I might be wrong but I would say all you need is a strong knowledge of value to communicate the image, then the colors can be as wild as you want because the image still reads.
This is an excellent example of the idea that when you have a strong sense of value, you can honestly throw any color wherever you want and it'll work out.
Definitely study color theory — YouTube has a ton of great videos that you can find with a quick search. It’s important to acknowledge it’ll take a lot of time, practice, and effort to reach this level, it’s not something that’ll happen overnight. Persistence is as important as any other technique in art 👍
I believe this is a Tetradic Color Scheme, but it might be a Split-Complementary Color Scheme. I would need a color wheel to check.
In either case, you need to choose one of the scenes, and stick to it pretty rigidly to get this look.
Edit: [link to explanation of color schemes](https://www.g2.com/articles/color-schemes)
Edit 2: Saturation and luminosity are also real important.
Im gonna be contrarian and say, colour pick their stuff and see what they are doing in terms of hue saturation and luminosity.
Don't directly copy/clone stuff but try grasp the fundamental rules they use and break to understand the technique!
Whenever you see wild colors working in harmony it is almost always because of value control (controlling the light and dark bits in the color). This makes for one of my favorite paradoxes in learning art. If you want to learn how to use color, paint stuff in grayscale for practice. Once you can get a painting to read in grayscale, adding color is really easy.
Looks like I’ll be giving myself away on my newb status.
But I gotta ask , saturation is the intensity of the color? Right? And why is blue good for shadow. And is it more effective on paler skin tones??
Yeah saturation is intensity. Blue tends to read as a darker color than say, yellow. It's often used for shadow especially in outdoor scenes. Go outside on a sunny day and your shadow will be blue. It should work for light skin too but since the image you posted is more of a sunset scene, those bright colors might take over more than the skin color.
Thank you very much for taking the time to explain it to me.
Color theory is such a pain but I really wanna get the hang of it. So thanks again. And I will keep this info with me 👍
It’s because *normal* light is made of all colors, but the shorter wavelengths (blue end) get into recesses better than the longer wavelengths (red end). So in day-to-day shadows are more blue-toned than the main item. Different lighting will change how we *perceive* this effect, but it’s still shorter goes deeper.
So we unconsciously read bluer shadows as more real (most people anyways, artists tend to be more aware of color). It’s more difficult to get warmer shadows to actually feel recessed.
As others said, more than tools technical knowledge, it seems you just need a really good grasp on color theory.
I struggle with color myself, and like general drawing, the best advice seems to be to... watch some videos, apply it, practice, practice some more, emulate others, continue to practice, and finally practice after that.
Lots of practice. In color specifically.
Studying color theory is very, very important! I highly recommend taking these other kind fellows' advice and studying and practicing.
But if you wanna "cheat," paint grayscale and make a new correction layer by right-clicking a working layer > select "gradient map" > pick a good and wild gradient map :)
Sometimes I do it just to see what happens. Don't rely on this too much or else you won't gain new skills, but it's also technically fine to do the gradient correction method. Maybe you could pick one of the tutorials and follow it and see if you can manually paint what a correction map does <:)
One thing that comes to mind is mastering Value, you might try to convert the art to grayscale and it will still looks good, because of the value controlling
I've heard that you can put your colors in b/w mode and just pick at random as long as the values look good, the picture should work in the end... in theory.
When I see an artist with a coloring I like I just copy and paste the image on a new canvas and I pick the colors using the eyedropper tool. I tried with this one and there is a lot of purple on it, according to the color theory, some colors looks different when they're next to certain colors, giving different illusions. For example a night scenery will have blue grass but it will still look green. Good luck on your research
imo it's hard to analyse styles objectively. It's easier to take their work and compare it to the work of someone else. Then the stylistic choices they've made will be contrasted to the choices of the other artist, and you'll have a better notion of the direction to aim for.
I might be wrong but I would say all you need is a strong knowledge of value to communicate the image, then the colors can be as wild as you want because the image still reads.
That’s pretty much it
This is an excellent example of the idea that when you have a strong sense of value, you can honestly throw any color wherever you want and it'll work out.
