[Wiked Ewok]

Hey you guys, I need help in coloring basically. I've never had the chance to study drawing or painting in a class so I'm missing out on many techniques. But right now I need to do some work with graphics for my school newspaper, some website etc, and getting a quick overview of the basics of coloring would REALLY be helpful to me. Here's some of what I'd like to know:

1)how light affects color. Different shades of the color, how to get them? umm contrasting colors or something like that?

2)What do the terms warm and cool colors refer to? how are they used/applied?

3)How do shadows effect the color? do I just apply a black/grayish overlay to it, what else can be done to create the effect?

4)How do you color a Black object? use grayish tones? it tends to look wierd that way. More distinct white highlights on a more flat, black surface?

5)lastly, how do you color a human face? Using shades of "peach" won't help me much so I was thinking about blues and reds(blood?) but I don't know how to incorporate them.(they tend to make my face look either angry hot or dead pale)

I know you can't really sum up half the coloring techniques into a quick and that it's also a matter instincts, but I really need some quick tips. (resources would be great)

Thanks you guys!

If you can, please email me any tips or resource links so I don't lose them

[Wiked Ewok]

Silly me forgot to post email:

[email protected]

Thanks

[Frost]

Hey Wicked Ewok.
That's a LOT of questions... =)

First, here's a few terms as I understand them:
HUE: The COLOR, based on the ratio between Reg, Green and Blue. This doesn't take into account how dark it is.
SATURATION: How PURE the color is. Saturated colors are the purest most colorful mix of colors, and unsaturated are the least colorful, the grey-est.
VALUE/BRIGHTNESS: How white or black the color is.

So in general you can have a red hue (which defines the base pure color) with half-saturation (which makes it half grey like a washed out red) with low value (which makes it darker).

1) How light affects color? Hmm, I guess different types of light cause different types of falloffs, ambiants, etc, and some may have slight hues (color) changes over distance. But the color of lights affects how everything looks in a painting. A blue object lit by a pure red light will probably end up looking like a dark purple/magenta color. You need to know how colors mix with each other, it's an invaluable experience.

2)Warm as fire, cool as ice. This is just relative to the rest of the image colors. Everything in a painting is relative to the painting's general color/contrast/etc scheme. If you have a completely blueish scene and you add a tint of blue that has a bit of red/orange/yellow in it (even a SLIGHT bit), it will make it look warm and detach it from the rest. Warm contrasts with cool (HUE). White contrasts with black (VALUE). Pure colors contrast with greys (SATURATION). You use contrast to make things stand out of your painting (usually the subject).

3) Shadows and lighting... there are entire books devoted to it... I'm not getting into it. But look at Spooge Demon and Fred Flicks Stones threads from the past like the white matte cube thread...

4) Black objects are never pure black because the surface of the object often reflects and behaves to environment light. A matte (absolute non reflective) surface will be more diffused with no (or extreme little) specular (light reflection), but will diffuse the light reflection over a large area of its surface. A shiny black glass sphere will be the darkest and reflect the enviroment like a mirror, with very clear and clean reflections, and high and tight highlights from the light sources. Take the time to learn how materials and surfaces are affected by light, and notice how reflective or matte they are.

5) A big misconception about skin tones.. you CANNOT have a preset color swatch or such for skin. Like I said before, EVERYTHING in a painting is relative to the rest of the painting (ambiant light, hue, saturation, value, contrast, etc). You always need to make a skin color that fits the needs of your painting, and nothing else will work (unless you always have the same background/scene/light configuration). Skin is a warm color, like you said, peachy or such... just make the skin tones generally warmer than the rest... it's all relative, experience is key.

Hope this helped a little...
frost.