hello!!! i'm a big fan of your art since i saw it like, a week ago!! lol. i'm particularly in love with your flat style of coloring, and wanted to ask if you have any tips for someone who sucks at colour (cries), to make them appear more harmonized.. even when i adjust color balance and things like that, they all look like they're fighting each other : ( hope you have a great day!! and no pressure to answer if it will take forever haha, i'm sure the biggest key is.. practice.. OTL
Hi! omg my flat style of coloring is because I’m lazy and I don’t want to paint all the time hahahahaha. I definitely don’t do it on every piece though; there are certain pieces that I’ve done where I think a flat coloring style wouldn’t work.
But onto the meat of your question... usually when I color (and this is for all my drawings, whether flat or painted), I first think of the mood of the piece and try to pick colors surrounding that mood. Like if I want it to be bright and happy I’ll pick an overall warm tone and choose browns, yellows, oranges, etc. If it’s sad I’ll pick blues and purples. Then I think about how saturated I want the overall thing to be. Very saturated colors would make the piece lively or intense. Desaturated colors would make the piece calm or soft. Usually I pick colors that are all near each other on the color wheel because it’s easy to make them work together lol... it be hard to make opposite colors work together sometimes.
And after all that, I still use a ton of adjustments to make every color harmonize. Most often I’ll slap on a solid layer of color with blending mode set to Overlay or Screen. I’m showing these drawings for the millionth time lol but these are the most recent example that I have, so please bear with it.
The first pic has a layer of brown over it with blending mode set to Screen. As you can see, the colors are not super saturated because I wanted these drawings to be more calm than loud. The colors are mostly warm because I wanted these drawings to have a happy mood.
The second pic is without that layer of brown. Hopefully you can see the subtle difference. It’s a little uglier I think.
I always do rough colors before even lining my art because it helps me visualize the end result better. When I was younger I used to line everything and color at the very end, but now I think that’s not the best practice.
ALSO LIKE.... I don’t go to art school and these are just practices I picked up over years of drawing, so I’m not the final say on color or anything. This is just what works for me. Hope this helps!
