around with moving my paper to see how it changed … I eventually moved it up and to the right a bit, and then left it at that.

And there you go, a fun and clever way to color your doodles. Play around with other patterns to dress your doodles in polka dots, argyle, and more!

P.S. Don’t forget to stop by the blog tomorrow for a freebie!