#pinkasketch

Kylan: You killed my parents!

skekMal: ...

I’m sure we’ve all come across pieces, or made pieces with the rainbow feature that just doesn’t look right. Something about the wide selection of colour and the way it’s implemented can really make or break a piece  ( just like with any manner of pallette endeavours ).

The fact of the matter is that rainbows are incredibly temperemental, and it takes careful thought and consideration to implement them anywhere in a design. The huge spectrum of colour is an immediate attention stealer, and i personally would only use the rainbow for details or what i would consider a character’s defining trait, since its presence tends to hog the viewer’s focus. 

I don’t typically use rainbows in my designs, mostly since i tend to dabble in much simpler pallettes as part of my style. 

But while people tend to resent designs with rainbow pallettes involved, it is often not in due to the rainbow itself, it is due to the misuse of the pallette and stylization around it. 

So let’s take a look at that two particular points. 

Stylizing

There’s quite a few ways to incorporate rainbows into a design. I’m just going to present three, or the three most common i tend to see. These work pretty well within specific styles in my opinion, though typically, the softer the gradient fades from colour to colour through the rainbow, the better jives with simpler and heavily graphic styles ( A + B ). These highly simplified styles also allow us to suspend our sense of disbelief more, as the single direction of the gradients doesn’t break with the flow of any particular locks of hair ( as there is no locks of hair defined ). 

Once you start moving into art styles that contents itself highly with the direction, volume and overall flow of the figure ( for an example detailed toony styles, or semi-realism ) you might be inclined to work with ‘C’, as it addresses the direction and volume of whatever object your drawing, and will adhere to the construction of your design much less intrusively. 

The surrounding pallette

Now, as i mentioned before, as much as stylization of your rainbow can be intrusive stylistically - it is equally, if not more disruptive to any pre-established pallette that isn’t carefully tailored to it. 

^Above, i’ve slapped a rainbow into the hair of my character design. Now, his skin-tone mixed with the white of his hair and the light in his irises makes it a little easier on the eyes. It’s not perfect, still pretty busy looking, but it’s not atrocious looking either.  However, when taking his outfit into consideration, the rainbow bit starts to stick out rather garishly. This could be because of the colours from the added rainbow is clashing with the somewhat intricate colours of his outfit, that don’t draw from any of the colours in his hair. 

For inspiration, we can look to characters such as Rainbow dash from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. This character makes use of rainbows pretty extensively in the mane, the tail and the mark on her hindleg. This is all brought together and balanced out by a very simple basecolour - a slightly dulled baby blue. 

This uniform colour only accompanied by a little sprinkle of pinkish-reds ensures that the pallette isn’t actively fighting the rainbow, and letting the rainbow take up the visual interest that it demands.  The important part about rainbows is to give them space in your pallette to breathe, and this is most easily achieved by using very neutral colours, and avoid incorporating too many other colourful details in your design. 

So three no-no’s based on what we just learned. 

1. Stick with somewhat desaturated colours that doesn’t compete with the saturation of your rainbow. 

2. Avoid incorporating more colours than necessary, this way you won’t end up with a design that looks “busy” or “chaotic”. 

3. Avoid complex, coloured patterns that could draw attention away from the rainbow. 

Try instead: 

1. Clean, desaturated whites, greys or blacks to accompany and frame your rainbow. 

2. Remember that darker colours offers a very hard contrast that can add vibrancy to your rainbow. 

3. If/when you incorporate other colours into your design, don’t make them too bright, i recommend keeping them a little dark and a little dull. My personal preference would be using blue-tones, but you can use any colour you like as long as they’re muted. 

Ultimately, incorporating rainbows is a wild endeavour, and i’m not here to tell you what to do and what not to do, only give my two cents on how to solve the “garish” rainbow situation that can arise if you work with the full colour spectrum without knowing what you’re doing. 

I think i’d like to boil it down to a matter of restraint ( and colour theory.  Something you can read more about in my post here:   https://theredlinestation.tumblr.com/post/185826075569/one-thing-i-really-struggle-with-is-color-picking ) Mod Em also did a bit on colours some time back:  https://theredlinestation.tumblr.com/post/181383173276/aah-okay-so-today-i-was-rendering-in-black-and

You can technically pull anything off, if you know how to make something work with the rules of colour theory, and knowing exactly how to bend the rules just right. 

... *pinches the bridge of his nose with his two right hands* ... I’m afraid that this is my fault. 

I tried to make a compromise with skekMal, and I said I would not try to interfere with his hunt as long as he refrains from needlessly killing sentient beings. Property, however, is not sentient. 

If I am at his side, of course I will always try my best to keep damage to a minimum. If I am not, well... 

Rules: list 10 songs you’ve been listening to recently and tag 10 people.

I was tagged by: @skek-sa, @nurloxx and @pinkasketch / Thank you very much! Let’s see how i will do, must look and search Hmmm~

1. BANG by AJR

2. Tourner dans le vida by Indila

3. Alive by Lazer Owl, Anthony LAzaro

4. Livin’ for the Weekend by Fitz and The Tantrums

5. Loser by Jagwar Twin

6. This Mountain by Faouzia

7. Overture by AJR

8. Roses - Imanbek Remix by SAINt, Imanbek

9. I found by Amber Run

10. Start a Riot by Duckwrth, Shaboozey

Brea: He sure did! I guess you can say he's... My rock???? ;)

Hi there! I’m a big fan of your work! And I hope you can help me with my anatomy!

I drew this a while back on my dA and I’m pretty proud of it! But do you think you can help with the anatomy/pose? IDK why, but I just could not get the arms to look right. Plus, the hands are supposed to be “clawing” at the face, but I couldn’t find a decent reference for it, so I just drew them holding the head.

Submitted by pinkasketch

For a simple pose like this, you could probably take reference from yourself in the mirror! It would also help with figuring out how the face looks when it’s being clawed like that. I just used this stock photo: 

I think the hands themselves could be bigger. An open hand for the average person should  be the same length as the face. If you want this really tense emotion, the fingers get scrunched up, and you can see the folds of the skin when the finger curls. 

I added dynamism to the pose by flaring out the arms and tilting the shoulder opposite the direction of the head. Avoid parallel-ish composition, since that is static and calm and doesn’t convey the tense emotion. 

You could also push the emotion even just by furrowing the brow more and adding those crease lines. If he’s clawing his face, you could even exaggerate and pull down his eyelid, for a more spooky effect!

I hope this helps. One of the ways I make up poses is using a simple skeleton to try out the pose first. See what works for you! Thanks for submitting. :3