Sketchbook

[kerm]

Thanks Kerm. I always feel like a bit of a fraud giving advice about art as I'm still trying to figure this stuff out myself, but here are three things that really helped my understanding of colour;

1. Don't be afraid of the greys. 'More paintings fail because of too much intense colour rather than too much grey'

2. Colours don't work in isolation. Every colour you put down affects all the colours around it, sometimes completely changing our perception of it.

3. Buy a copy of James Gurney's Colour and Light from which the quote from point 1 was taken. He explains everything much better than I ever could. It costs less than $20 and is one of the best artbooks there is for explaining colour in simple, easy to understand language. It's also full of his beautiful plein air oil paintings which he uses to demonstrate his points.

Here's the next character which is, ironically, almost monochromatic.

Thank you for your answer. I must say I do have both James Gourney books, they're great, but still I'm feeling a big gap between what I can render, drawing from imagination and observation. Most times, when I paint with grays I get mud and when I paint with saturated colors I get cartoony feeling. Well, my observation color studies aren't that bad, but still I have all the colors in front of my face when I paint them, so it's waaay easier. Do you do a lot of value planning before you go ahead with color? Are you keeping your painting very desaturated most of the time and at the end of process add a few saturated accents?