Let’s talk about color.
Since art school, color has been a point of hesitation for me. It always seems so daunting. Beautiful palettes and color schemes don’t come naturally to me, probably because I hyper analyze everything.
Because of this, I’ve always been extremely careful when choosing color, leaning on the conservative side with muted palettes, heavy with yellow to warm up the tones.
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ENCOURAGEMENT TO EXPLORE COLOR
At the end of a mentorship program I did with Giuseppe Castellano of the Illustration Department, the one note Giuseppe had for me was to consider pushing my color palettes. Not that I necessarily had to, but the children’s publishing world typically will want more vibrant color choices. This was reiterated when I first met and signed with my agent, Aliza Hoover. She encouraged me to explore color and contrast more to enhance the storytelling in my work.
A VITAL STEP
As I began to take note of my color choices, I started including a vital step in my process that I typically neglected: Color tests (or color comps).
Either between final line-work and final color, or even right before I dive into the final line-work, I now work out my colors in a very rough, blobby sort of way.
There are a few things I’m looking at as I work out the color test
1. Contrast in color:
Are the colors I’m choosing standing out from one another enough to be readable while maintaining harmony?
Is the focal point of the image being enhanced with a contrasting color in the background?
2. Contrast in value:
I toggle back and forth between black+white and color to asses the contrast of my image (one of the many reasons I love digital media). This is easily done in procreate by adding a 100% black layer on top of your illustration, and changing the blending mode to hue.
While zooming way out and analyzing the black and white version against the color, I determine whether or not the image is readable and makes sense. This also helps a lot when adding lighting effects.
3. Mood/Tone of the Image:
Determining the mood or tone of an illustration can heavily influence color.
This is an example of blended palette use. I’m using a monochromatic palette (a palette using varying values of one color) in the background, and a version of split complimentary (two or more colors close on the color wheel *also known as analogous*, with one complimentary color that sits opposite on the wheel) with the majority of the colors lean towards blue, green, yellow with the contrast of hot pink.”
The intent behind these choices were:
1. monochromatic zombie horde to keep them on the periphery of the image and to emphasize the single minded mass that zombie hordes are. One mind: one color.
2. To have the group of kids stand out as the main focal point, I kept colors relatively analogous with the horde, but outside of the monochromatic range. Meaning everything is yellow, green, or blue-ish in the group of kids, keeping the palette close to the horde on the color wheel.
3. To have the blood pop without being too violent I chose hot pink. It keeps the mood fun and playful amidst the horror around them (my favorite combo: fun + horrifying).
ANALYZE THE BLOBS
Since I began including color tests in my process, I’ve found that analyzing them without line from a distance is my favorite part. If everything is looking readable, and the story is coming through in this blobby state, that’s when I know I can move on to final color.
If color is daunting for you too, I hope this was a little helpful! I know there are a million ways to approach color, but this method is what works best for my process/brain.