[~Maximiliaan]

I would have posted this in media but I don't have permission to post there so I'll just do it here.

So my problem is that I just don't have any clue how to get the right colors. Somehow everytime I start painting the colors just feel crappy and I simply don't have a clue why. When I'm making studies I'll just steal them from the reff but when I try to make something myself then I fail at the colors.
Anyone know how to solve this?

Thanks in advance
Max

[luis-felipe]

I think choosing the colours isn't hard at all, for me at least, its hard to choose the value of that colour, its lightness and darkness and how it interacts with the atmosphere around it.

Every time I use colour, I think before what the general light source is, if its an artificial light its usually yellowish or blueish. if its outdoors, its probably ambient like, so a touch of blue, a touch of yellow etc. So basically I'm saying is that colour, IMO, works with lighting.

So what works for me is working with less saturated colours in the background, they sort of blend together easily because there's little or no change in colour as we get to the middle ground. then gradually I increase the colour's saturation as we get to the foreground.

Maybe try to make a monochrome piece, that means like the whole image is basically one hue of colour. like this: http://z.about.com/d/painting/1/0/t/5/pp1-mbales.jpg

Also study complementary colours etc.. I'm still working on how I use colours because they could be off, but it helps to have some knowledge on colours that work well together and that compliment each other.

http://kuler.adobe.com/ "click CREATE" fiddle with that, you can see how colour works etc..

Basically, i think the best way is thinking about your piece a little more before jumping straight in and putting random colours. Try to picture the painting in your head..

[Geos]

Try working from life- it helps considerably in improving one's color, and gives you some good training to invent color from your head later. That said, from traditional viewpoint value and light comes first-- if your modelling is correct you can be off with color a bit and it will still ring true. Generally when drawing from mind you first decide on values, then on hue and chromas. Areas in low light are the most chromatic, halftones and light are less so. On faces cheeks and noses are sometimes redder due to blood vessels. Same can be said for elbows and knees. Andrew Loomis's "Creative Illustration" is an excellent source for value and color information.

[Crahzz]

First off picking colors from photographs is somewhat an 'iffy' business. I know a lot of people use this method because it is the most conveniant but as we all know photograph contain a lot of wrong information. To get to the true color, without distortion you need to really know what it is you are painting and why it is the way it is. One might even go as far as saying to research what light is and how it refracts and creates colors. It doesnt really matter what you do as long as you have a throrough understanding of your subject. By experimenting you can come a long way, it is in the biggest sense a matter of training your eye to be sensitive to these things.

A good thing is to realize what you want to accomplish, mood wise, look people up (like traditional painters) and get more into the technique of mixing colors. As soon as you spot a color that is wrong and you can compare it to what you want it to look like you will realise with what other color to blend it.

Ow btw max, I will cover this topic more extensively at my lecture and workshop =)
Cheers

[~Maximiliaan]

Thanks for the advice guys :D Next time I'll try to think about colors. Maybe this will help my color use hahaha. Never thought of it,might have been kinda stupid

oh and Crahzz I can't wait for your lecture and workshops, I'm really looking forward to them!

[SinKing]

I have the same problem and tried using different blend modes for my brushes (screen, multiply, behind). That's pretty interesting especially for painting decals, or some sort of gritty surface texture, but I still have trouble chosing the right value.
Ho do you guys usually paint? Do you make a monochrome layout of your picture, to see where your shadows go? I did that a couple of times and started painting over in color. While this works well for rather undetailed landscapes and such, it seems a pain in the ass to do for large paintings with lots of details. Basically it would mean painting the same thing twice, once with colors. Workaround?

[SinKing]

So it's the weekend and most of you guys will be waking up soon, too. I already made a quick paint of a communication officer's helmet today. It's supposed to look less like High-Tech and more like Cyberpunk and I try to give it a somewhat used look.
It was a quick sketch of half an hour, but it's a good example of the problems I have with colors. There is always flatness in my pictures, even though I ty color grading and high contrast in some areas.
What should I practive mostly? The strange thing is that when I draw real life objects they look just right, but I have problems thinking the same light and color settings for something imaginary.
Hue and Saturation changed:

P.S.: I guess triangular mouthpieces always scream "Star Wars".

[Emil]

Maximiliaan I would suggest that you start doing life drawings, I had problems using colors too, but after doing many life drawings digitally and traditionally with watercolors my understanding of colors and how they work improved, start with something simple like an apple then next time add something like an orange and when drawing them pay atteteion how they interact, how the apple reflects the orange and how the orange reflects the apple.
Hope this helps.

P.S. There is no point of doing studies from photos if you steal the colors directly from the photo.

[Imhotep397]

Originally Posted by ~Maximiliaan

I would have posted this in media but I don't have permission to post there so I'll just do it here.

So my problem is that I just don't have any clue how to get the right colors. Somehow everytime I start painting the colors just feel crappy and I simply don't have a clue why. When I'm making studies I'll just steal them from the reff but when I try to make something myself then I fail at the colors.
Anyone know how to solve this?

Thanks in advance
Max

Honestly , sometimes picking colors is as easy as tying shoe laces for me and other times it's just torture. I am looking for solutions as well, but I think books with color swatches are the best way to help you break out of a rut. Check these:
Amazon
Amazon

[Mull]

Using swatches or photographs imo are not as productive as life painting, yes you can get convincing enough images but to understand how colour works you need to study it in some depth.
A practical way of learning is to grab your choosen medium (pencils, watercolour, oils or a lappy and wacom) and get outdoors and paint the colours you see. Once you have a decent level of experience (and I'm not talking about hour or days but years) you will find using colours a lot easier.
Unfortunately there's no easy way, no shortcuts or special digital tricks its all hard work, practise and experience.

[Imhotep397]

I do think live reference study is the core of how we learn, but that's more for subtlety and detail. Most times, especially for fantasy/sci-fi, people want to create their own color schemes and just carry over the subtlety of contrast and detail from life studies and then run into trouble developing color schemes that will help them. That's really where swatches photo/image grabbed palettes can help. Jeremy Sutton is an amazing painter and utilizes this technique to experiment with for some of his paintings. Anyway, someone else here recommended Adobe kuler and I think that's probably going to be a really excellent resource for artists, especially since people are adding color palettes that get posted and rated. It shouldn't really be an either or just more options.

[koshime]

The fundamental challenge is, from what you are describing a lack of the firm grasp of colour theory.

A few weeks spent on understanding, studying and applying some colour theory and studies will show a 200% boost in your colour application and painting for sure.

Can I recommend the excellent Gnomon DVD: Practical Light and Colour by Jeremy Vickery

I cannot recommend it highly enough. It does what it says on the tin:

1/ Practical
2/ Covers most of the basics of Light
3/ And how light affects your perception of colour
4/ And thus how you can think of applying colour and light within your respective field of work

[subversive-imaginati]

Well I'd say the reason the black helmet looks flattish is:

1. It's on a white background. Personally I rarely use white, often my underpaintings are multiple colours, it gives it a base that doesn't leech colour.
2. There's almost no colours in the black. Go observe a black car, even a beat up black car with just enough shine to reflect light will reflect it's environment, usually blues, greens and grays from the sky, grass and concrete respectively. Don't be afraid to really push it and use strong colours because many people are surprised at how strong reflected light shades can be. Also faded black may well take on many shades including red if the paint had any ferrous compounds in it. Plus there's likely to be scrapes of other colours in the paint from whatever beatings it's taken.
3. Overall it's very blurred, there are no really sharp parts, yet parts are often outlined with blurred lines. Blurr is useful for lost edges but all over? it flattens, also outlining everything will flatten it.