05-24-2014, 04:02 PM
Color theory is indeed a really huge subject, my bad and sorry for the vagueness: I' not too practiced in giving critiques and need to learn to be more specific/thorough S:
In your image of the clown pokemon trainer - if you observe the saturations with the color picker - though you did a good job of picking colors equally distanced from each other in the color wheel, they're all very high in saturation and give the eye little room to rest. Adding more variation in saturations would add more interest to the image and pop out your main color. You can have multiple colors in the image but if they're all scattered throughout the color-wheel without saturation variation the viewer doesn't know what color/mood to concentrate on. You could for instance, keep the oranges saturated and de-saturate the greens and purples to give more unity to the palette. The more saturated color would also add interest to your main subject which should in this case be the trainer.
Here is a really great video tutorial that explains how to calculate saturation depending on how far you are from your main color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kQllLy_X4I
Also, on your image of the pink lady in the yellow background: if you colorpick and check with a colorwheel the 2 colors are approximately 120 degrees apart from each other in the colorwheel (1/3 the distance). The image would have more impact if you made the 2 colors be polar opposites of each other or added red to convert it to an analog color scheme or added blue to convert it to a triad color scheme.
The shadows on her skin for the most part are also closer in hue to the background than they are to the local hue of the skin. The skin should take in some of the bounce light from the environment and therefore the hue, but the hue of the shadows should still be closer to the hue of the skin than to the hue of the environment because the shadows are still part of the pink skin.
In your image of the clown pokemon trainer - if you observe the saturations with the color picker - though you did a good job of picking colors equally distanced from each other in the color wheel, they're all very high in saturation and give the eye little room to rest. Adding more variation in saturations would add more interest to the image and pop out your main color. You can have multiple colors in the image but if they're all scattered throughout the color-wheel without saturation variation the viewer doesn't know what color/mood to concentrate on. You could for instance, keep the oranges saturated and de-saturate the greens and purples to give more unity to the palette. The more saturated color would also add interest to your main subject which should in this case be the trainer.
Here is a really great video tutorial that explains how to calculate saturation depending on how far you are from your main color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kQllLy_X4I
Also, on your image of the pink lady in the yellow background: if you colorpick and check with a colorwheel the 2 colors are approximately 120 degrees apart from each other in the colorwheel (1/3 the distance). The image would have more impact if you made the 2 colors be polar opposites of each other or added red to convert it to an analog color scheme or added blue to convert it to a triad color scheme.
The shadows on her skin for the most part are also closer in hue to the background than they are to the local hue of the skin. The skin should take in some of the bounce light from the environment and therefore the hue, but the hue of the shadows should still be closer to the hue of the skin than to the hue of the environment because the shadows are still part of the pink skin.