Basic guide to color and change your ASCII art with "tput xterm" and PS1 Shell

Set text color "foreground" with setaf

echo "$(tput -T xterm setaf 'color_number')"
echo "$(tput -T xterm setaf 2)"

Set background color with setab

echo "$(tput -T xterm setab 'color_number')"
echo "$(tput -T xterm setab 6)" 

The basic 8 color options for tput

    0 = black
    1 = red
    2 = green
    3 = yellow
    4 = blue
    5 = magenta
    6 = cyan
    7 = white

PS1 Shell to underline ASCII chars

printf "\e[4m"

PS1 Shell for Bold text / ASCII

printf "\e[1m"

For both Bold and underlined option on one line

printf "\e[1m\e[4m"

Example Linux bash script "bold, underline, and color cyan"

Add printf "\n" (newline) if needed

#!/bin/bash

printf "\e[1m\e[4m"

echo "$(tput -T xterm setaf 6)"

printf "\n"

cat /your/path/to/ascii_art.txt

printf "\n"

for using lolcat instead to color the ascii for motd or other

sudo apt install lolcat
cat /path/to/ascii_art.txt | lolcat

Color the text based on a programming language instead.

• useful for quickly coloring help menus in bash scripts

https://pygments.org/demo/
pygmentize

pygmentize -l <language_option> <<eof
<ascii-art>
eof

pygmentize -l csh <<eof
<Bash_Help_Menu>
eof