Artist Q&A
SWITCH COLOURS Q UICKLY
When I’m having trouble selecting
a colour palette I sometimes let
the computer help me decide.
There are several online apps to
help you: color.adobe.com and
colourlovers.com feature great
web interface tools that enable
you to construct a colour
scheme on the fly.Artist’s
secretQuestion
Can a garish colour scheme make for a more effective illustration?
LaVerne Harleson, US
Answer
John replies
The key thing to consider, whatever
palette you’re using, is colour harmony.
Do the colours play well together? Or
are they all competing for the viewer’s
attention? Another important factor is what kind
of mood are you trying to create for your audience?
What makes for an effective painting is how the
parts come together. Colour, value, shape language,
Take your original sketch and do several colour comps
to see which palette fits the mood. Don’t limit yourself!composition and rhythm all work together to
craft a compelling image. If you’re relying on a
bombastic colour scheme to save your piece, you
may have other issues that need to be addressed.
Here I paint over a greyscale drawing several
times, because the light sources change in each
image. My two favourite Photoshop colour
tools for doing this are Color Balance and Levels
adjustment layers. In a Levels adjustment, youcan tweak the red, green, and blue channels
individually. Gradient Overlay is also a wonderful
adjustment layer to quickly assign one colour to
light values and another colour to dark.
The problems with using bright, saturated
colours usually arise when you overuse them. But
it really depends on the painting and what you’re
trying to convey. If you can pull it off, a “garish”
palette isn’t garish at all.