(my script is in the alt text if ever the font is hard to read)
Iāve been getting a lot of asks wondering how I go about picking my colors for character designs, pages, backgrounds, etc, pretty much anything about color in general, and I figured in some attempt to try to answer them all at once, hereās my attempt at a color-centric art tutorial! Iām far from an expert on the subject, and I havenāt received any formal training on the matter, so this is entirely constructed of ideas Iāve gleaned from a bunch of snippets of different peopleās advice over the years, studying other peopleās art, and experimenting on my own to create something that works for me. Nonetheless, I feel passionate about the subject, and I hope this is able to help make color āclick!ā like a key in a hole for anyone who reads it. I had to discover my key-click moment on my own through trial and error, but i donāt believe in gatekeeping advice, so hopefully I can help you skip the trouble I went through lmfao.
None of this is meant to be likeā¦ a shaming or judgmental authoritative truth of āthis is how it must always be done! anything outside of my vision is wrong and morally bad! Harrumph!!!ā Especially since this is random shit Iāve figured out on my own with no formal training. Itās more just āif you are looking for something to ease your strain, perhaps this might help you give you what you need to have an easier time!ā But most of the time I donāt even color my illustrations the way I do in this tutorial. Usually I try to balance & combine these principles with the āstandard colorsā that a scene is āsupposed to be,ā like if the ground is a concrete gray and the trees are green, Iāll keep them looking gray and green (depending on the lighting), but with the knowledge of āI want this to be a sad scene, so Iāll make the grays and greens lean heavily closer to blue, so the audience knows that itās time to be sad.ā Stuff like that. Theyāre cheat codes for strategic intent, not strict rules.
Now hopefully when it comes to covering more specific things, like how I design my characters, you guys now know the baseline foundation Iām running off of so I donāt have to explain all of this first before I get into the nitty-gritty hairs of āwhy I made this character purple and green vs why this character is blue and yellowā lmao.
Color is a hard subject to explain! Most of the color theory explanations Iāve heard primarily cover stuff like the science of reflecting light, then name drops all the famous kinds of color palettes, tells me what a cool vs warm color is, explains nothing else, and dips. Which, personally, has literally never been helpful for me when it comes to understanding why the fuck my painting should include the color blue in the shadows. Heaven forbid applying any of that shit to character design. Ough. No I had to figure that out on my own lmfao. So therefore this tutorial is more skewed towards that kind of perspective, someone who doesnāt really benefit (at least at this skill level) from the scientific cerebral shit. I want to know the why behind your creative choices!!! Tell me why the curtains must be blue!! Thatās whatās important to me on a practical level. Dont get me wrong, Iām sure one day Iāll learn the purpose behind the scientific stuff, Iām sure thereās a reason behind it, but youāve gotta figure out how to take the first steps at all to begin with before I can get to the master level stuff of likeā¦ā¦ā¦scientifically understanding how bounce light works. And if we donāt understand why the curtains are blue, I donāt think weāre gonna get why the bounce light should be blue, too. So I wanted to explain it!!! I wanted to cover it!! Because Iāve never seen it explained before!!! And itās important to know the why!!!
And uhm. Hopefully I managed to do an alright job at that lol. I hope you guys enjoy! <3
