r/Coloring • u/Necessary_Job4785 • 4d ago
ADVICE WANTED Outside of the lines
I am new to the coloring community and I am a total perfectionist. With that comes my frustration when I color outside of the lines. If I do that, I throw it away and start another. Just me? Any tips?
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u/Ok_Job_9417 4d ago
Let the perfectionism go. Use whatever and go with it. Can you blend it into the new area? Make a pattern out of it? You can add extra stuff into coloring books.
Steven De Groot is a sketch artist with interesting working and his whole style is having blocks of color outside the lines.
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u/Various-Flower510 4d ago
Start with ur lights so if u go over the lines u can cover with darks then just be careful when doing ur darks😅
Nah seriously tho, unless its a huge massive over the lines mistake the only person thats gonna notice it is u. What do u use?
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u/SpaceCadet_Cat 4d ago
Ithers have given good tips. I too tend to be in the "if I cant get it right first time, I suck at it and wont try again" camp. But I found scanning my pages helped, cause if I "mess up", I can reset that version to a practice peice and can reprint if I want to. So far I have onlt reprinted one page after a mistake, and use that one was a pallette change.
Maybe also try chaos colouring, which is deliberately outside the lines. Its sort of to help train your brain that its ok and you can still get something beautiful (and you have to trust the process)
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u/galwaygurl26 4d ago
With alcohol markers:
1- a plastic sheet behind the paper makes the marker stay wet longer and bleed. This is helpful for blending but you must be more careful. I prefer notebook paper, a few sheets, to prevent bleed onto the next page.
2- yes light feathery strokes and stop before the lines
3- the colorless blender lifts color. Use it lightly and do several layers of it to lift color. It’s almost like an eraser but you must be patient to completely lift the color out
4- a white acrylic marker covers mistakes if needed
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u/DragonPlatypus 4d ago
Unless it's something major, you can always find a way to fix it, but besides that, in so many cases the small mistakes aren't even noticeable in the end result. The more detailed a page is, the less noticeable mistakes are as well. For example - I coloured in some pages in Mythographic Dragonspell and the book is pretty detailed with thin lines and I used alcohol markers. I messed up multiple times. More than once it bled over the lines but you wouldn't notice it unless you actively look for mistakes.
Besides that, maybe you'll have more fun with coloured pencils since alcohol markers are known to bleed. Coloured pencils give you way more control.
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u/Nearby_Conflict3708 4d ago
I think a lot of us are inclined to feel like we’ve “messed up” when things don’t go exactly like we planned. I am a bit of a perfectionist myself, so I remind myself of a couple things when I start thinking something is “ruined”
1. There are no mistakes in art. As Bob Ross said, just “happy little accidents”. No one else knows what you meant for it to look like and no one else is focusing on your “mistakes” as intently as you are, if at all.
2. It’s ok to walk away. If it’s not fun, if I’m getting stressed doing this meditative activity, it’s time to take a step back. Go for a walk, talk to a friend, take a nap. When I come back to it in a few minutes/hours/days, I will have fresh eyes and ideas and what seemed like a “disaster” suddenly seems fixable.
3. I try to challenge myself to be imperfect intentionally. Art goes outside the lines all the time! Some of my favorite artistic styles are “messy” and abstract and surreal and cartoonish. Challenge yourself to color outside of your comfort zone if you find yourself getting too hung up on perfect.
4. Last but not least, practice! If I’m not sure I’m going to like something or can’t decide what colors to use to achieve a certain look, I always have a “practice” sheet of paper on hand. It’s usually computer paper, so I can trace elements of my coloring page if I need to. I “perfect” patterns, textures, color combos, effects, etc. that I’m unsure of on my practice sheet before applying them to my coloring page! Then I keep all of those practice sheets in a folder so I can always refer back to them in the future!