Sun

Firstly is understanding value, or the greyscale of your intended subject. You need to be able to push your focus (also called a focal point) somewhere and keep it visually clean - this makes it easier for when you move into color, so you have a starting point of where you want your lightest or darkest colors. Here's an example from my college homework days using a character design:

with this design, i ended up going with the bottom far right. the patterns where fun, but they were too busy and drawing too much attention away from my intended focal point, her face. the top 1st and 3rd could've also worked, it was just a taste thing lol

something to note - i'm not using a true black or a true white. true white or black isn't accurate to the actual values of colors - you can use something like a light pink, but it’s going to be darker than true white, y'know? also like. for the same reasons don't work on a pure white canvas. the moment you start working on a non white canvas and get used to surrounding your character in value, it's only up from there lol

Also keep in mind i'm designing this character with her skin color's value AND the paper's value in mind. you know how new or lazy artists tend to say they just cant make a character with a dark skin color work with a design? they probably didn't even consider this. they work on a titanium white canvas and expect it to magically work out lol

Do know that once you really get into the habit of working with color, you most likely won't need to do this all of the time. it's just a helpful tool, and a necessity when you're a designer and you need to crank through dozens of iterations before you can even think about color.

OK COLOR

The method in which i learned how to get good at understanding color is. not going to make you happy lol. I was taught via physically mixing all of my colors from cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white gouache (fancy expensive paint that works like acrylic or watercolor depending on how much water you add), and painting still lives. It was BRUTAL trying to get every color correct, but now i can replicate/mix almost any color I see in my color wheel with pinpoint precision, and the final exam result speaks for itself:

however, because i care about you and don't want you to spend a fortune on paint, here's the easier digital way of doing this: do a master study. take a photo into your art program, and try to paint the photo and recreate the colors using your program's color wheel, all while NOT color picking directly from the photo. you will quickly learn that color is extremely situational and changes depending on what's next to it. for example, your teeth aren't white - they're quite yellow, they just look white bc it's surrounded by pink and red. exact same thing with your eyes.

Now, you may ask "why the fuck did you tell me all of that, i'm confused now and it has nothing to do with palettes!" unfortunately it does. the more you're able to reliably guess or understand what situation a color is in/what it's surrounded by, the better your taste in color palettes become. suddenly you don't depend on titanium white for the schlera of an eye or teeth, or shade with black. you start using shit like desaturated greens and reds and purples for your "white"s. you can use a lot of weird colors for shit, as long as the surrounding colors and values make it FEEL believable to the viewer. If you want an exercise, try color picking this illustration i did. everything in this image reads acceptable, the colors are just crazy lol

Knowing all this shit also prevents you from relying too heavily on filter layers for fixing your colors, or always using them to shade.

Let's take this C00lkidd I threw together and gave some random colors. They don’t make my brain upset so I deem them acceptable. Again, comes from practice.

let's say you wanna make his palette warmer, or he's in a sunset scene. we can use a multiply layer for the effect, and it works ok, but it’s shifted around some of my values around. so beside it, i manually played around with the color wheel to get something similar. i made is skin a little darker so his teeth stood out, choose a different metal color, kept the jacket and shirt in a more similar world to the og, etc

Same situation for a night scene. he's cooler everywhere, but better communicated.

That isn't to say you can't use filters - i use them all the time to tweak my final work/bring my colors a little closer together, BUT they should be treated as a tool, not a crutch.

Now, for actual color palettes and their application to your work:

One of my preferred methods is taking photos with colors i like, throwing it onto my canvas and either color picking or tweaking it for my needs. it's super solid for when you wanna go for the same feeling/mood/aesthetic.

Here's another with the same approach, but i play around with blending and shadows. this is more my "signature style", using more saturated colors, shading and lighting with teals, purples, etc. sometimes i outline with a color or throw random colors in pockets just for flavor. none of the shadows are on multiply layers, they're blended straight into the other colors so i can control their vibrancy. it's very watercolor-ish, just erratic: