Acceleron's Art Stash

so first off, I definitely recommend doing a color thumbnail/color sketch/color pass/whatever you wanna call it -- it's basically just. the color version of doing a sketch before your lineart. like I said, color and value are a huge weak point for me, so I like to have a good idea of things before I start focusing on doing all the nice refined lines and shapes and all! most of the time I'll do a rough sketch, then do a very messy color pass under the sketch, and then take that into a bigger file to do a final, clean version of.

I'm just gonna use this random quick Meleanor as an example (why yes Mel is eternally on my mind and my sketches 24/7, what about it). the first thing I think about is general focal point/contrast -- I know I want her to stand out against the background, and she's going to be mostly dark, so the background should be light. I also want to make her arm red, so I'm gonna start with greenish colors for the rest of her as a complement:

and then I start by slapping down the biggest color blocks:

immediately I can tell there's an issue because her skin is blending too much into the background. small areas that aren't a big focal point aren't a big deal if they get a bit lost in the values, but I'm losing a lot of her face in particular and I want to emphasize that more. BUT I also like the contrast that's going on with the dark color, so I don't want to just darken the background.

if I had a more complex background, I could try sticking something of a more medium value behind her, or do something fancy with gradients (although that might get tricky if I don't want to lose her horns). but I actually kinda want that extreme dark/light contrast to emphasize her face more, so I'm just gonna use her hair:

...but then that creates another issue of making the sword less visible. so that's where I bring in a more medium color that both the dark and light stand out against:

because the medium color is kind of 'contained' by the more extreme values, I'm not really losing the main contrast, if that makes sense! the back of her hair isn't as important, so it's okay for it to fade a little bit more into the background value.

(for the record, this all took about two minutes at this point. I'm really just focusing on colors and very general shapes and problem-solving as I go, not on trying to do a good drawing or get any details in.)

then I go for the next big color -- value-wise this is similar to the color I just used for her hair, but since it's contained by the more extreme values, I'm still getting that contrast. if her arm were overlapping the lighter part of her hair I might think about adding in another color to either her arm or hair to contain it better, similar to before.

...and then for the rest of the sword, I started with the same color as the lighter one for her hair and just changed the hue (in this case all of the colors except for the red are in the greenish range, which helps the red stand out more even though it's the same value). I also felt like I wanted a little more distinction in a couple of areas, especially her shoulder and face; I didn't want to pull attention away from the higher-contrast areas, so I stayed pretty close to those values.

...and then I decided I wanted more contrast on the sword anyway so l made the hilt darker (just using the same color as her extreme dark)

so it's just kind of...trying to think in big color blocks, starting with the more extreme values and then adding in more medium ones as needed. I find it's a lot easier in general to set up my more extreme contrast areas first, then make decisions about other colors based on that, if that makes sense!

and that really only took like. five minutes total! so now I could do a nice clean version, with a pretty good idea already of what colors I want to use and what areas I might need to be more careful with my shapes on. and if I decide I do want to add more colors or rendering, it's a good starting base to use -- I can more easily find a color that's closer to her dress, for instance, that I could use to add detail without getting too close to the color for her arm. OR I could decide to change up the contrast and/or colors entirely, and because this is just a super-fast messy little thing I can very easily and quickly play around with the colors without having wasted a bunch of time working on the first pass.

my style tends to be very limited palette with little to no rendering, so I don't usually go much beyond this color-wise (honestly most of the Mels that I've been posting were just color thumbs I cleaned up). but even if your style is more detailed, I think that trying to figure out those big color blocks first is a really good idea; I find it's a lot easier to start by figuring out the big extreme contrasts first, and then finding the areas that need more detail, and again going from the most contrasting color and dialing back from there. and since the big points are already figured out, it's a lot easier to choose colors that won't get lost or overwhelm the important points! (and if you're working digitally, keep that color layer on top to be able to check your values throughout! 👍)

and again I really can't stress enough how quick these are...I think a lot of people get scared off of doing color thumbs because they think they waste time, but it really is just a super quick way to play around with colors and figure stuff out without the stress of trying to do Nice Lines and everything on top of it. especially if you find that you're putting a lot of time and effort into fixing and redoing parts because they're just not working color-wise, it's a lot easier to spent a few minutes working out the problems ahead of time!

I don't mean to make it sound like you absolutely MUST be doing full color thumbs for everything that you then must follow EXACTLY or anything. I just personally find them to be a very helpful way to work stuff out! and sometimes it works out well enough that I end up basically just cleaning up the shapes...

...and sometimes I do end up changing stuff a lot; it's really just a starting point!

even if I have a much tighter sketch done, I usually at least slap some quick colors in to make sure it's all working well before I jump into doing the full thing (especially if I didn't think about what to do for a background beforehand...which is a constant problem with me whoops)