ik ive asked you stuff before but i cant help myself, ur art is so good!!!!!!
how do you pick colors for your art? it's genuinely so incredible!!
Hello again, and tysm!
Historically I've always hated picking colors. As a concept artist, my instinct is to always start with the unlit, base version of an object's color since this is the most helpful thing for a 3D artist. But for illustration, this is very boring.
I started picking my signature ugly neon colors out of laziness. When I fill in a piece, I always use a bright color to "mask" out the parts I plan to add color to because the edges were easier to see. When I started this account, I wanted to try making my pieces more illustrative (I am a chronic sketcher) so I thought, "well maybe I'll just leave the ugly colors and try to build around that". This was how I started playing with bold colors that I used to hate.
Picking colors for illustration is very vibes-based. I like to make all my individual "pieces" (hair, shirt, skin, etc) out of "Solid Color Layers" in photoshop:
This lets me preview the colors in real time in the color picker while seeing what it looks like on the piece. I drag the color picker around until I go, "that feels about right", or, "it's been 15 minutes and I need to make a decision now".
Picking colors for design work is much more structured, but a lot of the same principles still apply when I am fine-tuning an illustration. To summarize: my main focus is to direct where I want the viewer to look by controlling contrast.
The eye is naturally drawn to points of high contrast and there are three tools in color that you can use: value contrast, hue contrast, and saturation contrast. I made a bad diagram in paint to explain. Left is high contrast and right is low contrast. Value is the "brightness" of a color, usually represented by % of black. The middle row is showing hue contrast. Colors on the opposite end of the color wheel will have more contrast than colors next to each other. Bottom row is saturation, which tends to be the most subtle way to add or remove contrast.
When doing illustrations for fun, I like to create an eyesore, with lots of contrast everywhere.
On top of everything, I like to play with gradient maps and blending modes in photoshop. Gradient maps get the same decision making method as picking base colors: pure vibes. If I'm still unsatisfied with the colors, or if nothing is feeling harmonious, I will sometimes make a new color fill layer and go through all the different blending modes with that color layer, just to see how it affects everything underneath. I will fiddle with the opacity and color as I go. I tend to like the effects of soft light, overlay, pin light, and multiply.
