im shit at colouring, plz help

[0kraashi0]

i've been trying to change my shit up recently cause i know most of it is stale and boring as hell. ive done colour studies, ive been practicing fundamentals, observing other artists, all that good stuff. ive been doing my best to draw from brain and things ive learned instead of taking direction from an image and i feel like ive made some progress, but im butting my head against a wall. i find it most difficult to make my colours look interesting and engaging without making everything super dark. i know its a sin to shade with black, and dark saturated colours should be the go to in that department but i just cant get the hang of it without everything looking muddy. posing, perspective and anatomy are things i think i can handle a bit but if anyone out there is willing to give me some good pointers when it comes to colour i dunno, ill buy you an icecream lmao

anyway thanks for reading, advice is suuuper appreciated

[Rotohail]

Did a piss poor paintover but alright. Pointers:

Try to save black for your foreground/figure, so background, more grays (glazed over your blacks),

Think that black is absence of light, so if you use black it means something ain't getting light. The rest it depends on the material and the lights you use. All materials have like an inherent local value/color and then react with your lights so not all materials will go all the way to lighter values at the same rate. Darker materials stay dark. (reflections mess this up since you can have a glossy dark material with very strong reflections but that is another matter, yet of importance also).

And the last pointer which is the one I struggle, shapes and planes define your form, if you know your shape is in shadow, don't put lighter colors, change hue and saturation mostly but stay within the same shadow values you have chosen, go to black/darker tones if you want to occlude or create gradations/light decay. If you bring extra lights, like rim lights, try to make them of less intensity than your main else you get the flattening effect, might as well just use flat colors and soft gradations.

Hope it helps. Still figuring this shit out myself.

[0kraashi0]

At 9/15/20 12:33 AM, Rotohail wrote:
Did a piss poor paintover but alright. Pointers:
Try to save black for your foreground/figure, so background, more grays (glazed over your blacks),
Think that black is absence of light, so if you use black it means something ain't getting light. The rest it depends on the material and the lights you use. All materials have like an inherent local value/color and then react with your lights so not all materials will go all the way to lighter values at the same rate. Darker materials stay dark. (reflections mess this up since you can have a glossy dark material with very strong reflections but that is another matter, yet of importance also).
And the last pointer which is the one I struggle, shapes and planes define your form, if you know your shape is in shadow, don't put lighter colors, change hue and saturation mostly but stay within the same shadow values you have chosen, go to black/darker tones if you want to occlude or create gradations/light decay. If you bring extra lights, like rim lights, try to make them of less intensity than your main else you get the flattening effect, might as well just use flat colors and soft gradations.
Hope it helps. Still figuring this shit out myself.

[0kraashi0]

At 9/15/20 12:33 AM, Rotohail wrote:
Did a piss poor paintover but alright. Pointers:
Try to save black for your foreground/figure, so background, more grays (glazed over your blacks),
Think that black is absence of light, so if you use black it means something ain't getting light. The rest it depends on the material and the lights you use. All materials have like an inherent local value/color and then react with your lights so not all materials will go all the way to lighter values at the same rate. Darker materials stay dark. (reflections mess this up since you can have a glossy dark material with very strong reflections but that is another matter, yet of importance also).
And the last pointer which is the one I struggle, shapes and planes define your form, if you know your shape is in shadow, don't put lighter colors, change hue and saturation mostly but stay within the same shadow values you have chosen, go to black/darker tones if you want to occlude or create gradations/light decay. If you bring extra lights, like rim lights, try to make them of less intensity than your main else you get the flattening effect, might as well just use flat colors and soft gradations.
Hope it helps. Still figuring this shit out myself.

holy shit no dude, that paint over was fucking amazing. this is exactly the kind of thing i was looking for, this is invaluable information, i def owe you an ice cream haha

[A-lieN]

That's a pretty good drawing, when coloring I usually think about 3 things Shape, Edges and Color

For shape your piece simply doesn't have a clear light source. Try simplifying the lighting into 3 shapes: Light Shapes, Shadow Shapes and Mid-tone Shapes. If you map these out before going into things like edges, texture or even color, you will have an easier time applying them or adding other lighting sources.

For edges I like to simplify it to hard, firm, soft and lost edges. looking at your piece, the face in particular has only one edge on it, a soft edge going up and down the face. The edge should instead be a hard edge to indicate that it is a hard shadow and the nose should also have a firm/hard shadow to indicate the bottom plane of the nose. Getting good edge control is mostly down to painting more and observing from real life where those 4 edges I mentioned tend to occur.

For color I usually try to strike a good balance of warm and cool tones. In your piece the warm and cool tones are mostly balanced aside from the all the black present. I think you can solve this "being forced into using black" issue by painting over the sketch instead of under it. If you need the sketch as a guide you should at least lower the opacity of the layer as having dark lines tends to skew your sense of color and leads to the issue you describe. If you want the sketch to show through in the final result, it should be clean enough that almost all the lines in the sketch has a reason to be there, take the lower left hair for example, the lines feel unconfident and I don't really know what the lines are trying to convey. A good check for this is to look at your line and ask your self "What EXACTLY is that line for?" If you can't answer in less than 5 seconds or you have a very none specific answer, then that line needs to be redone or removed.

I hope this helps, you should also look into Marco Bucci's 10 Minutes to better painting series, especially the video about shape and edges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnhj5efzN_w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZknWKTpc90

I am excited to see how you improve and good luck!

[RedbatX]

I'm new around here but, well, coloring is one of my favourite things, so I'd like to help with something.

