how i like to approach coloring!
i wanted to have it down somewhere nice cuz i’ve had enough people ask and id like to elaborate on it <33 i hope it helps!!
let’s take first this magic 8ball sketch concepting i did recently specifically to play with color —>
all of these were meant to exude magic and curiosity in some way! albeit messy they were fun to play with
i really like using a dark red for the light bc it makes it feel slightly more foreboding/strong in a way? not the Evil color but very mischievous and magical, i thought that the navy blue/red gradient which is seen in a lot of things was a really good sort of mystery and magic color set to use for an 8ball, it’s very mystical and i like the darker sense of lighting onto it bc it’s a black object traditionally
the pink and brown one i wanted to have a slightly more rosy light, my initial thought was the ‘go for it’ being in reference to a crush so that sort of supportive brightness esp with highlighting the answer instead of the ball (i don’t think it turned out quite as good but it still stands)
and the bottom one i’m really happy with, purple and green are both the strongest ‘magic’ connotation colors in my head so i wanted it to be extra alluring and shiny, with the purple being the dark and the green being slightly more saturated it’s a sense of like- curiosity/discovery if that makes sense?
color meanings are famously very flexible, so color pairings and contrasts themselves often help to set a more direct theme/palette
FULLY RENDERED EXAMPLES
it’s usually most obvious in my lineart for finished pieces, for example my recent hugh morris has a lot of soft pink for his lighting bc of his super romantic and soft connotations which shows up on both the red and purple
then the blue is a good contrasting shade color, mostly because it’s sat comfortably to highlight the purple really well! it’s also useful bc my original lineart was a dark magenta so it forms an analogous palette (dark blue - purple - magenta- light pink)
a lot of it risks coming across as subtle conjecture at best but it’s important to me that the feeling of a piece reflects who the person is/what the environment is etc, especially since i don’t tend to do a ton of strong environmental lighting (i mostly do standalone character art and not a ton of scene/backgrounds tho im tryna branch out a bit with that LOL)
my shadow milk is also a really good example, he’s alr fairly monochromatic but i tried to give it personality! i used a lot of the strong cyan to represent something kind of wispy and inhuman (with cyan being difficult to come across in nature it tends to feel very jarring or concerning, and he’s all about deceit and mysterious nature)
then Ourple bc i love when people associate him with purple + he was a lot more purple in his past as count obvi bc he’s associated with knowledge, astronomy, and nobility, but it’s just the shadow of his former self atp >:))
and everything lines up really nicely on the analogous palette it’s super close together (purple - navy blue - blue - periwinkle - cyan) despite him being basically monochrome LOL
PALETTES/BRUSHES
i don’t Always do my work off of the different color design palette types, but they’re super useful to play with and find something fun (my favorites to use are analogous and split-complimentary)
and i usually do cool color vs. warm color (like, if my shading is a cool color, my light will be a warm, and vice versa)
i use ibispaint X and i made my own brush to work with bc i really like a bit of huge/brightness shifting cuz i like it to feel more Real as much as possible, and it really helps a sort of oil/watercolor mixing feel
(im not talking much about the layers bc i def do a lot with transparency layers and sometimes multiply/overlay stuff, but it’s a lot more ‘fucking around and finding out’ than it looks like LOL so i don’t feel confident to talk abt how i use all that, just play around and have fun!! whatever feels right to you!)
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i really hope this helps someone, if you have anymore questions or would like more stuff i would love if you sent an ask!
