Art blog of MxMearcstapa

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Learning color theory through oil painting is more difficult than learning it through gouache & watercolor, primarily because it takes way more time to find mass tone and mix everything and also it's much less obvious to easily and quickly discern if a paint pigment is highly staining or transparent.

Oil painters like to seem like they have the richest and most storied traditions in color theory to past down but also inevitably they are the most likely to retain an extremely limited chroma palette based on classical palettes for the sake of classicism and not always make that fact very apparent to a beginner aside from saying it's an "old masters palette" watercolor/gouache painters are bad at using paints that are not light-fast and clinging to them despite having better alternatives, but generally still understand chroma gamuts and pigment importance better or at least talk about them more.

When you're mixing paints, the earth colors (browns) don't need to handled and thought of as brown. Ask yourself if the brown is yellow, orange, red, or leaning towards a black (which would be treated as a violet or blue, depending on whether black is warmer or cooler).

Yes there are cool reds and warm blues

Any reference color wheel that places red on the very top hurts my feelings, stop doing this just because you learned "roygbiv". Yellow is at the top and the Indigo-Blue range is on the bottom because this also means the color with the lightest possible value is opposite the color with the darkest possible value, so you have the colors arranged with a value scale from top to bottom BUILT IN.

This makes me think makeup artists have good color theory, having to understand undertones of skin, warm v neutral v cool toned red lipstick....

Yes!!! I mean first of all, makeup artists are artists.

and they are ALSO ultimately just blending pigments to produce certain colors and effects, so yeah professionally do study the basics of color theory and then necessarily have to adapt it to their medium. And they tend to generally add like, what you talked about with recognizing cool/warm/olive/neutral undertones and such as a big consideration to their canvas.

And that IS why people will say "this is a cooler red lipstick" (although even cooler than that would be magenta or fuschia!).

I think the only thing I've noticed wrt to honestly mostly beauty influencers and not actual professional MUAs is that too many people buy an eyeshadow palette of cool tones in the palette and then put it on and complain it pulls "too warm for their cool skin." And it "isn't actually a true cool tone palette."

I just want to grab all these people by the face and say:

"Shhhhhh. Color temperature is relative. Although you have cool skin undertones, you ALSO have blood under your skin which will inherently make your base skin-canvas slightly warm no matter your foundation shade. So when you put any kind of pigment that isn't fully opaque onto your skin, the transparency WILL be warmed by your skin because you're alive and have blood still. The eyeshadow palette IS a cool palette. You're just not a vampire, which is why that cool taupe shade suddenly looks different from the mass tone in the palette."

These influencers would understand this better if they did some watercolor painting on pre-tintedpaper and then compared it to painting on pure white.

Handprint.com is hands down the most comprehensive scientific explanation of how different color wheels or palette choices work. It's big and dense and exceptionally thorough. I skim frequently and find myself always learning more. https://handprint.com/HP/WCL/water.html everything is done using watercolors as a reference point but a LOT of this translates to other mediums. For the record his CIECAM color wheel is what I consider to be the best (not 3 dimensional) color wheel for artists. Period.

He uses pigment numbers for some of the most common watercolors rather than specific paint brands or color names to place the pigments. It's also a case study in why yellow being at the top is the best because it also means you have a value scale from top to bottom (since black paints are just dark violets or blues, ultimately.)

When you look at this, you can start realizing more and more why the earth colors can be used as if they were like, straight red, or yellow, or orange. Like if you wanted to make a limited palette, you could use "burnt sienna" as your dark yellow (which will make the whole palette lean orange!) Or it could be your orange or you could use burnt sienna as your red. (Look at gamut masking links below)

Seriously it's good to try and swatch your medium (even really quickly!) Within a CIECAM Artist's color wheel. Below are two of my attempts:

From loose memory and then mapping pigments roughly.

He also discusses the difference between visual complements and mixing complements!

Anyways absolutely try to read bits and pieces. The whole site is amazing. Handprint is amazing.

Also:

https://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com and James Gurney's book: Color and Light: a guide for the realist painter. James Gurney is the dinotopia guy. That book is also amazing for painting fantasy with lots of fantastical examples. Here are two short videos on gamut mapping and gamut masking. Accompanying blog posts.

No surprises here! His book also charts pigments:

Actually these are my four favorite books hands down:

Color and Light: a Guide for the realist painter - James Gurney

Color for Painters: a guide to traditions & practice - Al Gury

The oil painters color handbook - Todd m casey

Artist's master series: Color & light - 3d total publishing. This one emphasizes digital!

The first two have been out for awhile now and you can more easily find them cheaper/used online than the latter two which are relatively newer and hefty hardbacks.

Also, from personal experience: al gury is a sweetheart angel who is a huge crazy cat man. I adore him, he's so kind and helpful. I think it's a little late to join the current session (although they did only start Jan 28, so you can always ask! Class videos are recorded), BUT he frequently offers a class on color that is fully online through PAFA continuing education, as well as other classes. I haven't taken it yet, but I HAVE taken other classes online with Al and he's really great.

Oh also online gamut masking tools:

In krita: https://docs.krita.org/en/user_manual/gamut_masks.html

https://claudiamatosa.com/resources/gamut-masking simple tool

https://mypaintingclub.com/blog/post/39-The-Gamut-Mask-Tool another tool with more complexity

Do you have any tips or tutorials?

I was asked by a friend yesterday if I could offer basic tips about comic paneling. As it turns out, I have a lot to say on the matter! I tried breaking down the art of paneling using the principles of art and design, and I hope it helps you out!

EDIT: uh uh there are a lot of people reblogging this, so i figure i may as well append this now while i can lol

This whole thing was very much cranked out in a few hours so I had a visual to talk about with a friend! If this gives you a base understanding of paneling, that's awesome! Continue to pull in studies from the comics you see and what other artists do well and don't do well! You can tell paneling is doing well when the action is flowing around in its intended reading format.

Here's the link to the globalcomix article from which I pulled the images about panel staggering! Someone sent in a reblog that it wasn't totally clear that the 7th slide mostly covers what NOT to do in regards to staggering, and that is my mistake!

I saw in a tag that someone was surprised I used MamaYuyu too, and I don't blame them lol. If I had given myself more than a couple hours maybe I would have added something else on, I just really admire MamaYuyu's paneling personally.

Your wish is my command, dear anon!

[Transcript]

->Gums show a little

→ Smiling pushes cheeks out

Mouth corners look like triangles with lil' hooks

A closed-mouth natural smile will show the top teeth only

There are four incisors (the flat ones) followed by a canine & five molars on either side

I usually group the incisons together fon a more stylised look

While smiling, the lips stretch and look thinner

really helpful technique ^ once you know how to divide by halves and thirds it makes drawing evenly spaced things in perspective waaay easier:

Here you go: ~How I draw braids~ 🩷🙏

How do you colour hair!?!?!?!?

I struggle with hair a ton when it comes to colour, and I'd just like some advice from another fellow artist 👀

I actually have a speedpaint for this one!!

to summarise the video (because its very fast)

1

i get a base colour for the hair

2

i add an ombre effect using a darker more saturated version of the base colour and a smudging brush (i use a small brush to define hair strands, certain areas have the colour fade reach futher down than others)

3

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.