07-27-2014, 10:08 AM
Wall of text incoming. I hope this proves that i love colour lol :D
Tl;dr: Study photos, apply immediately. Observe life. Read books, watch videos, learn about colour theory. Ask yourself questions about colour while you work, so you can repeat them in your own pieces. Chromatic grays are cray cray. Treat yourself to the eye dropper from time to time. DONT TRUST THE PHOTOSHOPS COLOUR PICKER! (at least read that part)
I don't really have anything original to recommend as far as studies go. The usual photo/life/master study is pretty sufficient in terms of exercises. Its also useful to analyze colour when you're not painting. When you're just out and about see if you can identify colours, their temperatures, the colour of the light source, how that affects the local colour of an object etc.
One thing though: in my opinion (im going to emphasize that its strictly my opinion) colour studies need to be applied to a personal work almost immediately, more so than any other study I should say, because it is easily the most complex of all the things you can study, since it basically encompasses everything you can learn in some sense. Its also vastly more complex than say learning grayscale, not only because it incorporates grayscale, but also instead of working with just ten values , you're now working with millions of combinations of colours. All of which change based on the combination of colours beside it or surrounding it.
I would highly recommend investing in some colour theory books or videos. Gurney's colour and light is a solid start, but its not the end of your knowledge journey. Also recommend this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErNasMLHr7I
Watch the whole thing as soon as you can cause I think youtube might delete these eventually. Theres also this
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/p...9Q7afldV6s
Which you can easily find elsewhere if you cant afford it.
I also like to ask myself some questions while working on a study.
What hue does it LOOK like? Whats the temperature of this hue? Value? Saturated or desaturated? Is it acting as a shadow, a lit area, a fill light area, Cast shadow? Is it really a reflection of something? How is the colour of the light source affecting the apparent hue of the surface? (think orange light source on blue fabric.. its tricky). If I can repeat that same thought process in my own work I can have a better chance of selecting the right hues when I work without having to look at reference.
While I'm studying, if I make a decision, after asking myself those questions, to put a colour down and notice its wrong, I'll either keep going and assume its just missing adjacent colours to make it feel right OR i'll ask myself this question, which opens up a whole new realm of colour: Is it really just a chromatic grey masquerading as a different colour? For instance if most of your image is done in yellow, orange and red, a highlight that appears blue could actually just be a very desaturated red, orange or yellow. Its good to experiment with these greys to see what kind of wacky shit they do. Its really surprising honestly.
I usually allow myself AT MOST 2 colour picker eyedrops in a study. And only if I'm really stuck. I like to compare what I picked intuitively with what is actually there, and try to figure out what i got wrong. Some would argue that will slow down your sense of colour, but I argue precisely the opposite. I think it speeds up your development because you gain insight into how complex colour really is, and you consequently expand your knowledge of colour into a realm that you might have taken months to really discover just by eyeballing it.
And lastly a couple things about the colour picker in photoshop that are super helpful to keep in mind. Ive added a picture to make a point
![[Image: 5mdyw.jpg]](http://i62.tinypic.com/5mdyw.jpg)
1. The value bar on the left side is misleading. You probably already know this, but the top right corner =/= white or anything even remotely close to it. Most of the time its a value 3-4 or less, nowhere near white. The only exceptions as you can see are yellow and its adjacent greens (dipping into cyan). But even then they are more like value 2-3, not white.
2. If you want to check your values while you're working DO NOT, i repeat, DO NOT check them by desaturating your image. The first row is a series of colour picker screenshots in grayscale by going to view>proof colours. First go to view>proof setup>custom and set it to working gray dot gain 20%. The second row is the exact same three colour picker screenshots seen desaturated. As you can see, it totally kills the actual value of that specific hue at different saturation levels.
Its also useful to keep in mind that warm colours when desaturated become cooler, and cool colours when desaturated become warmer. Good to keep in mind when
Hope that helps. Theres a lot more I could say about colour but I'll leave you with that for now. If you want me to continue or have questions, by all means go ahead. I looooove colour!
