Choosing colors help

[ropebone]

I've been having an issue choosing the right colors. I've watched so many tutorials on it. But, I still can't figure it out. The practice that most people try to teach is how choosing a color you believe is blue, in reality it isn't really blue but a faint green color that appears to be blue. The problem is, when I try to choose colors in this format they are either way to dark or way to light. Can someone please help me with this problem.

[Blewzen]

You have to choose first a color that is gonna be the predominant in the piece and then all the rest of the colors you are gonna put in the piece have to be less saturated than the predominant, and way more desaturated as they are far from the predominant in the color wheel. You can always saturate a bit the colors in order to give more focus to an area of the piece.
Let's put an example: If you put blue on the entire canvas and then you want to paint a red coat of a warrior for example you will go to the red section of the color wheel and choose a very desaturated red tone. You will see it as a red even if it has really few of red tone.
This approach is mostly used for realistic painting if you are gonna draw comic etc. you don't need to use this necessarily.

I found out this tutorial very useful, I'm not sure if you saw it http://youtu.be/9kQllLy_X4I but if you didn't, check it, has the basic idea of how to choose colors like what i was explaining before.
Also the book Color and light by James Gurney is great and easy understandable.

[ropebone]

You have to choose first a color that is gonna be the predominant in the piece and then all the rest of the colors you are gonna put in the piece have to be less saturated than the predominant, and way more desaturated as they are far from the predominant in the color wheel. You can always saturate a bit the colors in order to give more focus to an area of the piece.
Let's put an example: If you put blue on the entire canvas and then you want to paint a red coat of a warrior for example you will go to the red section of the color wheel and choose a very desaturated red tone. You will see it as a red even if it has really few of red tone.
This approach is mostly used for realistic painting if you are gonna draw comic etc. you don't need to use this necessarily.

I found out this tutorial very useful, I'm not sure if you saw it http://youtu.be/9kQllLy_X4I but if you didn't, check it, has the basic idea of how to choose colors like what i was explaining before.
Also the book Color and light by James Gurney is great and easy understandable.

Thanks for the reply! I do have a question though, yes I have seen this tutorial before, but I am Still a bit confused. what about adding highlights? how do l choose a correct color from that? One artist I've been watching for a while has some amazing color mastering. He has been drawing things like this: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9042102/ and http://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/veramundis/ and I've been focused on how to achieve something similar.

[Blewzen]

No prob. In the highlights colors tend to be saturated and more bright (oposite on shadows) usually, for example in the green guy of this http://www.furaffinity.net/full/11131968/ you can notice easily that the green on the guy and the part of the wall where he is getting out, is so much more saturated and bright that the green on the corners of the pic.
But highlights and shadows is more a value matter, you can know alot about colors but when talking about light and shadows you have to know about values, how much bright something looks when hit by light?, and how much bright something looks on shadow?
Hope to be helpful xD