andrewburger

Cotton Boucle Day Dress

c. 1913-1914

I've seen it in many cases when they put a character in a different backgrounds so they gotta match the characters colors to not feel out of place, but I have no idea how to do that.

(the timelapse in question)

honestly i just eyeballed it, it doesn't have to be the right color at first because you can always adjust as you go along. note that this grayish blue layer i put on top of the base colors ended up looking warmer once i added the rim lighting, which was a more saturated blue.

as i added more warm elements to the background (aka purple and magenta) that initial blue shading layer had to be adjusted to match. you may notice the shadows on helga ended up being more greenish than blue. that's because it's the complementary color to magenta, meaning they're on opposite ends of the color wheel. between those two sits blue-teal, which i used for the lighting. i think those are three of four colors making up a tetradic palette? the remaining one would be orange, which i didn't use.

that's the walkthrough for that specific piece but let's talk a bit more about how to pick colors for shading, lighting and backgrounds:

i didn't touch on values because that's a bit trickier, it depends on not just the color but also the material you're coloring (a soft wool sweater isn't gonna have the same contrasting values between lights and shadows as, say, a shiny leather jacket.)