/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3242362
You should be posting in the question thread, for one.

Secondly, if you're not understanding how light and shadow works with color, you need to take a step back from color and work on values until they are solid. Value is the first part of color that you learn, the second part is hue/saturation.

Can't blame you for being frustrated and confused. If you take the advice then awesome and if not then good luck to you, you are someone who wants to learn the hard way.

>>3242362
just color shit the way it should be colored

>>3242367
>>3242367
>work on values until they are solid.
what do you do then? what is that first step from values to colors?

>>3242385
Realize saturation looks like shit, dial it back, focus on colors that look good together when you want them to and bad together when you don't. Always desaturate more than you think you need to. It's better to deceive the eye with contrast than to actually have violent saturation.

>>3242411
thanks for the advice anon. gotta admit, a lot of that went over my head, but i appreciate the pointers.

>>3242385
Draw or paint still life in greyscale. Get your values and forms down first. Then guess what? You do still life in color next.

Here's a tip for you that will help immensely: Always lay down your background tones/colors first before you get to the subject. Colors and tones are all relative to each other, so this helps you ensure you are seeing everything correctly.

Good luck

>>3242385
Apply the same thing to hues. Go from the darkest hue, by adding black, to the lightest version of that hue, by adding white. Then do the same with colors, like making red darker by adding blue, or green.
Color theory is not something that can be taught here. Pick up some books on it, watch YouTube videos. Most of color theory in practical application is mixing colors, knowing how to cool or warm up colors, and knowing how they interact with each other.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=color+theory

>>3242362

This might help.

The absolute madman.

>>3245452
>>3245455
>how to tumblr

>>3242362
Read Alla Prima by Richard Schmid and

Color and Light by James Gurney

Your welcome

really quick and probably completely wrong:

palettes should be mixed based on lightness/vibrance of a colour and how close it looks to your base

eg. say you're painting something with a base of violet, you should be focusing on pinkafying it with the highlights and purple-bluing it with the shadows

more or less with a colour wheel the colour next to yours clockwise should be the base of your highlights and counter-clockwise your shadows for simple aesthetic

obviously this only really applies under certain circumstances and as I said I'm probably fairly wrong

>>3246544
the first one is correct, you increase saturation in the darker tones

>>3242362
This thread is frankly kind of terrible.

How to Render by Robertson

Has everything you need to answer your question.

Read it in full, then contribute to a meaningful thread.

sage

>>3246964
This might confuse you, but I'll drop it anyway.

http://www.huevaluechroma.com/011.php

>>3246964
>book always gets recommended but no one can ever bring answers still
Really makes you think

>>3246969
ever considered that it might be a bit hard to condense an entire book down into a single post

>>3246969
Alright smartass, I've got nothing to do tonight.

Because you are a chimpanzee that cannot read, we'll go through the book page by page, and I'll link specific examples that might help with your question.

>>3246983
We'll start with the basics of color.
You have..

Hue: The closest pure color that matches up with the color you have at hand.

Value( or lightness): How light or dark a color, literally a scale between white or black.

Chroma(or saturation): A measure of how close that color is to neutral grey or the strongest hue possible for that color.

These are generally how you will measure color.

The photo I linked shows you the entire color spectrum in a 3d model.

Up and down gives you lightness.
From the center, and towards the center gives you Chroma.
Hue is a bit hard to see, but if you imagine viewing it from the top. The central axis revolves to determine hue.

>>3246990
If you were to slice this like an apple you get little wedges of color that form the Munsell Book of Color

>>3246994
All the colors you'd be able to use are in this 3d model of color.

If you are a digital artist, you probably are only concerned with sRGB.

Which has Red, Green, and Blue on a scale from 0 to 255.

Generally, if you have a color that needs darkened because it is receiving less light, you would move towards black on your Munsell sheet. If you need a brighter color, you would move away from black on your Munsell sheet.

>>3247002
For shading, you have ambient and direct lighting.
Study the attached file.
Do not Phong shade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_shading#Phong_reflection_model

>>3247005
Basically everything will reflect light in a similar manor, but it may appear different based on the surface.

For example, if you have polished metal, it will reflect your surroundings in a warped manor.

If you have wet things or the above picture, it will usually have some sort of highlight.

Variations exist.

>>3247009
If you are observant, which I know you aren't, you'll notice (in the picture that describes moving away from black in a radial pattern) that the brightest version of a single color is not brighter than white.
In most pictures that require it to be brighter, a little white is mixed in.
Be cognizant of this.

>>3247015

>>3247018
I want you to mess around with this flash file.
http://www.huevaluechroma.com/pics/2-7.swf
Lower the two suns down to zero to eliminate direct light.

Since light is reflected from our atmosphere, most pictures will have a little ambient light.

If you notice, there is a bit of ambient occlusion on the bottom.

Notice also that there are two shadows.

This is more than possible.

>>3247024
Now we're on to psychological influences.
Colors in shadow will appear lighter than they actually are.

In fact every color will be subtlety influenced by its surrounding colors.

>>3247036
I recommend you read the rest of the sections on huevaluechroma.com

What I posted barely scratches the surface.

Of course, "no one can ever bring answers still."

So let's go on to Robertson.

I doubt you're even still here.

