Designing a Coloring Book

I wanted to make a coloring book for a friend's birthday of all of his favorite things. I didn't mind doing some editing in Illustrator, but I wanted a way that other people could contribute drawings too that don't have access to very many materials. I've included some pages for The Happiest of Birthdays Book and some extra coloring pages for a different book that is in the works.

Materials needed:

• plain paper (8.5x11 copy paper works great)
• black sharpies or other permanent markers (thick and thin lines)
• camera or scanner
• access to a printer that can print 11x17 paper, although you could scale down and do booklets with 8.5x11 paper too.
• Adobe Illustrator or other vector editing program* (for cleaning up images + editing)
• long-arm stapler

*I'll also show a way to make the pages without Illustrator.

Step 1: Using a Permanent Marker to Start Your Drawings

Some of these I drew, and some I collected from others who wanted to contribute to the coloring book. Black permanent markers work best, but other pens and markers are fine too, they just might require more post-processing.

If you don't want to use Illustrator, I recommend drawing on plain white copy paper with a black sharpie, then use a copier to make pages.

Step 2: Editing Images in Illustrator

1. bring scanned or photographed pages into Illustrator
2. select > image trace
3. play around with threshold and other settings until it looks good enough
4. click expand
5. use the direct selection tool (a) to clean up the drawing
6. object > path > simplify to clean up the drawing further
7. add a stroke if you would like your lines to be thicker
8. arrange your objects on a page
9. if you would like text, type what you want, then select (v) and go to object > expand
10. change from fill to outline
11. if you want more room to color inside the text, effect > path > offset path
12. save as a pdf!

Step 3: Putting the Pages Into Book Form

I use Adobe Indesign to put my coloring pages together, but you could also just copy your pages. Export as a PDF, then print on 11x17 paper in booklet form. After your booklet is printed, fold in half, unfold, and use a long arm stapler to attach your pages together.

Attached are the birthday book (which may or may not be fun for you, it's filled with inside jokes), and some additional pages that are not part of the birthday book. This project is still in the works! I hope to have my finished version printed with a nicer cover page and twice as many pages as I currently have.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Comments

[tsherman2012]

Hi I am new to this has anyone made coloring books on here ? I desperately ned help please??

[jayludden]

Hi!! I've made many coloring books since I posted it and my method is a little different now! I draw with a variety of black markers on white paper. Papermate Flair is my favorite pen to use, but sometimes I use a sharpie pen if I want a thinner line. I use an app called tinyscanner for Android and take pictures in B&W mode. It is really helpful for making a clear white background and keeping your lines crisp. You can export a multipage document as a PDF or a single page as a png. That's good enough from there! I usually go the extra step of importing my images into Adobe Illustrator to convert to vector, then bring those vectors into Adobe InDesign to make a booklet. I then print as booklet and center staple! Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.