In this tutorial, I'll be showing you how to achieve different moods on Lofi art using some basic knowledge from Color Theory.

1A - What is Color Theory

You can also call it color harmony

 

I've already discussed this but here, I'll just gonna make it more simple to make it easier to understand for anybody.

 

Color Theory can help us to make our composition better by controlling the colors and tonal value, helping our audience to see the focal point right away.

 

We all know separating the foreground and background is crucial to any art.

Without any basic knowledge, we tend to randomly choose any colors for our artwork based on what we see around us, hoping to make it work. Sometimes, we're lucky to pick the right color but don't have any idea how it worked.

In color wheel, there are Cool side and Warm side, so keep this in mind because we are going to use it later.

1B - Saturation and Value

Having no clue about color theory, we tend to pick colors the brightest, the most saturated, especially in digital art. That is why digital art is supposed to be harder than we thought because of this.

 

Controlling the saturation of colors can help us make the foreground and the background separates from each other.

Tonal Value also has a huge part in this when it comes to depth between foreground and background, so checking the grayscale can help us see if the image is readable.

Fun Fact: Colors also have psychology behind it. That's why you see Stop Sign being red because red can be alarming, also it can build a great contrast. Our eyes easily get distracted by red so we tend to see it right away. It can also be used with a different meaning as well but I am not here to discuss that. Just sharing it for some little knowledge.

 

 

 

1C - Types of Color Harmony

Color Theory is being used by professional artists and I am sure you saw it somewhere but may have not noticed it. It might be your favorite movie poster.

 

There are 7 Types of Color Combinations.

The Common Rules:

 

• Each Combination can turn around the color wheel. It doesn't have to be specific like the shown colors in the image

 

• You don't use each color equally. One or Two Colors should dominate the canvas

 

• Not necessary to be strict only within the chosen colors. Light and shadow are uncontrollable. You can still include colors outside the choices as long as it doesn't make too much attention.

 

• You can control the Tonal Value of each color.

The Combination Names are:

1. Monochromatic

 

2. Complementary

 

3. Split-Complementary

 

4. Tetradic or Rectangle or Double-Complementary

 

5. Triadic

 

6. Square

 

7. Analogous

 

2 - Apply it to your Lo-Fi Art Properly

What you'll be seeing now is just the flat color of a composition.

Some might start thinking, can we even create a mood starting from this?

 

There's a lot of color within the image, can we even apply the Color Harmony to it?

 

The answer would be yes. It is possible with the use of shadow and light.

 

Light always has its color, the same as the shadow depending on the environment.

 

Colors being mixed or being on the side of other colors changes their look, giving an illusion that the specific color belongs to the image.

 

And when the Help of Tonal value, everything can be possible.

 

So our goal here is to create a better tonal value, control the colors, and create better lighting for the specific mood we wanted.

 

..But just because we applied one of the Color Combinations, even with light and shadow, it doesn't mean it always works.

 

Just like what I did here with Split-Complementary. It might look nice, and the color is realistic looking, but there's nothing to focus on. Dogs aren't visible, the person isn't visible at a glance, so I don't advise following this.

2A - Noontime Lo-Fi

Noontime is something I always play around with. Because of the intense light coming from the sun, the light bounces to any material it hits and could illuminate the dark areas.

 

As a person who lives in a Tropical Country, this type of ambient is reminiscing. I want the viewer to feel the heat of the noon.

 

Though for others, this might look boring so we could push a little bit of color to it, in the dark.

So this might something others would prefer, or maybe not, it depends and it's fine since each of us has their own preferences.

And of course, I still tried to apply some color harmony here.

 

There's a lot going on in the image but as long as you'll notice the emptiness of the sky, indicating that the weather is very hot, that's good. You'll see the monitor, keeping the balance between the left half and right half of the image, it is good.

 

Though the blue shadow doesn't fit the "hot" weather, so maybe the first one was better after all.

And all of this going on, we should not forget to check the tonal value.

 

We can still read the character and the dog, which is good.

2B - Rainy Mood

In Rainy Weather, colors are dull because we don't have enough light around us.

 

In fact, it can still be darker depending on how dark the clouds can be.

 

Rainy Weather tends to give a gloomy ambiance to the environment, that's why sometimes, it kinda feels lonely.

We can push a color blue on the shadow to make it "cool" looking weather but I don't think it would fit that much here. Though with style, it could still be valid.

Color Combination? It's Triadic.

 

Contains Green, Blue, and Red.

2C - Moonlight Mood

Moonlight is interesting. I know we might see artworks that make everything purple but I always wanted to show something that could also work even on common colors we see every day.

 

This is an obvious Complementary Color with the use of Red and Blue.

 

We know that Red and Blue aren't opposed to each other, but I also mentioned that you don't necessarily need to follow exactly what's in the color wheel.

 

We can validate this because we uses the Warm and Cool Combination.

Red is being the warm here and Blue is being the Cool Color.

 

Because of this, each color creates a weight on the other.

 

You'll also notice that the blue dominates the entire image, but red still could at least stand out because it's the opposite of blue.

 

Yes, there is still green in the image but I made it desaturated so it won't be noticeable and gave the viewer too much influence of blue.

2D - Galaxy

This is harder to pull off because of the Light on the monitors but it can still be good because we are now seeing the character first than the galaxy.

 

This can't be possible in real life. If you tried to take a photo like this, everything lights up because of the monitor, that's just how long exposure works.

 

But we are doing art here, to play with the imagination, so this can still be valid.

 

 

This is considered analogous. I did try to push purple on the entire room to give more color to it.

 

Yellow is being too far from blue but like what I've said, if it works, it would work, after all, it is a warm color same as red. It helped the galaxy gets attention.

2E - The Gaming Mood

This might be similar to the previous one, Analogous but this is intended to be a Square Color Combination.

 

I am having a hard time pulling this off as "Square" because of the purple light around the image and it will change the color of the entire room. Other colors don't seem to show more so we could still see it as Analogous somehow.

 

Though there is a good composition for Square, this is just not the one.

2F - Sunset

Everyone would love a sunset, and I also think that it can be good on Square Color Combination

I am using Orange, Red, Green, and Blue.

 

Now, blue can be missing but there is a little amount of blue somewhere.

 

It was the sky that is having a little blue. Railings can be blue but decided to make purple just to add artistic freedom, the same as the shadow on the mountains.

 

Adding different hues helps the image to make it more interesting.

3. Artistic Freedom

Of course, as an artist, we don't always stick to reality, because reality can be boring. We are free to change everything just to make look good and express what we want to let others see what we can do.

The first one is simple. Well, it is just a typical look but I am trying to achieve some 90s Television kind of vibe. Just wanted to share this but it won't be the best to majority.

Another thing I wanted to share is based on how people love purple or pink.

 

Since A lot of people also likes sunset, we can change its color and still could work.

Now, this might be a good-looking Analogous Combination.

4. Tips and Advice

There are a lot of ways you can do on different color combinations.

 

Be sure to experiment on each of them to see what things could work and what is not.

 

Pick a color, plan ahead of time, don't be afraid to have mistakes, and everything will be fine.