How to Color
For a long time, I mainly drew in black and white and went for realism than abstract or fantasy art. However, I always wanted to learn how to draw with color in a more fantasy art or graphic art form but my mind didn’t have many ideas in terms of subject matter. Recently I took a break from drawing from my own mind since I am searching for inspiration and can’t think of any great project ideas. But to fulfill my art hobby I have been using the coloring book app Lake more and it has been fulfilling.

In a previous article I talked about this app in detail, but I had not experimented with it as much as I did now and have been finding new inspiration and ideas in terms of coloring. In general I found the coloring pages themselves to have the same theme and were not realistic but more cartoonish renditions. While this was not my traditional style of art, or really my style at all, I took it as a challenge to learn how to color and put my own spin to these drawings despite only having 3 brushes to my disposal. While these brushes are not extensive like other apps, and I could import these drawings else where, the app is excellent for coloring since your colors stay within the lines by default and you are somewhat restricted with their more muted color palette which makes this even more fun and challenging.
In the above drawing, I focused on their acrylic brush with was not really acrylic in texture but was a more of a brush for solid bright coloring. I made use of it when I could and ended up with a pretty nice drawing that I will be printing and hanging up in my room.

The water color brush reminded me of alcohol ink pens in a way and of that art style. They did blend somewhat and the app does have it so the brush bleeds with other colors, and even though the colors are not as bright, it was very calming to use and it brought a different type of aesthetic to the piece.

Lastly I used the spray can for this piece with a combination of acrylic and watercolor. Before I had been using the spray can brush for background like the sky but I found it really cool to use for shading in general. It was fun to use.
Overall, I am beginning to enjoy the Lake app and it’s teaching me how to color in a more cartoonish fashion and has taught me that even with limited tools I can create really cool art pieces. Not every digital art drawing needs to be made in procreate or really needs to be made from yourself. Sometimes art can be just coloring and learning how to add depth to a structure given to you. Lake is a great app and I think it’s a great learning tool as well for beginner artists. Enjoy!
