"Boldly play with colors while maintaining the original colors!" 》

The theme this time is "Colorful Illustrations."

 

I wonder if you have ever encountered a troubling situation:

The inherent colors of the people and things I want to draw^ are not colorful! The colors of the illustrations drawn are very bland and dull! But since those are the original settings of those things, the colors cannot be changed at will!

 

^Intrinsic color: refers to the color of the object itself. For example, clean snow is white, wood is brown, etc.

 

So, what should we do to make the illustrations more colorful?

This TIPS will provide several small methods to allow you to draw colorful illustrations under this restricted situation.

 

 

[Introduction to the basics of color for beginners]

In this part, I will briefly introduce the basic color principles to explain the terminology that will be used later in the article.

Readers who already have a certain foundation can jump directly to "Preparatory Work" to officially start.

 

 

✧ Introduction to HSV and HLS color models

There are several color models that are commonly used to indicate colors.

One of the most well-known is the HSV system.

 

The letters of HSV stand for:

H: "Hue" Hue [Red>Yellow>Green>Blue>Purple>Magenta: 0~359]

S: "Saturation" saturation [gray~color: 0~100]

V: "Value / Brightness" brightness [dark~bright: 0~100]

 

The color circle is shown as follows:

In addition, Clip Studio Paint also has another built-in color model "HLS model".

You can click on the following locations to convert:

The letters of HLS stand for:

H: "Hue" Hue [Red>Yellow>Green>Blue>Purple>Magenta: 0~359]

L: "Lightness" brightness [dark~bright: 0~100]

S: "Saturation" saturation [gray~color: 0~100]

 

It is very similar to the HSV model in use. You can choose which model to use to pick colors based on your personal preference.

 

 

✧ Introduction to color principle terms

• Inherent color: the color of an object under natural light.

Color matching method:

• a. Similar colors: The colors of the object color on both sides of the hue circle will give people a comfortable and natural feeling when used together.

• b. Complementary colors: Colors that are directly opposite the color of the hue circle will give people a strong impact when used together.

• c. Side complementary color matching: Take the color directly opposite the hue circle.

• d. Split complementary color matching: use the colors on both sides of the hue circle directly opposite the object color.

• e. Triangular color matching: Using three colors in the right triangle position in the color circle can also give people a sense of impact, but it will be more colorful than complementary colors.

• f. Rectangular color matching (square color matching): Use the four colors in the rectangular position of the color wheel to make the colors more colorful, but you need to pay attention to the color balance.

【Preparatory work】

Before you start, please divide the illustration you draw into the following layers at least to facilitate the work:

1. Line drawing

2. Shades of skin color

3. Underground color of eyes and skin color (inherent color)

4. Main shadow

5. Background color (inherent color)

6. Background

 

The eyes and skin color are specially separated here because the colors of these two parts are more difficult to control.

You can also subdivide it according to your own preferences, such as separating the front and rear backgrounds from the characters, having more than one shadow layer, etc.

 

 

✧ Sample picture

The content of this sample picture is "Asian girl wearing sailor uniform surrounded by plants." The character's biological characteristic color (such as black hair, black eyes) and the inherent color of the leaves (green) have been determined and cannot be changed at will.

 

For ease of explanation, I used a cel (color block) coloring style. But in fact, it’s okay to use illustrations in other coloring styles.

Also, please find out if there is anything in your illustration whose color can be changed at will. This part can be used for overall picture coordination and buffering in the future.

 

In the example picture, since the inherent colors of the characters and leaves have been fixed, I decided to mark the sky as a part that changes color freely.

Firstly, besides blue, the sky can also change into other colors such as orange and purple. Secondly, the importance of the sky in this illustration is lower than that of the characters and leaves, so the readers will pay relatively little attention to it, leaving them with less attention. Give the artist more room to make changes.

 

Sometimes just changing this area can achieve a color contrast effect. Below, I turned the sky into a red background. Do you feel the added impact of the picture?

Of course, if you want to keep the blue sky background based on the drawing theme, it’s okay. The various processing methods will be introduced below for your reference!

1. [Use highly saturated shadows]

✧ Change the original shadow to a highly saturated color

Here I changed the shadow to a purple with high saturation and low lightness.

 

About Shadow Layer Property Settings:

• If the shadow coverage contains only one intrinsic color, you can use normal or color-increased layer attributes;

• If there is more than one inherent color in the shadow coverage, use layer properties such as Color Boost.

For example, the shadow layer of a leaf can use normal or color-added (because there is only one inherent color "green");

The shadow layer of the clothes needs to use color enhancement (because the collar, bow, etc. are different colors).

Note that the skin tone and eyes cannot use the same purple as other locations, and need to lower the brightness and saturation.

 

The shadow color of eyes can be closer in hue to the main shadow color (purple), but less saturated;

The shade of skin color needs to be close to its natural color.

(In addition, I also increased the saturation of the sky blue to match the picture)

If you can't see the inherent color after adding shadows, you can lower the saturation of the shadow color.

For example, if the picture below uses red shading, the blue collar of the sailor suit will become unrecognizable from its original color. So while keeping the hue unchanged, I lowered the saturation until I could recognize the approximate inherent color.

✧ How to choose shadow color

Number of shade colors:

In order to maintain the unity of the picture, I would recommend that beginners start with one shadow hue color, and then fine-tune the eye and skin color shading according to the selected color. If a certain part does not look good, you can also adjust the shadow saturation and brightness of that part to achieve a balanced effect.