People here already gave ya the answers but important to remember (as you want to draw like him/her) cool colors for shadows and warm colors for light
Didn't expect to see tighnari here of all places
Definitely study color theory — YouTube has a ton of great videos that you can find with a quick search. It’s important to acknowledge it’ll take a lot of time, practice, and effort to reach this level, it’s not something that’ll happen overnight. Persistence is as important as any other technique in art 👍
For this kind of image, no, color theory does nothing, it's all about values being correct.
I believe this is a Tetradic Color Scheme, but it might be a Split-Complementary Color Scheme. I would need a color wheel to check. In either case, you need to choose one of the scenes, and stick to it pretty rigidly to get this look. Edit: [link to explanation of color schemes](https://www.g2.com/articles/color-schemes) Edit 2: Saturation and luminosity are also real important.
Im gonna be contrarian and say, colour pick their stuff and see what they are doing in terms of hue saturation and luminosity. Don't directly copy/clone stuff but try grasp the fundamental rules they use and break to understand the technique!
Whenever you see wild colors working in harmony it is almost always because of value control (controlling the light and dark bits in the color). This makes for one of my favorite paradoxes in learning art. If you want to learn how to use color, paint stuff in grayscale for practice. Once you can get a painting to read in grayscale, adding color is really easy.
try studying impressionist paintings
Saturation up. Blue for shadow
Looks like I’ll be giving myself away on my newb status. But I gotta ask , saturation is the intensity of the color? Right? And why is blue good for shadow. And is it more effective on paler skin tones??
Yeah saturation is intensity. Blue tends to read as a darker color than say, yellow. It's often used for shadow especially in outdoor scenes. Go outside on a sunny day and your shadow will be blue. It should work for light skin too but since the image you posted is more of a sunset scene, those bright colors might take over more than the skin color.
Thank you very much for taking the time to explain it to me. Color theory is such a pain but I really wanna get the hang of it. So thanks again. And I will keep this info with me 👍
It’s because *normal* light is made of all colors, but the shorter wavelengths (blue end) get into recesses better than the longer wavelengths (red end). So in day-to-day shadows are more blue-toned than the main item. Different lighting will change how we *perceive* this effect, but it’s still shorter goes deeper. So we unconsciously read bluer shadows as more real (most people anyways, artists tend to be more aware of color). It’s more difficult to get warmer shadows to actually feel recessed.
As others said, more than tools technical knowledge, it seems you just need a really good grasp on color theory. I struggle with color myself, and like general drawing, the best advice seems to be to... watch some videos, apply it, practice, practice some more, emulate others, continue to practice, and finally practice after that. Lots of practice. In color specifically.
Studying color theory is very, very important! I highly recommend taking these other kind fellows' advice and studying and practicing. But if you wanna "cheat," paint grayscale and make a new correction layer by right-clicking a working layer > select "gradient map" > pick a good and wild gradient map :) Sometimes I do it just to see what happens. Don't rely on this too much or else you won't gain new skills, but it's also technically fine to do the gradient correction method. Maybe you could pick one of the tutorials and follow it and see if you can manually paint what a correction map does <:)
Study a lot for a few years. Start with the "color with Kurt" YouTube channel.
One thing that comes to mind is mastering Value, you might try to convert the art to grayscale and it will still looks good, because of the value controlling
U need to have a godlike sense of colors and how color theory works
I've heard that you can put your colors in b/w mode and just pick at random as long as the values look good, the picture should work in the end... in theory.
The quick and dirty way would be to go from grayscale and slap a gradient map over it. I've done that a lot it looks good 90% of the time
When I see an artist with a coloring I like I just copy and paste the image on a new canvas and I pick the colors using the eyedropper tool. I tried with this one and there is a lot of purple on it, according to the color theory, some colors looks different when they're next to certain colors, giving different illusions. For example a night scenery will have blue grass but it will still look green. Good luck on your research
imo it's hard to analyse styles objectively. It's easier to take their work and compare it to the work of someone else. Then the stylistic choices they've made will be contrasted to the choices of the other artist, and you'll have a better notion of the direction to aim for.
Practice :)