12-02-2014, 11:28 AM
Is that a photo-study or a piece from imagination? If it's from a photo it would be helpful for us to see it so we can give better feedback. Also if it's from a photo, don't be too ambitious. If you're not yet confident in your colour abilities, pick a simpler picture, whether in terms of colour or in terms of detail. Start with the simple stuff and work your way up
If it's from memory, the best feedback I can give is really to do more studies. I know its a cliche answer, but that's really what it boils down to. Every time you feel like you're regressing or struggling, it's likely because your fundamentals aren't quite there yet.
But don't just do studies for the sake of doing them. If you want to paint paris in the wintertime, find some photos of that, study them and then come back to your imagination as soon as possible. Colour is probably the hardest dimension of art to get a solid grasp on. There are rules of thumb you can follow for grayscale, for perspective, for form rendering etc, but colour, as far as I know, is very much interpretive and looser, and it's very easy to make mistakes. That's why, more than any other facet of art imo, you have to use the knowledge you gain from colour studies asap.
I would advise against colour picking from photos into imagination work at this stage. A lot of pros do it to speed up the process and save decision making time, but its not a substitute for understanding colour. If you're doing a photo study, definitely allow yourself 2-3 colour picks throughout the whole thing. There's a lot of colours that are quite surprising that you might never guess without doing that every so often. But do your best to observe all the colours as you interpret them first. You will most likely be off on a lot of them, but thats not an issue. Over time you'll become more accurate
Have you seen shaddy safadi's videos on youtube? They're not necessarily about colour, though there is a bit about them in there. But I think you can try his technique for painting landscapes in your work. For me, personally, it helped to develop a LOT confidence in colour since I could focus much more on the colours and forms and not worry about the silhouettes and edges so much. Once you get that understanding and confidence, you can ditch the method if you don't enjoy working that way and just paint normally again, but with more confidence knowing that you don't have to struggle with colour so much and can focus on the forms and other things.
Hope that helps! If you have any specific questions feel free to ask, colour is probably my favourite thing to talk about in art :). Also, out of curiosity which dvds do you have? I've seen 2 colour dvds and they were both very good
If it's from memory, the best feedback I can give is really to do more studies. I know its a cliche answer, but that's really what it boils down to. Every time you feel like you're regressing or struggling, it's likely because your fundamentals aren't quite there yet.
But don't just do studies for the sake of doing them. If you want to paint paris in the wintertime, find some photos of that, study them and then come back to your imagination as soon as possible. Colour is probably the hardest dimension of art to get a solid grasp on. There are rules of thumb you can follow for grayscale, for perspective, for form rendering etc, but colour, as far as I know, is very much interpretive and looser, and it's very easy to make mistakes. That's why, more than any other facet of art imo, you have to use the knowledge you gain from colour studies asap.
I would advise against colour picking from photos into imagination work at this stage. A lot of pros do it to speed up the process and save decision making time, but its not a substitute for understanding colour. If you're doing a photo study, definitely allow yourself 2-3 colour picks throughout the whole thing. There's a lot of colours that are quite surprising that you might never guess without doing that every so often. But do your best to observe all the colours as you interpret them first. You will most likely be off on a lot of them, but thats not an issue. Over time you'll become more accurate
Have you seen shaddy safadi's videos on youtube? They're not necessarily about colour, though there is a bit about them in there. But I think you can try his technique for painting landscapes in your work. For me, personally, it helped to develop a LOT confidence in colour since I could focus much more on the colours and forms and not worry about the silhouettes and edges so much. Once you get that understanding and confidence, you can ditch the method if you don't enjoy working that way and just paint normally again, but with more confidence knowing that you don't have to struggle with colour so much and can focus on the forms and other things.
Hope that helps! If you have any specific questions feel free to ask, colour is probably my favourite thing to talk about in art :). Also, out of curiosity which dvds do you have? I've seen 2 colour dvds and they were both very good