Crit plz

[Anonymous No.4230321]

I know this is trash. I’ve recently started trying to paint digitally with procreate and I’m having a tough time selecting color. I feel like I’m at a level of drawing that I can accept with myself. And my understanding of value in grayscale is also mediocre, so I feel like I can just keep practicing and that will be ok. But choosing color is so damn hard.
You’re welcome to tear any of this apart, but I’m specifically interested in tips on how to practice color or some ideas or thoughts that made it easier for you guys to understand it.

Thanks.

[Anonymous No.4230330]

>>4230321
what was your process for this?

[Anonymous No.4230333]

[Anonymous No.4230336]

>>4230330
I drew a profile by construction. Went in with flats and then shadows and then highlights. Then I noodled like a retard for a long time to try to make it look better. But I feel like I can’t fix what’s basically a low understanding of color early on by just tweaking in final stages.. so..

[Anonymous No.4230374]

I think you should focus more on drawing than painting right now.

[Anonymous No.4230413]

>>4230374
What should I be working on in particular? Drawing is a large subject as well.

[Anonymous No.4230432]

>>4230321
I'd suggest working on color harmony, maybe try limiting yourself with a gamut before you start painting, it will teach you about the relativity of color. james gurney explains gamut in his book. Picrel (sorry for polish i dont have an english version), the gamut is over gandalf and below you can see a tiny gandalf painted with that gamut where his skin is painted with grey but it does look like skin in this limited palette. I would recommend working on this because now you're not thinking about color as relative, you just use all colors - if you see grey hair, you use grey, if you see green shirt, you use green etc - you need to learn about how a color can *look* green in a specific palette.

I think a nice little tip for color harmony and using gamut in general is making random spots of the colors all over the painting - so for example if you're using blue for the sky, also make a subtle wash of that blue in green of the grass and in other areas of colors. This way no color is "separated" and they all appear in harmony and balance.

Also A huge part of how painters choose colors is knowing where your source of direct light is and what it's color and what's the color of ambient color, because they affect every single color in the scene and they're "responsible" for creating these limited palettes. If direct light is warm and ambient is cold, then your highlights will be warm and shadows will be cold, because ambient is weaker than direct and ambient's color has a chance to "win" in shadow, because it's a place where direct light is blocked.

Maybe also try the exercise where you paint 2 spots of the same color next to each other and put two different colors around it with the aim of creating an illusion where this color looks for example warm and cool (even though it's literally the same color). You need to know about complementary colors to do it.

https://creativecolor.wordpress.com/color-exercises/ super useful various color exercises you can try

[Anonymous No.4230440]

>>4230432
>>4230321
also it's good that you're working with somehow simplified shapes, you didnt do it very well in his hair (leave the "hair" brush for the very end or even dont use it at all) but it looks very nice for a beginner in his face and shirt. keep studying value and remember that colors (hues) each have a value of their own! its really not bad for a beginner digital painter

[Anonymous No.4230442]

>>4230432
Thank you. This is very helpful. I’ve read a little about this before, but I have a hard time “breaking free”. I’ll definitely try to force myself into a small gamut and try to go as far toward the local colors within that gamut as possible. Thanks a lot.

[Anonymous No.4230450]

>>4230442
no problem, gamut is very tricky even for int level artists so dont get discouraged if you have a really hard time with it, i think its just a tool for studying and you dont need to use gamut per se for painting. its just for forcing yourself into a limited palette so you get rid of habit of using color "literally".

also this is a bit extra but i really recommend "the art of color" by johannes itten. its not exactly technical and has a lot of poetic language but it still explains a lot of color theory and is generally a very inspiring and pleasant book to read, and its not that long (and also pretty iconic, itten taught at bauhaus). the cover is that complementary color exercise i mentioned above.

[Anonymous No.4230462]

>>4230450
Thanks again. I’ll definitely get back to practicing. You’ve been very helpful.

[Anonymous No.4230476]

>>4230462
remember to show us if you paint anything new, i believe in you anon.

finishing this off with a beautiful quote from that book that pretty much explains how colors work:

"Colors are primordial ideas, children of the aboriginal colorless light and its counterpart, colorless darkness... Light, that first phenomenon of the world, reveals to us the spirit and the living soul of the world through colors."

[Anonymous No.4230491]

>>4230321
Your choice of colouring is good, the mute tones work well . Your flesh tone is also enjoyable . Particularly your highlights and darks give a sense of solidity and gravitas I don't usually see in digital painting. Well defined profile, the forehead that has a small flick of pixel above the eye lids worked well. It was a good place to stop but equally, it could bear being worked on further, shoulder blending is rushed and doesn't have the confidence of the face, eyes and eyelashes missing, wrinkles and pores wouldn't go amiss. The composition itself is cramped, I'd liked to have seen the protagonists hands . The painting is not expressing all that it could. Good work.

[Anonymous No.4230793]

>>4230476
I love you

[Anonymous No.4231162]

>>4230321
>I know this is trash
bro it's a sketch
not even a detailed sketch
finish the painting instead of bashing yourself online.
Sit on it for a few more hours, try to refine it, hell draw individual hairs if you need to.

[Anonymous No.4231166]

>>4230432

I'm Polish aswell :)