#coloring reference

Ive always enjoyed how you deaign your characters from the use of shape language to the use of color.

I noticed that many of your designs have around 6-8 (and more on your latest) colors in use at a time. I was always told that you should work with a limited pallete when designing characters, but you somehow designs lovely characters "breaking" that rule.

How do you do it? I always get overwhelmed if i have more than 5 colors in a designs but usually it lacks the contrast and "pop" that your designs have.

Also when you design characters, do you start with a theme, their personality or their role in a story?

COLOR THEORY

This is a great question! So when it comes to color in designs; character/backgrounds/props, generally less is more. You pick 3 colors : 2 right next to each other ( analogous colors ) : 1 on the the otherside of the color wheel ( complementary colors ). From there you want to vary the value/saturation. So there's a dark color - mid tone - highlight (usually the complementary color).

So It might seem like I have a lot of colors, but in actuality it's only 2-3 colors with varied saturation/values to create contrast.

You want a 2/3 ratio split of the analogous colors with the remaining 1/3 being the brighter complementary color to make little details POP. Now sometimes I will use 4 colors in a design, it still works because it's all about balance. I made a little crud pie chart for a general idea. Faye's main color scheme is blue -> green highlighted with red/purple/yellow. Her vibe is poisonous, and poisonous creatures tend to be colorful.

With the right balance you can make any color scheme work, you have to give each color their place, some are more dominate then others. If you make a design with every color 25/25/25/25 equal split, the design will come off as bland and nothing will stand out. But if you make it 40/40/20 suddenly that 20% stands out.

I made a tutorial!

This was requested of me a while ago, so apologies for the wait! In this video I cover my entire process when it comes to coloring/drawing gold. I did my best to explain in-depth and detail how light, shadows, contrast, and color work together to create a polished gold look, applicable to any metal in art. Hopefully it's not too difficult to follow and I hope it helps!

I was asked by someone from Amino on how I add so much detail to my hair.

When it comes to coloring, I love working on the hair. It’s honestly the best part to all my drawings.

I tried to explain, but sadly my fellow artist was also a visual learner so my explanation was terrible. Then again, I absolutely SUCK at explaining things.

And so they have kindly asked if I could make a little tutorial on how I color hair. And here it is!

I’ll definitely explain in more detail for each step since I couldn’t add too much in the tutorial.

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Step 1: Base Color

When putting the base color, I never use the exact color of the character’s hair. I always use a shade that’s slightly darker than the actual color for the base.

(As mentioned in the image, I never use black for the base of the hair. Use a dark grey shade instead.)

Step 2:

Add a new layer and clip it to the base layer. Switch to the brush Hair Light and set the opacity for it to 33%

You can use as many colors as you want, but I mainly stick to three; the base color, and two shades lighter than the base with the third color being the brightest.

Make sure Force Fade is enabled and color by following the flow of the hair don’t color randomly.

(For black hair, I use three different shades of grey. Alternate between light grey, grey and the base grey.)

Step 3:

On that same layer (unless you’re afraid of messing up then you can do this on another layer), switch to the brush Hair. Set the brush opacity to somewhere between 69-72%

Using the same colors, color the area where you think the light would hit the hair.

Use the bright color to lightly highlight those areas. And then use the other two shades to color around the lighted area to blend with the strokes from the previous step.

Once you’re satisfied with the coloring, merge the layers to the base one.

Step 4: Highlights

Now for some shine!

For this, you can use either the Hair brush or the Hair (Light) brush. Both work well! Make sure the opacity of the brush is at 100%

Use a color that is much more lighter than the colors you used. I used pink for this.

Highlight the areas from the previous step where you used the lighter shade from the three colors.

(For black hair, never use white. Use a bright blue color fort the highlights.)

Step 5: Highlights

After you finished adding in the highlights, open the filter tool and select Gaussian Blur.

Set it to 11. (That is my main set, but sometimes I’ll even set it to 6-25)

After you blurred the highlights, set the layer opacity to 81%

(For blue highlights on black hair, set the opacity layer somewhere between 20-40%)

Merge the layer when you’re satisfied with the result.

Step 6: Shading

Now for some shading!

Disable Force Fade and change to the Dip Pen (Soft) brush.

Use a color that is darker than the base color, and color in areas where you think would be shaded.

I am no master at shading, so obviously I colored in places where I think would be shaded.

Set the layer to Hard Light

Depending on the color you use, Soft Light or Overlay can work just as well!

(For black hair, I use a dark shade of blue.)

Step 7: Shading

Repeat Step 5 by opening the filter tool and selecting Gaussian Blur.

Set it to 11. Don’t over blur the shading you don’t want it to blend too well in the hair colors.

You can also set Gaussian Blur to 5-9 to make the shading pop more.

(For blue shading on black hair, set the opacity layer somewhere between 20-40%. Sometimes you’ll have to adjust both the highlight layer and the shading layer to make the colors blend well for black hair.)

Merge the layer when you’re satisfied with the result.

✨And You're Done!✨

There ya have it folks.

Moonlight and sunlight coloring reference

for reference, i have one swatchmaster.jpeg that i use for all my overwatch colored pictures.

don’t panic about having to get ref every time, just recycle one base color template for every pic,it keeps the pictures consistent.

another easy way to check is in color value, by changing the picture to black & white you can see the tonal variations differently than looking in color.