Once you get used to it, try using similar shades (i.e. more than one color) and gradually expand your range of colors!

 

How to determine hue:

First, find the "natural color that accounts for the largest part" in the illustration, and then choose the complementary color of the natural color or the color adjacent to the complementary color.

 

In the example picture, the largest proportion is the "green" color of the leaves. So above I used red and purple as an example of how shading works. If similar colors like green are used, the color impact effect is not as good as red and purple.

Like below I used a shadow color with a hint of cyan blue, and in a side-by-side comparison you can clearly see that it has a very similar feel to the original image, and is nowhere near as effective as the red or purple shadows.

 

 

How to determine saturation:

In order to make the colors more colorful, I would recommend starting with a more saturated color and then fine-tuning it according to individual needs (such as eyes and skin tone).

 

How to determine lightness:

I recommend that beginners choose a color with a lower lightness than the natural color, or use a "color enhancement" layer to add shadows to preserve the principle of "shadows are dark places".

After you become proficient, you can try changing the shadow of an object with a simple structure to a lighter color. You will be pleasantly surprised!

 

For example, below I try to use light pink as the shadow of the leaves, and then change the sky to a pink complementary color. What do you think?

2. [Replace the originally black areas with other highly saturated colors]

✧ Select the parts to replace with other highly saturated colors

• line drawing

• Occlusion shadow (that is, insert the darkest shadow position in the entire picture)

• You can also select other very dark locations

The difference between the shadow here and the one mentioned in the first part is that instead of selecting the "whole" shadow, only the "darkest" part is selected. Of course, you can also decide how many parts to select according to your own preferences. There is no problem in selecting only the line drawing part.

 

 

✧ How to choose the color to replace

• You can start with high-saturation colors—[Example I, II]

• Pay attention to the brightness. If the color is too light, people will not be able to see the original structure of the object (especially if the selected position contains a lot of shadows) - [Example III: The hair held by the character's hand is actually not very visible. What is it?]

• You can add gradients of several similar colors to add interest—[Example IV: Added gradients of purple~red]

3.【Use filter method for post-production】

In this section I will focus on how to use post-processing methods to make illustrations more colorful without modifying the images.

✧ A. Increase saturation

Add a tone compensation layer on top to increase the chroma. The brightness can be fine-tuned depending on the overall effect.

 

This method can make the color of the picture fuller, but it will not add more colors of different hues to the picture, so it can be regarded as an auxiliary function and used together with other post-production methods below.

✧ B. Adjust existing colors with other colorful images

I added this material to the top of the illustration, and adjusted the layer properties to "Solid Line Overprint Mixing". Transparency is set to 30%.

 

Because this illustration uses a color block coloring style, I used this layer attribute to get a color block feel. Other layer attributes such as "Brighten" and "Small Light Source" are also good choices.

 

This action can add a vibrant sense of color to your illustrations from a microscopic perspective. You can see that the leaves now have more than one color, but still maintain the "green" attribute.

 

 

✧ C. Add other colorful images to the existing screen

I added this material to the top of the illustration, and adjusted the layer properties to "Screen" and set the opacity Set at 75%.

 

Because the content of the illustration is outdoors, it is also a good choice to add the ray of light produced by the lens refracting the sun.

In addition to ready-made image pixels, you can also use some rainbow-colored prism brushes and use layer attributes such as "overlay".

 

This action can directly add more colors of different hues to the picture. Even if you use an image with only similar colors, as long as it is a different color system than the original image, you can get pretty good results.

4.【Add-painted items】

Since the inherent color of existing items cannot be changed, in order to increase the color, add some other objects into it!

 

 

✧ D. Add a colored frame

Here I added a thick border with a yellow-orange gradient, and adjusted the layer properties to "Small Light Source" and the opacity to 50%.

 

 

✧ E. Add a pattern that can be filled with any color

This refers to decorative patterns.

It can be filled with any color, such as stars, hearts, polka dots, diamonds, line patterns, etc., all can be used. It depends on what pattern matches your illustration theme and style.

 

 

✧ How to choose the color of painted items

I would recommend using the complementary or side-complementary color of the "natural color that makes up the largest part of the illustration".

Painted items use similar colors.

This can increase the vividness of the hue without making the colors of the picture look too cluttered.

 

In the example picture, it is the "green" color of the leaves that accounts for the largest proportion, so I chose "red" and its similar color "yellow-orange" as the color of the painted items.

 

 

Appendix: How to Achieve Color Balance

How to choose colors is always a vexing question for beginners.

Here are two directions for reference:

 

 

1. Adjust the saturation and brightness of the color

After selecting several hues, if they don’t fit together well, try adjusting their saturation and brightness.

 

For example, below I used the rectangular color matching method and came up with four hues (left). But they look harsh and not pretty.

So I lowered the saturation of the magenta and green, lowered the lightness of the blue, and left the red unchanged.

The color matching produced in this way, while maintaining the colorfulness, is more design-forward than the original matching.

2. Decide or find the theme color of the illustration

Color, like other areas of visual art, must be divided into "primary" and "secondary" to make it look good.

 

Please try not to apply the selected colors evenly on the canvas, but to adjust their proportions, more or less, and try again:

【Conclusion】

Finish!

There are so many color versions, which one do you like best?

What do you think of this teaching?

Feel free to leave a message and let me know! Hope this tutorial is helpful to you.

 

 

【Material Usage】