>>3247043
The most effective way to show volume is to create a value change.

The most basic render is a single light source with changes in value.

The more light that reflects off the surface of an object, the brighter it will become.

The less light, the dimmer it will become.

Here are a few things that you need to work out.

I want you to look through them, and really study them.

Then take a walk, and look around for them in your environment.

>>3247062
The simplest render.

>>3247066
Soft light isn't directed, and is usually reflected off of something we can't see.

It's diffuse, and without direction.

>>3247069
The same principles that apply to larger forms apply for smaller ones as well.

Details in form have the same rules.

>>3247071
Most surfaces reflect light.

If the light is strong enough this becomes noticable.

>>3247073
When you have less room for light to come in, areas of darkness will occur.

>>3247076
Don't overuse this, but it's a good way to define form.

>>3247077
These are pretty situational, but still relevant.

>>3245440
not op but thank you so much for this. Any more informative things like this please share.

>>3247082
I think I've made my point.

By now you've gotten some idea as to how color works.

As for color harmonies, there are a lot of variations you can try that will work.

I sometimes even use this.
paletton.com

>>3246544
famalamandingdong, you might not agree, but i personally think purplekeckleon has a great use of color

>>3247212
It's occasionally painful to look at, but it's supposed to be.

>>3247219
im talking about when her art wasnt a mess of purple vomit tho

>>3242362
Pick 2 or 3 hues, pick their complements, then mix the shit out of those colors to try to get every other color. There you go, color theory.

>>3245455
boo this sucks!!! bad advice!
>>3242362
Just buy some paint and start observing irl. Try to find the places where highlights and midtones and shadows meet and think about how the colors look interact next to each other, the more you paint the more you observe the more you notice, start expanding your palate and you'll notice more

>>3247868
Bah, IRL has bad color theory, as an artist, it is your job to give it good color.

>>3242362
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj1FK8n7WgY This video was what helped me make the transition from value painting to color painting. He breaks down pretty well the properties of color, and on top of that he lists the possible color combinations of the color wheel. After that it's just a matter of doing studies of materials to know how color behaves on different surfaces

>>3247015
can you explain this in more detail, I'm not very sure what you mean, are you referring to adding white in the middle of some color to show that it is emiting light?

>>3247930
I realize rereading that I wasn't quite lucid at the time.

Disregard that.

Most electric lights emit a slightly off white light, and I think I was confusing something.

The gist of it was that each color has it's own maximum value.

This gets distorted in HSV/HSL by lumping lightness/value at a fixed value for the highest saturation.

The real 3d color space is a bit lopsided, and not at all a hexcone or double hexcone.

Something like this >>3245440

Notice the highest chroma for each color is not at 5 or 10.

Some colors are naturally brighter than others.

If you need to exaggerate brightness, it becomes more necessary to add in white.

------------------------------------------------------------
Unrelated to above.
Pic related.

Something I noticed earlier that might not be noticeable at first glance is that the light in most settings is white.

So the color on a surface form changes not just because it's reflecting less light of its own color, but because near the lightest point it's reflecting some white light too.
I'm not talking about a highlight.
This is basically true for every material, and it's worthy to note because it changes the saturation, and hue of the color ever so slightly in addition to value.

>>3247962
>This gets distorted in HSV/HSL by lumping lightness/value at a fixed value for the highest saturation.
Can you explain more about this? I often hear it's important to lay down your values correctly but how does that work with colors having their own maximum value that isn't a actual number value?

>>3247966
I wouldn't obsess over this.
The Lab color system seems to be the best a determining value.
If you have photoshop there's a little slider that will give you the true Lightness of the color you want to use.
Lightness is fairly equal to Value.
From what I've seen on a scale from 0-10

Red~#FF0000~5
Yellow~#FFFF00~9.5
Green~#00FF00~9
Cyan~#00FFFF~9
Blue~#0000FF~3
Magenta~#FF00FF~6

It's probably best to just feel it out though.

>>3245455
eh this kinda works but what they misunderstand is that as soon as you make the pastel tones you have already desaturated your pallete by at least a whole level mixing in general desaturates is something people need to realize

>>3250734
Then how will you ever get vivid mixed colors if it's always getting desaturated? Denature everything else in comparison to focus on it?

>>3247980
I'll try simplifying or destroying this explanation

a colors chroma is how true its color is
some true colors are inherently not very bright
birghtness, tint and saturation relate to how much color to white and black are mixed with a color
in every instance of mixing a color will lose a little chroma but if the colors are lighter or white is used it could get lighter
that is why you never really think of yellow mixed with black as yellow even thou you can do that
It is because so much of yellow chroma is mixed away so quickly we rarely think of something as dark yellow without surrounding color to compare it to
Its also why purple mixed with white even if it is lighter isn't necessarily considered a rich color.

>>3250737
you kinda are choosing the scale use by making a pallete, the trick there would be to mix then find more chroma heavy colors closer to the new pastel tones. It is actually okay to use desaturated colors and important to making the bright colors work, mostly just take the extra step to choose some really bright colors from the pastel pallete and make a new pallete based on those colors instead. Otherwise you essentially made a less saturated pallete out of primary colors.

>>3247980
lab is my favorite too, it's nice changing the actual luminosity instead of think about about two or three things for every change in value