#colour picking

Ok so before I start I want to emphasise that this is only my opinion, and that I know a lot of amazing artists use the colour picking tool (/eyedropper tool) and find it really useful, so I’m in no way saying you can’t use it. More I want to go into why I think it can be a detriment to developing your artistic skill.

Colour picking, for those who maybe don’t know, is often where people will use the eyedropper tool on most digital art software to pick the colours from a reference image. (The tool can be used to just pick colours from your own piece, of course, and this is what I usually do and find super useful! I’m just going to be specifically talking about when artists pick colours from references in this post, though).

Now, the pros to using this method are that you can learn the kinds of colours that make up certain parts of an image. For example, shadows can often be difficult to paint, also with skin tones, so it can be useful to use colour picking to specifically see how saturated shadow tones need to be, or what colours make up the most realistic skin tones. 

However, an issue I think a lot of artists fall into is that they feel they have to colour pick every aspect of the image. So, rather than just picking major areas so you have an idea of the shades you need to use, they will colour pick every section of the reference image. And what this creates is that even if you have freehand drawn the image, or added various new elements to the piece, the parts where you colour picked will look identical to the reference, and you can often lose sight of your own artistic flair. Colour picking can also look out of place in an image where you’ve used a bunch of references, and this is often because the lighting is different. 

However, these aren’t really my main issues with colour picking. What I mainly have a problem with is that I feel a lot of artists use it not as a tool to help them get used to which colours they should use in certain places. But instead as a way to paint something without having to think about colour at all. I think particularly in digital art where we thankfully don’t have to mix our own colours, colour picking every aspect of a reference seems pretty redundant. 

I find it’s a lot more beneficial to look at a reference and either try and eyeball what colours you should be using (which is definitely something that takes practise, and may be a lot more difficult for people who have some form of colour-blindness). Or, and I think this one can yield the best results, use the colours in the original reference as a base, but build on it with other colours! If you think the original image is too bright, then use this as an opportunity to make the colours more muted! 

Basically, colour picking is fine as a tool and I have no issue with anyone who uses it. But if you feel like you’re beginning to rely on colour picking to do the majority of your work because you’re scared that you’ll get colours wrong, my advice is to try and do more freehand colouring work. Traditional art is a great way to get used to not colour picking, and also painting artworks entirely in one colour can help you get an idea of how to use colour in an exciting and interesting way!

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This was just a small thing I wanted to post, let me know if you’d like me to expand on this topic!

My post on references (here) links into this post too! So feel free to check that out!