ART – Color Experimentation – Triad Color Scheme

The last drawing I colored, I used a Tetrad Color Scheme, which is fancy way of saying I limited myself to only using four colors.

This time around I limited myself to three, which is called a Triad Color Scheme.

The colors I used were these:

I got these handy scheme at http://colorschemedesigner.com

My Big Take Away

There was one big thing that I learned this time around. I guess I should have known this but I just hadn’t put two and two together.

What I learned was, you can use more colors than the limited palette you give yourself.

If this is confusing, let me explain.

Yes, your only using a limited palette.  They are your  main colors, BUT when mixing them to create darker versions, or lighter version of the colors, it’s okay to use other colors to lighten and darken them up.

You’re still using the limited palette, but those colors will pop more if you mix them up with complimentary colors, or lighten them up with yellows and such.

You can make these color obvious or not, but it’s okay to use them.  The colors will come out richer that way.

I didn’t learn this until I was very far into the coloring process so I didn’t use it nearly enough.  Still, now I know better. Next time I color a drawing, I’ll make full use of this info.

And now for something completely different….

Patreon!

I forgot to announce this on my blog last week but I’m now officially on Patreon!

What is Patreon? Glad you asked. I think the best way to explain it is via this video. It does a good job giving you the rundown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-IDF809fQ

You can get high resolution, print ready jpegs of my art, full PSD versions of it and much more…go on over to my Patreon campaign and support me.

I’ve got a ton a great rewards and your also helping me produce more of this stuff.

I appreciate your support.  Thanks in advance.

https://www.patreon.com/LuisEscobar

 ART – Black Adam vs Namor the Submariner

In 2009 I drew this picture of Black Adam vs. Namor.  This week I inked it so that I could color it.

Here’s the final inks.  I did some adjusting to the drawing.  They are slight but they’re there.

The biggest adjustment was to the guy on the end.  I changed his face so it looks more like who it’s suppose to be.  Can you guess who it is?

The original was really off.

Here’s what the original pencil drawing looked like in case you’ve never seen it:

Hopefully by next week, I’ll have the whole thing colored.

ART – Two Take Aways From a Coloring Experiment

Above is the final version of my Ironman vs. Batman drawing.

I started it three weeks ago and as I wrote at the time,  I decided to color the characters using a preliminary mid tone base color.

I also used a Tetrad color Scheme.Which is  a fancy way of saying, I limited myself to only using four colors.

Specifically these four colors:

Thoughts On Using a Tetrad Color Scheme

The color limiting was challenging.  I would have definitely made different decisions had I had more colors to work with with.

That said, I’m not certain I colored this “right.”  If you notice how the colors in my final piece are divided compared to the color palette I was working off of. Blue is meant to be THE dominant color and all other color should be secondary.

In my picture though, it almost seems like green and blue are almost divided equally…or that just me being critical?

Thoughts On Using a Preliminary Mid Tone Base Color

I also used a different method to color this drawing.  I started out with mid tone base color or each area and then I darkened and lightened each area as necessary.

It turned out to be an okay way to work.  I also left all the reflective light til last, which made it easier to add odd colors to the shadow areas.

Over all I learned a lot and I’ll probably use this method again just to see what it’s like on another drawing.

What do you think?

ART – Coloring: It Doesn’t Hurt to Use Reference.

Shinny is hard.

As I wrote last time, I’m trying to stick to only four colors.

As of the time of this writing, this is where I left off the coloring for my latest piece.

I didn’t get a lot done, mostly because Ironman is shinny.  This slowed me down a lot.  Coloring him wasn’t at all straight forward.

There’s all that reflection do deal with.  I didn’t really know how to do it so I found some reference on the internet to help me get through it.

Here’s what I used:

The photos helped me visualize what shine on my drawing might look like.  I’m not exactly sure if I succeeded but it was worth trying.

This brings me to a different related topic…

It’s Okay To Use Reference

I teach drawing over that TheDrawingWebsite.com.  I only bring this up because I’ve noticed something.  There are some beginning artists who refuse to use any kind of reference.

I don’t know why this is. It’s as if they somehow think that doing so makes them a lesser artist.

If you’re goal is to get something that looks natural, you ought to look at what it looks like in reality.  There isn’t any shame in it.

They want to draw or paint something only out of their imagination, and make it look naturalistic, but they’ve never bothered to truly study nature.  It makes no sense.

If you’re not sure about what something looks like, don’t make it up.  Look it up.  The more you look up stuff the more you’ll educate yourself.

The more you educate yourself the bigger the library of experience you will have to draw upon when doing art.  This helps you draw more accurate naturalistic stuff from your imagination.

It’s okay to use reference.

ART – Taking Risks and Experimenting With Color

You simply can’t get good at color without experimenting and doing some crazy things you don’t feel comfortable doing.

Case in point…

I still don’t feel comfortable with color.  It seems to me like my last coloring job turned out okay by accident.

It felt as if I was stumbling into all kinds of happy accidents all the way through. That said, I learned a few things I wanted to do different this time.

To this end, in my next coloring job, I’m experimenting.  On of the things I thought wasn’t quite working in the last process was how dark the shadows where. Especially since I wanted the drawing to be lit by daylight.

If you see the final colors, they don’t seem that dark, but as I was coloring them, they were much darker and I had to lighten them up.

The process this time will be different.  I will start with a slighter lighter base than I did previously. That way I can both darken and lighten it where I think it needs it.

Which is the way most artists paint anyway.

Also any ambient light or reflective light will be put in a little later.

And the last thing that I’ll be doing different is the color choices.  I’m doing a Tetrad color Scheme approach.

In order to pick the colors I wanted to use, I went to the website Color Scheme Designer.  I believe it’s a website for web design colors but I think it will work fine for my purposes.

You can see the color scheme it came up with at the top of this post.

So I started using the colors.  This is all I got done this week:

I’ve barely started.  The idea behind coloring every character one color, was just to see what the most dominant colors of each character would look like over all. I also wanted to see what the dominant color (blue) looked like next to the secondary ones.

To be honest, I don’t really think it’s helping. Still, I’ll move forward and hope to get more done (if not all of it done) by next week.

I’m uncomfortable again.  This feels risky to me.  I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I know can’t learn if I don’t risk and experiment.

Hopefully, it will turn out okay.  The one good thing about coloring this drawing is the minimal amount of skin I have to color.