[Spiral]

OK, my scanner is busted so I can't post some better stuff with pencil, but because I want afew comments plus some starting help on color I whipped up this thing real quick. It's pretty sloppy sure but I want to try to color it.

I'm posting the sketch because I want to show that I want to get a contrast that's like in the sketch. The darker blue I used seemed darker in the color picker but isn't dark enough I guess.

What should I do with it now?

http://spiralarchitect.freewebspace.com/images/a-31-color.jpg

http://spiralarchitect.freewebspace.com/images/a-31-sketch.jpg

Oh, and sorry about the website just used it for the images.

[deadskies]

you've got a good start here. I would suggest using blenders to mix the dark blue that you have laid down with the lighter blue so that the transition is smoother. Then come back with something close to pure black and cut in some shadows as you've drawn in your base sketch. Another pass for highlights and ambient lighting and you should have enough to post again for more criticism.

as a finished composition, this image lacks interest. as a study it works well enough, but you might think about using a different color than light gray as a bg. kind of makes the guy look flatter. a darker or lighter bg would add drama.

e.
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[Spiral]

I worked on it for a bit before reading your suggestion. There's realy not a big difference, just used some darker colors to up the contrast. I'll go ahead with what you suggest, but I'm going to try to transition between the blues without using the blender, I don't really like the way it turns out, I'm using Painter Classic so I don't know how it would look with something else. Also, I want to try it and see how it will look and see if I can do it.

This guy was drawn quickly and just for practice, I don't want to make anything out of it, but I'll try changing the bg color, see what I can make out of it.

Thanks.

[Spiral]

Ok, I've worked on this guy a little. I can't say I like what I'm getting out of this, it looks more like a gradient festival rather than something that's supposed to be painted, even just for practice.

Anyway, I went and used a darker blue and, just using pressure, drew small flecks to smoothen out the dark and light side. In my zeal to get to a finished point at this stage, I 'smoothened' many parts too much and I smoothened parts that didn't need anything. Also the faulty , from the beginning, sketch and anatomy has become even worse with my not paying attention. In any case, I then used black to darken the shadowy parts. I blended somewhat and that's all I did for now.

I can't really see how or where I should place highlights or why. Also, I can't figure out what color I should use for ambient light in the dark areas, that's why I haven't done any of that yet. I tried a little but it didn't seem correct.

Any suggestion on the ambient lighting? It's getting frustrating somewhat.

http://spiralarchitect.freewebspace.com/images/a-31-color2.jpg

[faeklone]

First off, if you're painting with Photoshop or something like that, change the colour of the background layer to something other than black. The black makes the colours look brighter and more enhanced than they really should be.

As per light, I would suggest giving him some sort of white or blue light in the front (espescially if you're keeping him blue) and a color like red in the back. You have to determine where each of these light sources are coming from however, and how intense they are. The red ambient light should be coming from below or from the side, and be lighter on this figure than the light hitting your characters front.

Highlights are attained when the light source and the surface are at right angles to one another. So figure out where the light is coming from in the picture, even if it is straight ahead of your figure, and then kind of visualize or use reference to figure out where the highlights will go. Remember the same goes for the ambient light. The meeting of the two types of liget will often produce an area of black as one colour becomes the other.

For your picture I would suggest, if you're using photoshop, to set the opacity of your paintbrush to 10%-20% and then paint it that way. The picture will look better if you give it a wider range of value to work with. If you're good at using black and white or any other monochromiatic colour scheme to make things look good, use that and then just paint over your picture. The idea is, whatever gets you to the ends you desire is probably the best solution for you.

[Spiral]

Alright, I've gone ahead and worked the guy a little more. I decided to use a little more intense blue and color the light side abit. I tried for some variation on the skin because it was too flat, and added some highlights, not very accurately or good but, I was not aiming for them so, I just tinkred them around. What I liked mostly was adding the higher intensity blue in the halftone, it looks better than just fading the light blue to the darker and black blue.

As for the reflected light, I scribbled some dark blue in there, I didn't pay too much attention in most places but I saw that it didn't differ too much with how it would be done in black and white. Still, the intensity of the color and if the color should shift towards purple, were some of the thoughts that raced through my mind but I didn't know the answers so, I just stuck to a dark intense blue for the reflected light.

Now, I didn't touch the helmet too much, just added some small highlights but it looked strange so I used a light blue instead of white, and I didn't do anything with the girdle and fur at all because it's all failed and gone wrong from the start.

Now the reason I did't take your advice on the red backlight faeklone was because from the start, I had decided to make this a monocromatic image, only blues. I know that a red backlight would be good and I tried, I just can't find the correct red and even if I did, it wouldn't work well because I'm using painter classic and it "picks up' the color underneath and produced this weird grey thing and it didn't work well, so I stuck with my initial plan.

The background I just did because I got a box of Skeletor in front of me, and he's blue and looks nice against this reddish background so I did it just to not keep it black.

Any tips or suggestions?

http://spiralarchitect.freewebspace.com/images/a-31-color5.jpg