This is the first batch of 3 color studies and there are a decent amount of problems.The edge control is rough here (stuff looks a little fuzzy) and there are issues with the color being just a little off. But, it's early in my color examination and I was already learning a lot from this.
This was a rough one and a really serious example of how, especially digitally, colors are often not immediately what they look like. I don't color pick when I do these but I try to really examine them and match as best I can. When the study's done, I go back and open up the color picker and check how close I got. A couple of these are really bad. Specifically, cloud in the first study and the grass in the third. The clouds aren't quite orange and saturated enough and in the third, the grass is just too green. It's too saturated and if I were working traditionally, I'd say it was too "out of the tube" green. It wasn't mixed up so to speak. The middle one has plenty of issues also but I actually really like that the color in that one uses not an analogous color scheme like you typically see. Instead, it uses a modified Red/Green color scheme with the reddish/pink being the sky color and those reds are also mixed into the greens there to make interesting and desaturated greens that are really nice and rich. Lots of good lessons in that one.
The first one in this batch of color studies I probably got the water a little to dark. This one felt really hard to do (and was also a fun experiment in atmospheric perspective because that's another thing I occasionally struggle with). I'm comfortable saying this was an orange and blue color scheme but there were an awful lot of greens in this one as well so the interactions were really cool to see. It's also a good lesson in how, at certain levels and values, oranges turn into browns really fast and dark enough browns are as good as blacks. Again, using straight up black paint isn't a great idea in painting it makes things look flat. Those rich browns, however, don't.
The other studies are a bit more straightforward but no less interesting. The middle one very obviously an orange based color scheme but I'm not convinced that the blues I put in were actually the way to handle the color choices. I think the things that look like blues may have been oranges that were mixed with a desaturated blue but I think that piece was actually mostly desaturated oranges. I'd actually be willing to bet that if I looked at it again closely, I'd find that what look like blues were really desaturated oranges that would actually just be grays. The third study here is an orange and green color scheme with some cool yellows for emphasis. The fact that this one is so limited in its palette is really kind of cool and a great lesson in how this works.
Not gonna lie, these were rough. I was getting tired when I did these and my edge control and color matching ability suffered. The first one is a very blue/orange color scheme with a little bit of violet mixed in. The blues are kind of blue/violet in their hue and not super saturated to begin with though this one avoids being a pastel color scheme. The second one is a blue and yellow/orange scheme for the most part and man it's astounding to me how much variance you can have with those colors. The blues were fairly saturated but at different value level in this one with the yellow/orange being less saturated. That's another thing I'm noticing with these. If one color is very strong and bright, often the other will be less so. It's a bit of a push and pull.
The third study though takes that in a very different direction. This is probably the first of what I'd say is a pretty straight forward pastel color scheme. Those are, at least in my mind, characterized by the colors having lots of white in them and being soft and pale. It creates a soft, quiet mood in the piece and I think that's what's going on here. We're dealing with another blue/orange color scheme with a little bit of pale violet for added effect so we're basically only using 3 main colors with hints of red and red/orange for emphasis and accent and it's really cool to see. All three of these use similar or the same base colors for their palette and go in DRASTICALLY different directions.
This first one in this batch I was one I got a little two dark I think and used a little too much saturated red. It's one where I'd say this scheme was built on reds, yellows, oranges and browns. This is a major analogous color scheme and it's kind of interesting to me because one could look like a red/green color scheme if you aren't careful (there are yellow greens that could get into the range for that sky) but it's really just desaturated oranges and deep, deep reds.
The middle study was much easier. Blues, oranges and a hint of blue/violet again. This is probably the most saturated I've seen in a lot of things and it's still gorgeous in the original. I'm glad I picked it to study from. Now here's another great one. Those clouds aren't white! They're very pastel orange. That's a great example of how colors can look different when they're laid next to each other as opposed to on their own.
The third one was another one that was strange and interesting. It's another red, orange and yellow color scheme that makes the entire piece feel so warm and inviting. It's kind of amazing how you can change the mood so dramatically with the color palette being very similar as the first one had a more sickly appearance. On this one though, one of the areas I failed was that in mine on the right you can see bits of green that weren't necessary. Yeah, the reds are dulled down and desaturated with bits of green but there's some sticking out that's just unnecessary and not blended well. Definitely something to be aware of in the future going forward.
Only two studies in this batch. One monochromatic one and one that's a little more complex. The monochrome one actually looks monochrome but really isn't. There's blues and violets in that one. Still VERY close to monochrome but it's interesting how the violet shadows lend some depth without breaking the piece's cohesion. The second one felt strange to me as it's mostly browns with hints of red and blue in the sky. The clouds are a kind of pale brownish gray that seems to have been mixed to work specifically with all the brown and probably was. Even the "white" areas are really just pale browns that look white in their relationship to other things. Another great lesson that white and black paint should be used sparingly or not at all.
