# Need colouring help



## darkimagimp (Feb 13, 2012)

When I draw without any reference I like to draw in black and white to help me do the light and shadows. The problem is when it comes to colouring it, I kinda lost the effect of lightening  and my drawing becomes flat in a way. Do you have any tips to do a great coloring whitout destroying my art?

Here is a drawing (not finish yet) without color : http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7383335/?nocache=1329155685

Here is the same drawing with color ( It may be not he's final color, it was just a test): http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7391614/

P.S sorry if my english is not perfect, Im from Quebec so I speak french


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## Zydala (Feb 13, 2012)

How do you put the color on? Is it on another layer set on color/overlay? http://www.ctrlpaint.com/store_catalog/1301072740977.html <-- this is a great video about it, I highly recommend it

Not exactly about how to color but I'd make sure not to get caught doing too many details too soon, you should define the shapes and shadows of the body of the dragon a little more first.


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## darkimagimp (Feb 13, 2012)

To color I put a layer on the top in overlay, but would it be a good idea to flatten the image, the create a new layer to put extra lights using other color on it so it dont look flat and all the same color anymore?

P..S Im using the gimp, I am to poor to buy photoshop  lolll


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## Littlerock (Feb 13, 2012)

darkimagimp said:


> To color I put a layer on the top in overlay, but would it be a good idea to flatten the image, the create a new layer to put extra lights using other color on it so it dont look flat and all the same color anymore?
> 
> P..S Im using the gimp, I am to poor to buy photoshop  lolll



Gimp, eh? When you're happy with the shading in black and white, use Edit > Copy visible, then Paste as new layer, then set pasted layer as a new layer (instead of anchoring it). Set all other layers below to invisible if you're working with transparency. Then make a new transparent layer above it, set the layer mode to "color", then proceed to color away with the tool of your choice! 

To learn how the layer modes work, just keep fiddling with them. That's how I learned, anyway.


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## FireFeathers (Feb 19, 2012)

I don't know if gimp has this, but if there's a Color  option, that's how most people apply the first pass at painting a black and white image. Generally you're going to be doing a lot of refining as the color overlay just kinda annoyed me when I did it. Like if I was looking for a subtle peach, due to the tones, it'd come out hot pink and look like crap, lol.


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## Arshes Nei (Feb 21, 2012)

A lot of the reason colors look off when painting over in these modes is due to the fact people don't account for Saturation.

http://anastasiy.com/images/painter_color_wheel.jpg








One for CS4 and above:
http://attachments.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=842635&stc=1&d=1259646020






Take a close look at the wheel. The part going from black to white on the left is pure value. When you get to the corner with the strongest point of pure color, that's Saturation. Any color that's not along the the point of the triangle adds on a tint or tone IN ADDITION to the tone you're using. Sometimes this isn't a problem because colors like red, actually are another color like "pink" when tint is added, or "brown" when tone is added

People think once they got the tones down, they place down "a color blue that looks good" then it looks like crap because they don't account for the fact they're adding more tonal values instead of the color. 

You can go along the far edge of the triangle away from the pure value to pick color, but if anything...it makes you think about if it's really just about the getting the values right. I believe color and value are hand in hand. So not understanding that harmony and just "well as long as it looks good in black and white, I'm fine" will get you into trouble. So learn about saturation and color temps as well. As the old joke goes, "it's all relative".


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## darkimagimp (Mar 24, 2012)

So this is the final result....Im not a 100% satisfied with it, but I still have the black and white version, soooooo....I will probably try to redo the coloring beter to practice a bit

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7641747


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## Arshes Nei (Mar 24, 2012)

It honestly looks really drab. Remember my post above? Because a lot of these colors just went to darker shades of reddish brown, the picture looks more... as one would say "burn dodgy" You may not see it as bad in full view, but zoomed out you can definitely see it. You always want to take a few steps back and look at things at a distance or reduce it down to see your values at work.

I honestly wouldn't have known it was a griffin teasing a dragon because the colors are so dark and monochrome it's hard to differentiate one character from the other to tell the story.

You also want to work on the edges, or better overall values of the rock cliff. I look at it and it's like a lot of detail to indicate the texture, but not the right kind of detail to indicate lighting, edges and focus of the image and that goes for the one the dragon is resting its paw on too.

James Gurney's book on Light and color is one of my favorites on the subject of how to use color. This blog actually takes a few of Gurney's posts and presents the information on working with palettes which are referred to as gamut/masks. http://www.linesandcolors.com/2011/09/19/james-gurney-on-gamut-masking/ I highly advise looking through Gurney's blog for more info. I think the problem with digital coloring is people looking for tricks and getting stuck on that "trick" when one should look more at their foundations, and understand color theory before using such tricks in digital painting (because those tricks are to save time if you got deadlines, they're really not a replacement).

It's not that the piece is really terrible, it's just my first impression of seeing the finished product. I think the drawing itself is nice.