I normally use a cartoon style and flat colors with not so many shadows, so the shades are not my speciality, but if you ask me the best trick is choosing the palette, flat or not is still the same. Those are some of my tools:

-Warm and brighter colors make the things noticeable while cool and toned down colors hide them. This is probably the most important thing I can say. Use this to put the focus in the elements and zones you want to show or not. Like the eye or the blood in your pic. It also helps to the composition.

-Limited palette. So many colors can be confuse. Use toned palettes or a few selection of colors. Personally I use 5-6 main colors max.

-Contrast and combination, look for it. If you work with a toned palette another type of color will be the king. An easy tip is use the complementary colors, the opposite ones in the color wheel. For example, yellow and purple, normally these combinations work pretty well.

-Dominance scale. One color or tones will be the most abundant and the others just for minor elements. This helps for the tone and ambient of the work.

Hope this helps and sorry about the grammar mistakes, English is not my first languaje.

[0kraashi0]

At 9/15/20 07:26 AM, A-lieN wrote: That's a pretty good drawing, when coloring I usually think about 3 things Shape, Edges and Color

For shape your piece simply doesn't have a clear light source. Try simplifying the lighting into 3 shapes: Light Shapes, Shadow Shapes and Mid-tone Shapes. If you map these out before going into things like edges, texture or even color, you will have an easier time applying them or adding other lighting sources.

For edges I like to simplify it to hard, firm, soft and lost edges. looking at your piece, the face in particular has only one edge on it, a soft edge going up and down the face. The edge should instead be a hard edge to indicate that it is a hard shadow and the nose should also have a firm/hard shadow to indicate the bottom plane of the nose. Getting good edge control is mostly down to painting more and observing from real life where those 4 edges I mentioned tend to occur.

For color I usually try to strike a good balance of warm and cool tones. In your piece the warm and cool tones are mostly balanced aside from the all the black present. I think you can solve this "being forced into using black" issue by painting over the sketch instead of under it. If you need the sketch as a guide you should at least lower the opacity of the layer as having dark lines tends to skew your sense of color and leads to the issue you describe. If you want the sketch to show through in the final result, it should be clean enough that almost all the lines in the sketch has a reason to be there, take the lower left hair for example, the lines feel unconfident and I don't really know what the lines are trying to convey. A good check for this is to look at your line and ask your self "What EXACTLY is that line for?" If you can't answer in less than 5 seconds or you have a very none specific answer, then that line needs to be redone or removed.

I hope this helps, you should also look into Marco Bucci's 10 Minutes to better painting series, especially the video about shape and edges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnhj5efzN_w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZknWKTpc90

I am excited to see how you improve and good luck!

im so glad i posted this mess, you guys are really giving me some gold nuggets and im very thankful this site isnt super antagonistic towards artists just trying to get good information, thank you

[0kraashi0]

At 9/15/20 10:38 AM, RedbatX wrote: I'm new around here but, well, coloring is one of my favourite things, so I'd like to help with something.
I normally use a cartoon style and flat colors with not so many shadows, so the shades are not my speciality, but if you ask me the best trick is choosing the palette, flat or not is still the same. Those are some of my tools:
-Warm and brighter colors make the things noticeable while cool and toned down colors hide them. This is probably the most important thing I can say. Use this to put the focus in the elements and zones you want to show or not. Like the eye or the blood in your pic. It also helps to the composition.
-Limited palette. So many colors can be confuse. Use toned palettes or a few selection of colors. Personally I use 5-6 main colors max.
-Contrast and combination, look for it. If you work with a toned palette another type of color will be the king. An easy tip is use the complementary colors, the opposite ones in the color wheel. For example, yellow and purple, normally these combinations work pretty well.
-Dominance scale. One color or tones will be the most abundant and the others just for minor elements. This helps for the tone and ambient of the work.

Hope this helps and sorry about the grammar mistakes, English is not my first languaje.

no no, this is great. i think one of my biggest problems is that i try to create an "atmosphere" without really knowing how to achieve that, which is like, kinda why my stuff looks flat and dusty lol, im getting ahead of myself. thank you for sharing your wisdom. tbh when im colouring i tend to go whilly nilly all over the colour wheel just because ive seen other artists be able to pull it off in a way that works and i don't have that skill yet, what i need is solid ground to stand on. thank you for the guidance

[PerKGrok]

Just tweaked some values around to get it bit more oomph out of the image. Red and yellow often will work well.

[BuhlBoy]

ive been doing my best to draw from brain and things ive learned instead of taking direction from an image

This is a big misconception a lot of artists have, there is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from an image. Almost every artist I know, many of which work on some large scope game projects, use references all the time. References help build a visual library in your head, there is no shame in looking for a reference or even using the exact same pose as an image.

Other pointer is I would use more contrast, for me I find that using saturated colors for highlights and then desaturated colors for shadows tends to give a very interesting result, but it all comes down to how you want your pieces to look. Also don't sweat it if your piece doesn't exactly the way you want it. try not to dwell on it and move onto your next art piece. Each piece of art is essentially a new project and a fresh new slate to attack it from a different angle. Iteration is key and is imo the fastest way to improve.

[0kraashi0]

welp

i went a bit nuts here

but maybe i got a little bit better at colouring

[Tapersteve]

At 10/18/20 04:21 PM, turboboniiito wrote:
welp
i went a bit nuts here
but maybe i got a little bit better at colouring

I think this work could use some negative space to make it less crouded and draw the eye diagonally across from left to right. In terms of colours it's very nice and complimentary to the atmosphere.