Another one with only two and I don't even like LOOKING at the top one. I'm not sure why I even picked that one to do a study of because I don't like anything about it or the study that came from it now. That said, there's actually some cool stuff going on in that when you really break this down, because oranges change color dramatically at darker values, this whole thing is done in various levels of orange but looks like a two color scheme. You can see hints of it on the side of the tractor as well though I missed them at the time. That one's not my best work at all.
Learned a lot more from the second one though and it's a red/green scheme which are notorious for being hard to do without it seeming like Christmas. Seeing the extreme changes in lighting here was really fascinating and how with the strong green light source, almost none of the red shows through at the highlights. There is kind of a third and fourth color in this one and it's a very dark blue/violet that's mainly used to play up the dark sky element of the piece and it really takes a back seat to the highly saturated red and greens, as well as the red/oranges of the foreground. That's the other thing, this is one of the most saturated pieces I've seen. Most of the colors are very clearly what they are.
I think we turned a corner here and things were starting to make a bit more sense. The blue and yellow/orange color scheme in the first one at the top was really pretty obvious (side note compositionally the repetition of the pillars is kind of cool here too) and the interplay with the shadows was cool. There's some greenish looking colors here but those aren't actually greens! It's amazing to me actually. Those were just desaturated yellows. And it makes a certain amount of sense actually. Go get some yellow paint some time and mix it with black. Go ahead, I'll wait... done it? Did you see how green that looked? Well you can do the same thing with lots of brown and yellow and it gives you a richer feel. I didn't get a really good match there but the learning experience was awesome. The third one here was a near complimentary color scheme with different variants of orange and violet with the atmospheric perspective favoring more pastel like colors going back. My version is too mushy but the color relationships aren't bad and it was really fun to see how the you could warm up a violet and darken it with oranges to pull it to the foreground.
The top one here I couldn't resist doing. It's a master study of a guy who if he's dead hasn't been dead long but he's one of my favorite old school fantasy painters: Michael Whelan. He did the dragon riders of perm covers and I absolutely love them. The color decisions here were really sweet. Green and orange is a near complimentary scheme and I learned a lot with this one. I feel I got the mood right even though the shadows are really off in many places and the foreground dragon probably isn't orange enough. There's a hint of a blue green in the upper right corner that I think is a nice color touch to play off of all the greens and yellow/oranges in the rest of the image. It's also great to see atmospheric perspective done with a color other than blue. Here, the greens of the sky come in and objects further in the distance fade to pale dark greens.
Second one is less different. A near complimentary violet and orange color scheme with the blues making up the sky. A hint of green here and there with the trees being dark and very desaturated. I think I was starting to get a better grasp here but you can still see ALOT of issues with edge control.
By this batch the edge control and color matching were both getting much better. I was feeling good about being able to understand not only what colors I was seeing but how to get them. There's some serious issues with the first and second ones but by the third one here not only were the color interactions a bit more complex but I was starting to understand much more intuitively how to mix them digitally.
At some point I got bored with doing the master copies and decided to take some advice another artist and a video I watched gave me to study by doing film still studies for color learning. Boy howdy was that a good idea. Something I highly recommend and will continue to do in the future. This was the first one I did and it's more than a little off. There's some weird green accents in this one that I'm not sure are actually in the still but with all the red and orange in the original it really makes things pop doesn't it? Mine on the left just looks like someone put a white filter or something over the original and the colors don't stack up perfectly. I'm not bothered by that though because the stuff I learned about how to do orange/red interplays was so fascinating. Also learned lots of cool ways to indicate lighting and the importance of shadows. Mine simply aren't dark enough for one thing and the whole thing manages to look mixed in terms of color but still VERY highly saturated and bright.
I'm going to tell you something. This is my absolute favorite study of the bunch. Full disclosure I did a quick trace over of this one to make sure I got the proportions and everything laid in right and so I could focus entirely on the painting technique here and really try to learn about the use of color on this one. The reds and greens are both really desaturated here and it makes for a pretty realistic look I think Everything looks a bit washed out and there's a lot of the greens in the reds of the suit being reflected from the sky around it. You can see lot of it on the lower portion of the suit. There are some issues in mine (which is on the bottom with the original on top) like the highlights not peering perhaps as white as they could be (I probably underplayed them, not quite going as white and shiny as I could have) and the reds have pinker highlights in other areas like around the right (our right) shoulder. Overall though I learned a TON from this one especially since I find red/green palettes so hard to do right and I rarely see them done well.
That's a lot of pictures I know and I'll need to do a write up about all of them in the near future but for now, I'm tired and the important part is done.
EDIT
WOW that was a lot of writing for the debrief on these. I think that's everything that needed to be said. More stuff coming up in the future. Take care and see you soon.