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## darkimagimp (Mar 24, 2012)

Well it's a good thing I still have the original before coloring it saved on my computer. I will follow your advice and practice a lot, because I really hate when I draw a piece that I think have really good potential and ruining it with a bad coloring


In my opinion I had the same problems with thoses pieces even if they are a lot older:

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7258025/

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7257957/

In fact....I think my recent one Is worst


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## Arshes Nei (Mar 24, 2012)

You seem to stick with the same hues. You gotta liven that up a bit. That's why it looks so burn/dodge Not all shadows are just merely a darker version of the color you're choosing. If you look at certain artists, they have different ways of approaching shadow areas.

Some may grey out certain areas or use a compliment to cause a neutral.

There is also reflected light in areas too http://www.cheapjoes.com/art-instruction/art-lessons/tip-001-reflected-light.asp


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## UnburntDaenerys (Mar 24, 2012)

Here is a good visual representation of shading with hues.  The eye on the bottom compares same hue shading versus different hue shading.


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## darkimagimp (Mar 25, 2012)

Here, I did a quick painting ( 2 hours) to practice colorisation, listening to your advices. What do you think about it?

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7648865/


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## Arshes Nei (Mar 25, 2012)

If you're still doing the greyscale and color over it, it's not working. As I said in the post with the color wheels, you're adding value on top of value. Even hues have their own value which is why you may want to work on just trying to color without the greyscale or grisaille http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grisaille method in Gimp. You're not training your eyes to see the values in hues.

Obviously, for example, yellow has a much lighter value than most indigo/purple colors even at the highest point of saturation. When yellow has more shade to it, the value starts to remind one of a more gold or bronze. Just like when red has more tint to it, it is another hue, pink - more shade it's brown.


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## darkimagimp (Mar 25, 2012)

Ok, so now I did the same dragon (painted over it) but this time I did a new layer and painted over at full opacity ( and not in overlay mode) so you dont see the grey scale anymore.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7654003/


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## Arshes Nei (Mar 26, 2012)

It's still suffering from the same problem. Although the hues of blue are being used, there needs to be some areas where it's not as detailed. Are you going to detail your shadow areas or your light areas. When you do both, the picture looks busy. Right now you're still thinking too straightforward. A dark color has to be a "black" and a highlight has to be a white. This is making it too contrasty. Use less values.

I'm certainly not great but here's an example where I didn't use white.





http://i42.tinypic.com/mwxm9t.jpg

I used less tonal ranges, and kept it simple, if it was a shadowed area, I didn't go into details. I also drew a line over your dragon because it seems you were doing something like pillow shading instead of thinking of your guy as a 3d shape.

I'm sure the dragon experts will maul me, but then again there were some anatomy issues with your original picture (and we were mostly talking about coloring).

There's probably a better example by this lady http://cghub.com/images/view/219932/

She keeps a pretty tight color scheme, mostly a cool with split compliment. (since it's purple/yellow) Though I'm sure she may not actually be using "yellow" but it's near it on the color wheel because other colors close to the actual compliment in a less saturated tone will appear more of the compliment she's using. A concept talked about here too http://mattiassnygg.posterous.com/post/4284152629 The leaves look green (even though they're yellow) because of the strong red.

But anyways in your case. I'd tone down the number of values you're going for. Like say use 3-4 values for the scale. Avoid any of them being white or black. See what you come up with when you have that limitation.


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## darkimagimp (Mar 26, 2012)

Im not quite sure I understood everything ( not good enough in english) BUT I tried to do as you said.

I did another practice using only 4 values and not using black and white in it. It gives this:

https://d.facdn.net/art/darkimagimp/1332744403.darkimagimp_color_practice2.jpg


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## Arshes Nei (Mar 26, 2012)

See that already looks better. It's giving more life to the image because you're forcing yourself to work with the limitation. There's still a lot to learn (as I am learning it myself) but just make sure if you're going to have details in a light area, don't put too many details in your dark area. Remember where you're going to have the light source and plan that way.


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## darkimagimp (Mar 26, 2012)

Thanks a lot for your help! I will continue practicing this. I already improved a lot since I started  3 years ago, but Im not planing to stop improving. Im in constant learning and I love it


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Mar 26, 2012)

Damn, if you can draw like *that*, fuck the color!
My younger brother's art looks a lot like this, but his style leans more toward the surreal.

I might suggest drawing fewer lines, and introducing color earlier in the piece's creation.


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## Arshes Nei (Mar 26, 2012)

Kit H. Ruppell said:


> I might suggest drawing fewer lines, and introducing color earlier in the piece's creation.



Why?


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## darkimagimp (Mar 26, 2012)

I tried on a more complex one it's not finish ( still a lot of things to work on like  the wing in the back that I will redo because of the bad perspective).

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7659607/


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## Arshes Nei (Mar 27, 2012)

darkimagimp said:


> I tried on a more complex one it's not finish ( still a lot of things to work on like  the wing in the back that I will redo because of the bad perspective).
> 
> http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7659607/



Again, looking better than the burn/dodge look you had earlier. Still needs some work on focus where you want to have lighting to create more focus, as well as the anatomy and composition errors. Just keep at it, you'll start too learn how many values you can add as you get more comfortable.


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