I can't wrap my head around colors...
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How do you all select colors for your pieces? I already know about color theory and I've watched the SVS course on colors. I just can't pick good colors.
Things get extra difficult when I apply the rules of color theory to my work. Like, if warm colors attract the eye the most, does that mean I can never have a blue character?
And then there's the issue of saturation. All of my colors are either blindingly bright or too dull.
I just don't get it! -
@Patricia-Dishmon The only thing that I could say about this is that if you already saw your theories videos, what is left is to practices.
Practice everyday without commiting to them by doing master studies or life drawing of about 30min each. When you feel comfortable and get used to the relationship between colors, that's when you try to apply them to your original work.
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@Patricia-Dishmon firstly try and think less about colours having rules, but more 'guidelines'. A warm character (or red character) will stand out, unless every single thing on the page is red, in which case a solitary blue figure on that page would draw the eye.
The truth of it is, its less about colour, more about Value. Study value. If you get Value right, you can get away with choosing almost any colour you want.
Watch some marco bucci, he does really short vids on youtube that explain light and shadow really well.
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@Patricia-Dishmon Color is really complex and so hard to get appealing, right, and interesting. For a starting point I often collect illustrations I like and colorschemes based on a color, a mood, a topic, and then I start picking and combining colors that feel right for what I plan to draw. During the illustration process they will often change but it is a good starting point for me.
I you want to learn more about colors and how they really work I would recommend to look up Marco Bucchi. -
I have a few thoughts: first, like @gavpartridge said, whether or not your character stands out is all relative. While warm colors do usually stand out, so do more saturated colors of any hue, and areas of high contrast. You can design the scene around your character to help it stand out, whatever the character looks like. This could mean strategic lighting, atmospheric perspective, avoiding placing random and unimportant brightly colored objects in the scene, etc.
Looking at your website, I can say the colors aren’t objectively bad! It’s probably more that they don’t have the look you’re going for. One great idea I’ve heard is to take a reference illustration or photo with a color pallet you love and use those same colors in a totally different piece of your own. You can even use the eye dropper tool to get the exact colors if you have trouble recreating them.
Looking at your website, I do notice that adding more variation within areas of the same color could help things look less flat. For example, large swaths of greenery can really be enhanced by varying not just the value, but the hue, so some areas are slightly more yellow, some more blue, etc. Color and Light by James Gurney is a fantastic book about this subject and goes into so much useful detail about how colors interact in different environments. The point he always comes back to is to make sure you aren’t just painting the “local” colors of objects, i.e. the “actual” color of something under white light. Objects in the real world reflect all sorts of colors from their environment, and these colors really add a lot to the mood!
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@Patricia-Dishmon If I am trying to study colour I have looked at others works and then copied and pasted it into my autodesk sketchbook app and then picked out the colours and copied them into boxes. I found this to be highly fascinating and rewarding to do for some reason.
It helps you go from a subjective to a more objective view of colour as you see ranges of particular colours used and what colours artists have used for the complementary colour and also how subdued colours are used often.
(I have only done this with digital work-but I'm sure it also works with analysing non digital images)I believe no matter what colour you use you have either a warm or a cold version of that colour, even greys can be warm, and I have found that warmer colours work better.
Really I think these things can only be discovered by thinking about colour and analysing colour while you are not using colour because you have to be more objective and less intuitive. -
@Patricia-Dishmon you can always copy other artists' colors until you get the hang of it. that's what I do. I go to Instagram or Behance, save any piece I like and copy the colors later
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Well, I'm not great at this by any stretch of the imagination. I tend to limit myself to a few colors so I don't go off the rails.
If I was working on improving my use of color, the things that I would probably try are:
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watercolor painting with only two paints - maybe a blue and a yellow/orange. I think it helps you see how much you can do with less color. Also, by limiting yourself you can see which colors fall between them and they seem to go together.
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for learning the theory, I really like the book Color and Light by James Gurney. It's just all so interesting to read, even if I'm maybe not capable of putting it into action yet.
Personally, I am still learning how to draw without color, concentrating on shapes and tone. I feel like I'm not up to it. But I color in like a child. It's my fun reward for finishing a drawing.
You say "all of my colors are either blindingly bright or too dull." I think if that was my problem, I would choose one hue as my blindingly bright one and then tone the rest way down, and see how to go from there.
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Dont over complicate it. Try and remember that you only dont really have to choose many colours, your lighting will choose them for you.
Anything in direct light will have an element of that colour in them, ie white t shirt under a direct green light will be appear a bit green.
But the shadows will have elements of all their surrounding colours in them, and that comes from bounced light.
Its not simple though, if you wern't struggling you'd be a genius.
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Same as so many other folks are saying, I learn a lot when I pull a color palette directly from an illustration I admire. This class is a short-ish one, and it showed me a new way to think about that.
https://www.svslearn.com/news/2021/2/18/creating-custom-color-palettes -
Color is very challenging and like anything it will take lots of time and practice to get. Keep in mind that value trumps color. If your values aren’t right then your colors won’t be either so if you’re working digitally try working in black and white first and then adding in your colors that match the values of the black and white version. More color does not mean more interesting.
Take a look at Pixar color scripts. They’re a great place to get an idea of how to use color. Everything in Pixar films feels very bright and vibrant but you’ll notice in the color scripts that they usually only use two colors and a majority of the time those two colors are blue and orange or a variation of them. That goes for a lot of illustrations, you’ll find orange and blue everywhere so I’d recommend starting with those.
You can also just steal color palettes from other artists! It’s free! There’s really no such thing as stealing colors though, nobody can own that so just find some color palettes you like and experiment but remember, values come first!
