Fellow art nerds, today I'm going to show
you one really simple, awesome technique
for getting awesome colors in your
illustration. This technique is used by
professional illustrators to quickly
decide on colors to use in their
illustration or painting or what have
you, and the way this is going to work is
I'm first going to talk about what that
technique is, I'm going to give a live
demonstration about it, and then I'm
going to answer questions about it at
the end. So if you have any questions
during this demonstration, please post
them in Facebook and I will get to them
at the end. And just really quickly, if
this is the first time that we've met
before,
hello, I'm Susie Sahim, also known as BogusRed on the interwebs, and I am a
professional illustrator and engineer
whose artwork has been viewed millions of times
on Google's homepage. I'm also the
founder of paperdemon.com, which is a
community of artists that help each
other to become more awesome. Okay so
have you ever been in a situation where
you've started an illustration,
you've got the line art done, and you're
starting to lay in the colors, and as you
lay in the colors, you start painting
things in and then you realize, "wait a
minute, this color that I just added
doesn't go so well with the color that I
already painted it." And then you change
it and then you're like, "wait a minute,
that doesn't look great either. Maybe I
should go back to the way it was before."
And like you spend a lot of
time repainting the same areas over and
over again
wasting lots of time and then you just
get frustrated. Well if you've been in
that situation, this video's for you. So
this has happened to me several times.
The solution to this problem is to do
color comping and the way it works is
you just make really small thumbnails
like about two inches in size and just
do several of them experimenting with
different colors and this is a great way
for you to evaluate the color of your
illustration and experiment with
different things without having to waste
a lot of time and put in...get too
invested or emotionally attached to it.
This definitely reduces a lot of the frustration.
So this technique actually applies both
to digital and to traditional art so
even if you're painting in acrylics or
watercolors or what have you, you could
still use this technique. The way I'm
going to be demonstrating it today is
digitally but still the same technique
applies regardless of what medium you're
using. Okay cool so I'm gonna switch over
to my desktop here and I'd also love to
hear where you're watching this video
from, so please post in the comments like
where you're watching from if you're
watching this live or even if you're
watching this days later or whatnot I'd
love to hear where in the world you are
so please please comment. Okay so here's an
illustration that I started working on
yesterday and it's going to be painted
on a ceramic bowl so that's kind of why
that's got this circular shape to it and
I haven't yet decided what colors. I have
it in my head what kind of colors I want
in mind but I'm not certain so what I've
done is I've taken this illustration and
I've duplicated it several times really
small into these little thumbnails and
now I've got them all on a
layer here set to multiply and then I'm
going to on a layer beneath that, start
to lay in some colors and experiment
with it. Okay so here we go. I'm gonna start
choosing some colors. So I kind of had in
mind that I wanted to go with some more
warm tones in this illustration so I'm
just gonna kind of quickly lay in some
colors here.
Maybe I'll zoom in a little bit here. Now
the idea is you don't want to get too
much into detail. I'm just going to zoom
in more so that you can see it better
but when you're actually doing this
exercise it might actually be better to
be zoomed out so you don't get too
caught up in the details um but just for
demonstration purposes it kind of makes
sense. So I know that this like dragon
character, I want him to be
more red, red-orange color. This character's
name is Shenshort. He's from an
animated series I'm working on. He's kind
of a parody of Dragon Ball Z Shenlong, which is why I named him Shenshort.
So I'm not too concerned about the
detail. I'm just trying to get a rough
idea of what colors might be where. His belly would be yellow and I could also think
about making this darker color in the
center and then getting lighter towards
the edges.
Maybe doing some...of this.
Okay so I kind of have a rough idea now
that...of what colors would here. That
looks kind of good but I also wanted to
explore the idea of this maybe being
maybe more blue for the sky because this
is sky. I've got it warm tones here to
kind of play well with the warm tones of
of the dragon but I wanted to also
experiment with some blues. So I want to
try filling this in blue and maybe even experimenting with some warm tones for the clouds and that
could create this nice swirl pattern.
I might just go with the same red here.
And I'm reminding myself not to get too
caught up in the details because the
point here again is to just evaluate the
color, see if both the colors work well
together in terms of color harmony as
well as compositionally.
So that's...and there would also be some
browns in here as well.
I also had the thought maybe I could go
with more of a night theme instead of it
being daytime in the sky so I could go
with like some dark blues or purples.
And since I'm not...you'll notice I'm only
spending like maybe one minute tops or
two per thumbnail and like that's
the whole goal is that you're not
investing a whole lot of time in each of
these. It's meant to be a very low
investment and you can also duplicate
these if you liked for example...if
you liked the color here mostly but
wanted to make a small change, I could
select this and you know duplicate it,
bring it down here very quickly, saves
me a lot of time. Of course if you're
working traditionally you can't easily
do the copy-paste technique but you know
like let's say I wanted the dragon to be
blue, I could go in and make it
blue, just make that small change and see
how that looks.
Shenshort's not blue though so I
would...I probably wouldn't go with this
option because it would not be true to
this character.
