Step 6: Open your image in Photoshop.
Launch Photoshop, and choose File > Open. Then, select your newly saved PSD file. Save a flattened version of your layers in the same file and hide the original layers, as displayed in Figure 7.

Figure 7

Step 7: Choose your colors.
Now before you get started, select a color palette to work from, as shown in Figure 8. Once you have all of your colors set, create swatches for them for easy access, as shown in Figure 9. You can make a new color swatch by first selecting a color with the Eyedropper tool. Then, select New Swatch from the Swatches palette's pop-up menu.

Figure 8

Figure 9

Step 8: Make your image look like a pastel drawing.
To give your strokes a painterly texture, choose Filter > Artistic > Rough Pastels. In the resulting dialog box, enter the settings shown in Figure 10. Click OK. Your image should now resemble that shown in Figure 11.

Figure 10

Figure 11

Step 9: Add color to the strokes.
The next step is to add a brown hue to the strokes to soften them up a bit. So, select a light peach (R=250, G=205, B=174) as your foreground color and then make a color fill adjustment layer in the Layers palette. Next, change the layer's blending mode to Soft Light. Copy your color fill layer to intensify the color, leaving the layer's blending mode set at Soft Light. Now, make another copy of the layer, but this time change the blending mode to Hard Light to bring more of the peach through. Figure 12 shows the process stepped out.

Figure 12

Step 10: Color it in.
When coloring in your illustration, it's best to keep each colored area on its own layer so you can adjust it easily. So, create a new layer in the Layers palette and make sure you name it, otherwise things could get confusing. Also, change your layer's blending mode to Multiply to make it transparent. Then, select a color from your custom Swatches palette and click on the Paintbrush tool. Select an appropriately sized round, feathered brush and paint in the area. Next, if necessary, lower the layer's Opacity to lighten the color a bit, as we did in Figure 13.

Figure 13

Add tonal variations. To add variations of tone, make a new layer with the same blending mode and opacity and paint over certain areas, as demonstrated in Figure 14. Repeat as many times as you feel necessary in order to add form to your figure.

Figure 14

Test out different blending modes. Continue on in this fashion until you've colorized the entire image. As you're adding color, you may want to try using different layer blending modes on certain areas. For example, when adding color to the child's hair we applied an Overlay blending mode to darken it up, as shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15