Mastering colour and light will take your Art to the next level!
This art learning cheat sheet is an overview of tips, tricks and fundamental information that will help you to inject strong colour and light into your artwork. These starting points are taught by all leading professionals so they should be explored and mastered.
Main Points
Colour Creation
The colour of light and colour of local objects react to create new variations. Colour is adative.
Engage the Audience
Use colour, light, atmosphere & value for impact.
Balance Unity with Variety
Contrast familiarity with unfamiliarity using hue, saturation, value & temperature for visual interest.
Warms & Cools
Warm and cool colours compliment each other & work great within the context of unity with variety.
Colour & Emotion
Blue sombre moods, slowing down, night
Reds passion, summer, love, vibrance
Greens magic, supernatural, envy, nature
Yellows light, new life, natural
Reds passion, summer, love, vibrance
Greens magic, supernatural, envy, nature
Yellows light, new life, natural
Back Lighting
Having a scene backlit and the main light source coming towards you allows better lighting & colour.
Viewer Perception
Colour helps viewers percieve the story and mood trying to be conveyed so use appropriate pallettes.
Questions to ask yourself
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How do colours shift in relation to light?
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How do colours shift in relation other objects?
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What colour will elicit the appropriate emotion?
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How does global illumination effect the colours?
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Does the colour scheme reflect the mood?
Things to remember
4 properties of colour
Master value, Temperature then Hue & Saturation.
Engaging Artwork
Use a mix of colour, atmosphere, light & value to create a compelling sense of mood and story.
Value range
Limit the value range for more control over the image
Colour of Shadows
Made up of local colour of the object plus any colour of light coming into it.
Use of Contrast
Only use strong points of contrast for areas of focus.
Wavelengths
Longer wavelengths lean towards red spectrum.
