I'm practicing Color Studies
3yr
Hi, while focusing on greyscale to develop my oil painting technique and process, I'm also doing color studies digitally. Here is my first one. It took roughly 1 hour. Any feedback appreciated :)
I'm taking Joseph Todorovitch's "Portrait Painting for Beginners" to learn painting, and Bill Perkins "Color Theory bootcamp" to get an overview of color theory. Both are on New Masters Academy.
In the spring I focused on value studies, and I'm trying to bring with me the same focus on organization into my color studies. I started by doing a value study, then I did a hue study, then a temperature study, and lastly marked the range of saturation from 1 to 5.
I feel that I have a lot to learn :)
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3yr
I feel that I can't properly critique your color work (because I'm red-green colorblind :P), but it's cool to see how diligent and careful your studies are, @Jesper Axelsson. I agree with @Steve Lenze, the guys you're studying from are a great source for sure. Another resource that brought me a lot of helpful information about color and painting was Sam Nielson's course on fundamentals of lighting, over at Schoolism (https://schoolism.com/courses/art/fundamentals-of-lighting-sam-nielson). And yet another resource many people talk about is the book "Color and Light", by @James Gurney - I wonder if you've ever taken a look at it (I haven't yet).
Keep it up!
Okay,
What I learned about color is as follows:
Hue- this is the color, but, it is relative to the colors or hue's around it.
Value- it's dark to light value- most important.
Saturation- the intensity of the hue, also relative to the colors around it.
Colors that are muted or greyed, tend to be more harmonious with each other.
Temperature- whether a color is cool or warm, also relative to the colors around them.
Shadows- tend to be cool if the light is warm, and vise versa, if the light is cool, the shadows tend to be warmer. Warm light, warm highlight. Cool light, cool highlight.
I suggest using a limited palette, it makes things way easier.
Example of the relativity of color: In your reference, the shadow looks kind of green, that's because of all the red in the image. The eye will see the compliment of a color in other colors.
It's great your learning from Todorovitch, he is an amazing painter, really great. I remember Bill Perkins from Disney, he's amazing also.
Please keep posting these exercises, I look forward to what you learn :)
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3yr
Thanks a lot! Sorry for the late reply. Really appreciate the summary!
I limited my palette in the color study after this and it really helped. I was confused at first "but if you use a limited palette, then you can't match all the colors in the reference?" Then I realized that the reference need to have I limited set of colors, that the limited palette could reach, which was exactly what Bill had in his demonstrations🧠💥
Thanks again :)