Okay so back to this night theme.
And I'm gonna change my brush really
quick.
I'm just trying to get some opacity in
here so that I can do...experiment a little
bit with blending, you know like let's
say I wanted it to get brighter as we
get to the outer edges of the bowl, I
could do something along those lines.
And then I could fill in the dragon here.
This, if you're wondering what this
illustration is, what this is for, I'm
actually creating a ceramic, possible for
my husband for Christmas, so this is a
nice homemade Christmas gift for him.
I hope...this might be a little too
complicated to actually apply to a
ceramic bowl but I'm gonna certainly
give it a shot and I will post the
results, the final results of that after
I'm done with it. And I'm thinking maybe
I will go with like some blue...maybe I
could go with blue outlines for the
clouds. That could be kind of neat rather
than filling them in. This is a chance to really experiment and try different things and
see how they look.
And if you're wondering is that...what is
that thing on top of that dragon there,
what the heck is that, well maybe if I
fill it in, it will be a little clearer.
It is a pickle. Why is there a pickle on
top of the dragon and why does he have
brown hair? Well this is a character
known as Shit Pickle. If you have ever
watched the Angry Video Game Nerd, you
will know this character. He's the
character that appears occasionally on
that series and my husband is a big fan
of Angry Video Game Nerd and in
particular Shit Pickle. And there's also
Tanooki Mario because Mario is cool,
holding a plate of pasta.
And so the whites are going to pop a lot
more because they're dark back...we have
that dark background so that's why I'm
going in and taking the time to fill in
those colors a bit because I know that
it's gonna make more of a difference now
but still I'm staying away from
detail. I'm just kind of putting in some
rough colors.
And feel free to take more time with it
than I am like you know I'm going...I am
going kind of quick here because I
wanted it...you to be able to see the vast
experimentation that's kind of going on
here.
I might have a darker color for the
spikes.
Yeah I'm kind of not a fan of this
particular color comp. I feel like that
the red and the blue are really clashing
here whereas in this other one the blue
was I guess more...much lighter. I think
having the striking color of the...this
bright blue against this bright red just
does not work so well. So yeah I could
keep going on here, going with different
colors if I wanted. I could also go with
something more desaturated, maybe that
would help like if we wanted to explore
this dark night theme more but
make it work well with the reds.
I could try making it more of a
desaturated grays or blues and see if
that works. And you don't need high
saturation...or sorry you don't need a
high resolution on these images because
they're small you know it's okay
if it's pixelated or whatever. This is
just mostly for you. You don't need to
share this online. I think it needs a
little bit more color and maybe I'll
even start it darker in the center.
This is a technique that I learned at
San Jose State when I studied there. It's
a very common technique used by
professional illustrators. If you've used
this technique before and you found it
useful or you didn't find it useful and
you're using a different technique instead,
like post in the comments. I'd love to
hear what you think.
So now I can see that yeah this red is
working a lot better with the
desaturated blue, much better than
that bright blue I had on the left. And if
I wanted to make the lighting a little
bit more realistic too, which I
don't in this case, but I could also go
with the dragon just having red
at the outlines to do a technique...use
a technique called rim lighting but I
don't want to get into that here.
And then I could also experiment with
the clouds. What would I want there?
I'm thinking maybe to go well with this...
with these gray blues, it should also be
somewhat desaturated, light. Maybe
I'll even experiment with transparency a
bit.
You know, I could make these clouds
less noticeable, less significant and
just have them closer to the color of
the background. They're not the
main attraction in the illustration
anyway and I could also...if I like this
technique of the bright outline, I
could still you know see what that might
look like in combination with the
lighter blue.
And that...actually that looks pretty neat.
And this brown may not play well with
this gray so what I might do is
desaturate that as well. And actually
yeah, that looks a lot nicer
than that original brown that I was
gonna pick so I'll put that there so you can
kind of compare. Yeah that doesn't...that
color does not look very good. So you can
see here I'm making these decisions
about these colors really quickly. I
haven't invested a whole lot of time.
I'm also desaturating here this green
for the pickle. I'm keeping the reds more
in the bright tones.
And what is that in the center in case
you're curious? Well those are supposed
to be seven meatballs because of course
the dragon comes when you collect all
seven meatballs, as everyone knows, as it
is known in the land of pasta. And of
course our dragon has very large buck
teeth. The dragon...this dragon Shenshort
also has orange for some of the
areas of him so I'm just gonna lay
that in so I could see how well that
plays with the rest of the...
yeah that looks...that's not too bad.
Okay so hopefully that has been clear. I'm
gonna switch back here. Alright so
hopefully this video was really useful
and if not or if it is, whatever, please
post in the comments. If you liked this
video, please give it a big heart on
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description. The newsletter gives out monthly
tips on drawing and painting to help you
become a more awesome artist. Thank you
so much for joining me today. Have a
happy Sunday. I will see you in another
week, which I think will be Christmas Eve.
I will do a very quick video that day to
talk about perfectionism. Cool thank you
so much for joining me.
Bye!
