[Enrichment] - Color Studies

Angel_of_Bacon

Color Studies
>>Enrichment Directory<<


One of the best ways to make a picture come to life is by having a strong color composition, but often times color is made an afterthought when it comes to study- a touch of local color under a line drawing and calling it a day is often the case.

This month's exercise puts color front and center: by stripping down our compositions to the barest, basic elements, we can concentrate exclusively on the tricky subject of figuring out just what does make for "good color", without getting bogged down in other issues. By engaging color as a crucial compositional element, we can invoke a strong sense of realism or mood with very little in the way of actual rendering. Think of it as a color thumbnail.


You may choose to work on some, or all of the following:

Do quick color studies exploring a color concept (analogous/complimentary colors, saturated vs desaturated colors, etc, using color contrasts to guide the viewer's eye, etc.)
Make a series showing the same objects/setup under various different lighting conditions or moods
Analyze a painting, reference or scene from life by breaking it down into simple color shapes, showing how color concepts function in a real world scenario


For these exercises, try to keep your rendering simple and broad, without going into much detail. Try not to spend more than a few minutes on your rough sketch, and instead try to work exclusively with color. I would suggest working more with opaque blocks of color to encourage you to be bold and decisive with your color decisions, rather than trying to "sneak up" on a color by using transparency, airbrushes, excessive blending, or Photoshop blend modes.

Remember- use color to capture the mood and the light, not the details!

Inspiration and Resources




http://imaginateur.tumblr.com/



http://nathanfowkes-sketch.blogspot.com/

This site gives a decent idea of how to determine color schemes based on the color wheel:
http://colorschemedesigner.com/

James Gurney's blog has tons of posts about colors, color wheels, color schemes, lighting, etc.
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/search?q=color

Halen

I am SO excited about this! The pictures you've posted are exactly how I want to paint, and I'm never able to, because I always succumb to detail.

brokecracker

Hooray! I really need to work in this category!

squidbunny

Great one, AoB! I could use this.

I'm so busy I barely have time to eat anymore, but I took a few minutes to do a scribble in this general vein this morning after reading this topic (I've got some illegal transparency going on though):



Time permitting I want to take a more structured stab at this.

Iruka

I think I may try to tackle this with real paint after I'm done moving. Thanks for making the topic AOB!

Prospicience

I'm totally gon' get on this, even a little bit if that's all I can muster. I am not good with them colors.

SeraphSword

Quite a coincidence. Just ordered Gurney's Color and Light, should be here in a couple days.

Enc

The task of painting without inked lines seems really daunting to me.

All the more reason to participate!

mageormike

Yessss! Been awhile since I've last done a series of these. I will definitely be on board

Enc

Ive been wrestling with this for an hour and have no idea how to begin. >.<

Angel_of_Bacon

Red Raevyn

Ah frick frack, I feel like I'm floundering. I guess that means I'm in the learning process.

My first attempt, ugliness:

Reference:


I figured I am just doing blocks of color so initially I used Paint.Net at work. I tried to pick about 6 colors in advance and do it with that, thinking restricting my palette would help. I think it's just awful, once I started painting the colors didn't look right:


So I tried again at home with CS2 eyeballing a mid color for each thing (wall, shirt, skin) and then adjusting up and down from it.


I think the background is too busy and there are issues with the forms (I only spent about a minute roughing in their outlines), but I'm not happy with the colors, either. I look at these and feel like the guy posting his mis-proportioned anime fan drawings. I'm more proud of this 6-color MSPaint art I did two years ago:

I think I'm going to go find a tutorial or something, I'm trying not to bite off more than I can chew but I feel like a little mouse trying to find purchase on a large sphere (all the bites are too big).

Flay

Enc wrote: »

Ive been wrestling with this for an hour and have no idea how to begin. >.<

If you're painting something with depth like a landscape, try painting whatever is furthest away first, using large block colours, and gradually work in to the foreground.

Enc

About 3 hours in on this so far. Gonna pick back up this afternoon after some chores. Thanks to Flay and Tynic for the advice on how to get started.

Angel_of_Bacon

For those having trouble getting started, here are a couple of step-by-steps:
http://nathanfowkes-sketch.blogspot.com/2009/06/blog-post.html
http://nathanfowkes-sketch.blogspot.com/2009/09/demo-for-you-this-week.html
http://nathanfowkes-sketch.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-promise-to-get-back-to-good-ol.html

One thing I would definitely suggest for anyone working in Photoshop, is to make a second window for their document by going to Window>Arrange>New Window for _________. Zoom way out on it so it's really small, around an inch and a half to 2 inches wide/tall. Keep that on your screen while you're working on your primary window, so you can keep referring back to it when working. If you've put in a bunch of work and you can't see much of a change on that tiny window, you are working too tight and not working towards the overall, broader picture.


Couple of these- took roughly 25 min-40 min per. Process for these was I closed my eyes and just scribbled with a pencil brush just to get something down, spent a minute trying to sort the randomness into something slightly tangible, and once I had a vague notion of what it could be, started into color.
I like doing this just so I can go at a picture without any preconceived ideas of what it should be- it's easy if you're going for something specific to shy away from making decisions that go against that idea, even if it would make the overall image more interesting than that initial idea. By starting out completely randomly I feel less attached to any one thing, and feel free to explore more. (Though for the same reason, this is a terrible process for anything involving real anatomy.)