Tl;dr: Study photos, apply immediately. Observe life. Read books, watch videos, learn about colour theory. Ask yourself questions about colour while you work, so you can repeat them in your own pieces. Chromatic grays are cray cray. Treat yourself to the eye dropper from time to time. DONT TRUST THE PHOTOSHOPS COLOUR PICKER! (at least read that part)
I don't really have anything original to recommend as far as studies go. The usual photo/life/master study is pretty sufficient in terms of exercises. Its also useful to analyze colour when you're not painting. When you're just out and about see if you can identify colours, their temperatures, the colour of the light source, how that affects the local colour of an object etc.
One thing though: in my opinion (im going to emphasize that its strictly my opinion) colour studies need to be applied to a personal work almost immediately, more so than any other study I should say, because it is easily the most complex of all the things you can study, since it basically encompasses everything you can learn in some sense. Its also vastly more complex than say learning grayscale, not only because it incorporates grayscale, but also instead of working with just ten values , you're now working with millions of combinations of colours. All of which change based on the combination of colours beside it or surrounding it.
I would highly recommend investing in some colour theory books or videos. Gurney's colour and light is a solid start, but its not the end of your knowledge journey. Also recommend this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErNasMLHr7I
Watch the whole thing as soon as you can cause I think youtube might delete these eventually. Theres also this
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/p...9Q7afldV6s
Which you can easily find elsewhere if you cant afford it.
I also like to ask myself some questions while working on a study.
What hue does it LOOK like? Whats the temperature of this hue? Value? Saturated or desaturated? Is it acting as a shadow, a lit area, a fill light area, Cast shadow? Is it really a reflection of something? How is the colour of the light source affecting the apparent hue of the surface? (think orange light source on blue fabric.. its tricky). If I can repeat that same thought process in my own work I can have a better chance of selecting the right hues when I work without having to look at reference.
While I'm studying, if I make a decision, after asking myself those questions, to put a colour down and notice its wrong, I'll either keep going and assume its just missing adjacent colours to make it feel right OR i'll ask myself this question, which opens up a whole new realm of colour: Is it really just a chromatic grey masquerading as a different colour? For instance if most of your image is done in yellow, orange and red, a highlight that appears blue could actually just be a very desaturated red, orange or yellow. Its good to experiment with these greys to see what kind of wacky shit they do. Its really surprising honestly.
I usually allow myself AT MOST 2 colour picker eyedrops in a study. And only if I'm really stuck. I like to compare what I picked intuitively with what is actually there, and try to figure out what i got wrong. Some would argue that will slow down your sense of colour, but I argue precisely the opposite. I think it speeds up your development because you gain insight into how complex colour really is, and you consequently expand your knowledge of colour into a realm that you might have taken months to really discover just by eyeballing it.
And lastly a couple things about the colour picker in photoshop that are super helpful to keep in mind. Ive added a picture to make a point
1. The value bar on the left side is misleading. You probably already know this, but the top right corner =/= white or anything even remotely close to it. Most of the time its a value 3-4 or less, nowhere near white. The only exceptions as you can see are yellow and its adjacent greens (dipping into cyan). But even then they are more like value 2-3, not white.
2. If you want to check your values while you're working DO NOT, i repeat, DO NOT check them by desaturating your image. The first row is a series of colour picker screenshots in grayscale by going to view>proof colours. First go to view>proof setup>custom and set it to working gray dot gain 20%. The second row is the exact same three colour picker screenshots seen desaturated. As you can see, it totally kills the actual value of that specific hue at different saturation levels.
Its also useful to keep in mind that warm colours when desaturated become cooler, and cool colours when desaturated become warmer. Good to keep in mind when
Hope that helps. Theres a lot more I could say about colour but I'll leave you with that for now. If you want me to continue or have questions, by all means go ahead. I looooove colour!