Do you choose your colors as you draw or do you make palettes first? Also do you have any tips on how to choose colors?

Anonymous

I do both! It depends on the picture, if i’m unsure of what colors i want to use or i’m doing something outside of my comfort zone it helps a lot to pick out a palette in advance, but a lot of times i just go for it.

As far as tips:

  • It usually works out best if you start out with colors that are darker and less saturated than you think they should be. Save the really bright colors for areas you want to draw the most attention to. 
  • Save the white too. I usually wait until the very end of a drawing to add white (with the exception of white backgrounds) 
  • In general your shadows should be cooler and your highlights should be warmer OR vice versa: cool highlights with warm shadows. This doesn’t mean you have to stick to only green/blue/purple for shadows and red/orange/yellow for highlights (or the reverse) btw, just that you want to pay attention to temperature and make sure it’s consistent throughout your drawing
  • A really easy way to shade digitally is to make a multiply layer and use just one color to shade everything. Once you figure out where the shadows will go you can lock the layer and recolor anything that looks off, it’s super easy i love digital art. but yeah, using colors that are close to the same range keeps the image coherent. 
  • Pay attention when you see things that have colors that you like. Keep a sideblog or a folder on your computer just for things that you think look pretty. 

This post is pretty long and that’s all i can think of right now. Obviously this isn’t everything there is to know about color and it applies mostly to digital art. But i hope it helped a little. 

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