Process .gifs

jwadd

i decided to color the doodle i did this morning

m3nace

@jwadd, it's awfully desaturated in relation to the fact that this challenge is about colour. You should try and go a bit more nuts on that one. Maybe add some coloured light sources to spice things up.

Enc

Two from this morning:

squidbunny

Enc, I feel like you're improving already. The bottom one is super nice, but honestly I think you're worrying more about details than is necessary for the spirit of the challenge. There's a ton of little noodling brushstrokes apparent and you could accomplish almost the same read with virtually no colors in huge blocks, which is I think what Bacon is getting at with the challenge. Here, a quick paintover thing:



Zoomed out comparison (I could have done better on your midground cliffs; whoops:

Red Raevyn

That's helpful AoB, thanks. I'm going to work on that, and also apply what squidbunny is saying.

This is from yesterday:


Edit:
Today's

Halen

To stop myself from being tempted towards detail, I went for a nice sunset:

nakirush

ChicoBlue

I did a couple of WALL•E studies because I like WALL•E.



I used Sam Nielson brushes on them. Mostly the conte brush at 100% opacity.

Enc

squidbunny wrote: »

Enc, I feel like you're improving already. The bottom one is super nice, but honestly I think you're worrying more about details than is necessary for the spirit of the challenge. There's a ton of little noodling brushstrokes apparent and you could accomplish almost the same read with virtually no colors in huge blocks, which is I think what Bacon is getting at with the challenge. Here, a quick paintover thing:



Zoomed out comparison (I could have done better on your midground cliffs; whoops:

Thanks! I'll try and push the OCD part of my brain away on my next ones.

Enc

Also, @chicoblue that gloss on the white robot is inspiring. I stared at it for a long, long while trying to work out how you did it, it's amazing.

squidbunny

@Red Raevyn Nice work on the Monument Valley one in particular.

@chicoblue Goddamn. Great work and great choice of scenes.

lyrium

Angel_of_Bacon wrote: »

One thing I would definitely suggest for anyone working in Photoshop, is to make a second window for their document by going to Window>Arrange>New Window for _________. Zoom way out on it so it's really small, around an inch and a half to 2 inches wide/tall. Keep that on your screen while you're working on your primary window, so you can keep referring back to it when working. If you've put in a bunch of work and you can't see much of a change on that tiny window, you are working too tight and not working towards the overall, broader picture.

That is super nifty!!

m3nace

ION CANNON IS READY!

ninjai

bone saw is ready!!!

brokecracker

Well, this is an area I struggle with. These are probably the most successful thing I have done with color in mind. A series of Earthbound posters done with a limited palette. Would love to get feedback on what works and what doesn't with them:

m3nace

I like Twoson the best.

squidbunny

Actually I like them all but Threed, which is a lot more obvious and less clever (the palette's nice and Threedy, though). I love the meteorite impact site mirroring the sun in Onett. I like the Fourside/Moonside mirror, too, but wonder if it'd be more effective actually mirrored, i.e. the Monotoli building opposite the Moonside skyscraper, with the word "Moonside" on the bottom opposite Fourside? I know it'd disrupt the balance but I feel like it'd say more about their weird relationship in the game.

brokecracker

@m3nace thanks! I think that one is my favorite palette for sure. Has that hot muggy summery look.

@squidbunny thanks for the feedback! I actually had "Moonside" on there at one point but wanted it to look more "series-esque" so I ditched it And I think your right about Threed, a bit on the nose compared to the rest.

kevindee

I actually find Onett very, very pleasing. But I'm a total sucker for orange. All of them are enjoyable, though I'd try swapping house sizes in Twoson around, it feels jarring to have the more distant house be bigger, even if it actually is - same for the tree!

I say this without knowing what Earthbound is, though, so I might be missing something.

jwadd

jwadd wrote: »

i decided to color the doodle i did this morning

update

Enc

Two quick color pieces, just sort of goofing up tonight.

Red Raevyn

Oof. This was definitely too complex to go straight to painting - I should have sketched some shapes and outlines first. I bit off more than I could chew regardless, but it's such an interesting shot from a friend who just moved to AK.



I think I'll do it again tomorrow, and try to use simpler shapes and communicate with strokes instead of literal shapes.

m3nace

Red Raevyn wrote: »

Oof. This was definitely too complex to go straight to painting - I should have sketched some shapes and outlines first. I bit off more than I could chew regardless, but it's such an interesting shot from a friend who just moved to AK.
I think I'll do it again tomorrow, and try to use simpler shapes and communicate with strokes instead of literal shapes.

There's plenty of places where you could add dashes of blue in those shadows.

Halen

Jwadd, I think you could really benefit from some big blocks of colour instead of scribbling all the time. Also your palate is very muted.

jwadd

Halen wrote: »

Jwadd, I think you could really benefit from some big blocks of colour instead of scribbling all the time. Also your palate is very muted.

ty I will try and work these things into my next revision. The blue areas were larger initially.

NakedZergling