@lauraa Steal it :)! I had a teacher who is really good at color and told us that when he was working for a newspaper way back he had to produce a lot of paintings quickly he didn't have time to mess with color so he took successful schemes from illustrations he liked. Eventually he really developed his "color muscle" and didn't need to do that any more. You can't really plagiarize a color scheme, haha, and by using something you know works, you can learn faster. (The values and/or mood of the referenced piece should be similar to what you are going for though)

Also limiting the number of colors makes things more harmonious, applying a transparent colored "wash" layer over everything using the multiply or a blending mode of your choice also can bring things together. Also working in complements with a ratio of 60:40, 70:30, or 80:20 works well usually. Many successful artworks I find are usually complementary/split complementary or analogous.

My mind works color over value so agree with @Chip-Valecek and sometimes I often go straight to color studies and work 'reverse'. I also would suggest thinking of the mood you are trying to acheve and working based on that and the psychology of color (Red=hot, passion, pain, romance, adventure. Blue=cold, tranquil, water, clean, sad. Green=life, nature, sickness, radioactive. Yellow=Sickness, joy, warmth, sun, light. etc.)

@nyrrylcadiz You must be really smart to work towards being an engineer and figure out all this art stuff by yourself! And to have already worked on some book projects! Great interview

Hi! I know we're just coming off the holidays, and the new year has started but is there a contest this month? Just wanted to check so we'd have as much time as possible to work on it. Thanks.

@chrisaakins I finally got to see him live in November and the show was amazing! He's my fave Yeah, I don't know too many people who know him even though they might've heard his more popular songs before. I force my friends and family to listen to him, lol

@ixspen Now I think it's too open at the top, unfortunately, and especially since you want this character to be a giant, makes them look even smaller. It also introduces empty space for eyes to wander on the upper right. There seems to be a problem of scale, because the trees could just be small trees, not necessarily regular trees next to a giant. You need something really small for comparison, since the architecture and every thing seems to be made for the character's size. There is no reference for the viewer.

I did a really fast, really crude PS job for a composition that might work where I moved things around a bit, cropped a bit, and darkened the corners to prevent eyes from wandering out.

How important is the sky to the story? If the character is a giant, making them take up more space in the frame could help in addition to a small regular human sized something for reference as well.

@ixspen Hi! I like the color in the image a lot. Considering the composition, I think there is too much space at the bottom and not enough time space at the top. The umbrella also tangents against the left edge of the image.

@demotlj Yay, New York, haha! Ah thanks I'm lucky to have had great people to help me a long.

@lmrush The Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage. The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch and the rest in that series. Chronicles of Narnia. The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy. Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and The Calder Game (great Mystery fiction series about art). The Anybodies, The Nobodies, and The Somebodies by N.E. Bode. Alcatraz and the Evil Librarians series.

Those are all books I liked when I was around that middle school age about ten years ago—yikes, feels like yesterday. I was partial to series, so if he likes any he'll have a few for a while

@sophie-lawson I'd practice making random marks and practicing getting better control with your tools. Try changing up how you are holding your pencil, or use a pencil with harder lead. Implement methods that counteract your tendencies like using a kneaded eraser afterwards. Force yourself to really hold back on the pressure to the point where it seems like overkill. If it's really a tendency and just how you work, you could always do a dark messy sketch then trace over it onto the final paper for illustrations. I do something similar for transferring my sketches for watercolor.

@nessillustration Woot-woot! Congratulations!!!