Intro and Video Tutorial

Hey everyone! I am Addriano Divino, and I wanna show you how I make my Colorful Illustrations.

 

We’ll explore the basics of Color Theory and Color Harmony to learn how to choose the best color combinations for your artworks.

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Video Tutorial

Values and Saturation

The first thing we should understand about colors is Values and Saturation.

 

Let’s see how they work by using the Clip Studio’s Color Wheel.

You can access it on Window > Color Wheel.

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Values

In simple words, Value is how light and how dark is the color.

 

Using the color wheel, values will be on the left side of the triangle.

As you go up on this side, the color will be lighter (high value). And down, darker (low value).

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Saturation

Saturation tells us how intense the color is.

 

As far to the left you choose the color, the less saturated the color will be.

While high saturated colors are the ones to the right, close to the triangle tip.

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Adding the Values

Understanding this we can decide how and where our colors will be placed.

 

In this art, I wanted the background to be darker, so I am using low values for it. And the main character is lighter, with high values.

 

That way I am sure I’ll have a high contrast artwork, having the main character’s colors popping up against the dark background.

The next step is to select the right color combination for your art.

Color Theory

Color Theory studies the behavior colors, for example:

 

Color Mixing

Teaches us how to create new colors.

 

Contrast Effects

Will show us that adjacent colors can change our perception of another color using different contrast and saturation.

 

Color Harmony and Color Psychology

We learn how our brain processes the colors and gives them meaning and feeling.

It would need several tutorials to cover Color Theory, so to keep things simple we’ll focus on Color Harmony.

Color Harmony

If you ever made an art and felt that it was boring to look at, or maybe too chaotic, it was probably lacking harmony.

 

And to solve that we can use formulas of color harmony.

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Analogous Colors

Analogous Colors are the group of colors next to each other on the color wheel.

And they usually give us a nice and consistent palette.

 

For example: Red, Orange and Yellow.

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Complementary Colors

Complementary Colors are the two colors directly opposite to each other on the color wheel.

Usually used to create high contrast color palettes.

 

For example: Green and Magenta.

There are many other examples of formulas of color harmony that I highly recommend you to study, but for this artwork I’ll use the Analogous Colors.

 

The palette of red, orange and yellow will transmit the feeling of a warm scene that will suit our main character’s storyline.

 

For the background, a very dark red-purple. And for a bit of contrast I’ll use a very dark tone on blue-green that is complementary to the main warm palette.

Shading and Highlights

Now we’ll move from theory and study, to the more practical part of the process.

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Shading

To shade my character I’ll use a new layer clipped to the group of layers that have the base colors.

 

The Shading Layer will have the Multiply Blend Mode activated, and in the end I’ll change the opacity to a lower level (I usually use 30% of opacity for shading).

 

To keep the warm feel I’ll use a dark purple to create the shadows.

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Highlights

To make the highlights I’ll use the same method. However I’ll use the Add(Glow) Blend Mode, and a light yellow color.

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Extra Shading and Highlights

To refine my artworks, I like to add more layers of shading and highlights and a new layer for rim light.

 

Extra glow can be added above the lineart layer, to blend the whole art together or enhance the effect.

Painting the Lineart

I usually use a heavy lineart, so in the end even if the art is very colorful it might still look dark.

 

To solve that I paint parts of the lineart that are inside of the general silhouette of the character.

 

I create a new clipped layer above the lineart layer, and I’ll paint the lines I want using a dark tone of the colors close to the line.

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And that’s it!

 

Use these tips, and study more about colors. Combine everything with your own style, I am sure you’ll achieve great results.

 

Thank you for your time.

Until next time.