[waylon]

Ok. I've come to realize that I need to know a LOT more about setting up a nice color scheme, and I have NO idea how to get better at it.

I know the basics. Warm colors come forward, cool colors go back. Shadows will tend to be cooler. Picking only two or three main colors for a painting is a good idea, and they should form a roughly balanced triangle on the color wheel.

So my problem is I can't pick a good set of colors to save my life! I'm sure for the more advanced among you it just comes naturally, but how did you get that way? If you have one specific color that you need to work with (say, a particularly nice shade of teal), how do you pick a color to compliment it?

Sorry if this has been brought up before, but searching for "color" just didn't seem to do me much good. ;)

[Fred Flick Stone]

The way I started learning, before I found a good class on color theory was to copy other color schemes. The speed picks thread is a good place to start the thinking process of this. You want to copy the shapes and the colors on and around them,but don't worry about copying the details or whatever. The idea of the exercise is to start recognizing color schemes, and how they work. If you have nowhere to start, these already painted images are a great place to go. The other great resource is mother nature. Always look and observe.
And great photos shot by artistic photographers are great for color schemes. THese are great places to start copying color families. This along with great info on warm color and cool colors, lighting, etc. and lots and lots of practice will help you build up a potentially amazing color library in your head...

[waylon]

Hmm, just as I suspected. That whole "Practice" thing again. ;) The only speed pics I've ever really done en masse were in charcoal, noe exactly a very good color study there. Perhaps I'll try my hand at a copy of that guy in the turban.... :)