How do you do your color studies if you don't mind sharing? I remember seeing some of them with different kinds of backgrounds and I'm just curious about the process
Oh that's fine. I don't post most of my colour studies but I seperate them into two parts: observation and practice.
So observation is just as it sounds, I look at an artist who's shading I love (e.g. Rella's) and try to identify why they chose the colours they used, what parts are in shade and what parts aren't and the like. One thing I personally noticed for a lot of artists who's work I like that use very strong lighting is the choice of where to put detail. Very rarely do the parts in the shade and the parts in the light have the same level of detail, and (I think) it's done to draw attention to the lighting. Usually it's the part that's in the majority (usually shadow for dramatic lighting). This is honestly the type of colour studies I do the most since I like observing and trying to understand the why to the choices. So hair being semi-transparent so light would travel/shine more than it would for a torso, objects next to each other having slightly different edges of light since they may have a gap in between them or at different heights. Little things like that that I learned from observations can really add more to a drawing, and helps convey the type of texture and material of what you're drawing.
Tutorials from artists themselves are also a good way to study since a lot of them will explain the logic for what they do, such as setting a multiply layer for the shade with a tinted grey based on the background colour and then use the light colour to draw the shape of the light (personally I love this technique). They do miss some crucial points like why someone would shade with blue if the character is out on a sunny day, which is because of how shadows still reflect the colour of the sky unless it is completely out of the view of any light. Usually it'll be whatever colour the background is on multiply or with low opacity to bring the colours together, but there's a lot of different approaches.
I do practice drawings on occassion if I find a photo I really like and feel inspired by, but I'll be honest I don't do a lot of them (I know this and this off the top of my head were colour studies specifically). A lot of my process is trying to find references of the vibe I want to draw, try to put together how to translate that into my drawing using the observation techniques and then integrate them - rather than an usual colour study. I probably should do more practice studies myself but I can be impatient if I have an idea I really want to draw. But they are really good to do! They helped me understand how much shadow and light contrast in hues aswell as light, so it does help with colour theory which is half the battle.
Also when it comes to colour studies it's important to remember that there's no end? Not sure I'm saying that correctly. But as good as it is to dedicate several days or weeks to study how colour is used, colour theory shading and the like, it's also a constant learning experience. Like I hate the way I colour most of the time, I only bring it back to being decent with shading and colour adjustments after rendering.
Buuuuut for my personal process - I usually have the very first sketch with no colour, and then add colour after I make a more defined sketch that's about ready to lineart so I can play around with the background and how I want the final piece to look like before going ahead with putting another day or two into it. When I actually colour after lineart, I put down the base colours and the way of shading I prefer is use a multiply layer using the colour of the background, use an add or add glow layer for the lights and then shade eyes, hair and any other part I think needs more detail on top of the previous layers. I find doing details and then using the multiply layer don't give me the same feeling I try to go for.
I hope this helped or was insightful in someway!! I don't mind talking about my art process since it's stayed pretty much the same for years except me trying to use less layers for sketching for the sake of my laptop's life
