Bring flowers to life with coloring and shading in Photoshop.

Prep your artboard.

Open Yeojin’s practice file, and notice how she has prepared it. Each element has been organized into folders in the Layers panel, to allow for ease in coloring and editing in batches.

Prep your color palette.

Yeojin has also used a range of grayscale tones to suggest where to use lighter and darker colors. Prepare your color palette by choosing a color to map onto each one of the grayscales in her practice file, or try this one to start. Now comes the fun part — coloring!

Color your base shapes.

It all begins with one petal. To start, let’s click into the layer group titled “Foreground Petals.” This will involve some close work. To simplify the workspace, you can temporarily hide the other layers by unclicking the eye icon. Don’t worry, you can always toggle back to check your progress.

To neatly contain the color within your selected shape, click the Lock Transparent Pixels option in the Layers panel — “this will prevent your shapes from getting fuzzy as you color,” Yeojin explains. Then, select the Paint Bucket tool and the color of your choice, and fill the layers one by one.

Repeat until all the petals are colored.

Repeat the process to fill the remaining layers, using Yeojin’s suggested mapping of light and dark tones as a guide.

Pro tip: For a shortcut, try using the key commands Alt+Shift+Delete (Windows) or Option+Shift+Delete (macOS). This will autofill your selected layer with the Lock Transparent Pixels option, which you'll be using a lot of this step — and your future projects.

Use clipping masks.

Now let’s add shading and dimension to your petals. Yeojin suggests creating a clipping mask for each petal you want to zhuzh up. “This way, if you change your mind about something you’ve added, you can turn the layer off and on and decide as you go,” Yeojin says. “It just gives you more freedom to edit the details later.”

To add a clipping mask to any layer, right-click and select Create Clipping Mask. A little arrow will appear, indicating which layer you’ve just made a clipping mask for. You can make multiple clipping masks for the same layer, and organize your layers into folders as you go.

Add shading details.

Now, use lighter and darker hues to the edges of each petal to add depth and dimension. This is where the clipping mask layer you’ve just made comes in handy: You can undo, redo, or make edits to your clipping mask layer as needed without worrying about your base colors.

Experiment with brush textures.

Take your detailing to the next level with subtle textures. Yeojin recommends using the Soft Round brush, set to Dissolve mode with 100% Opacity and 100% Flow, which creates a subtle, grainy effect that’s great for adding details around the edges. “A lower Flow setting will adjust the intensity of the texture,” Yeojin says. Play around with brush settings to land on the one you like best.

Behold your masterpiece.

Keep adding more shading details and touch-ups using additional clipping mask layers, as Yeojin has in this inspiring example, and adjust as you go. You can take a peek at Yeojin’s final file here for reference. Have fun with the practice file and make it your own!

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