Color Theory Basics for Digital Painters — Transcript

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1. 0:00Hi everyone, my name is Marco Buchcci
2. 0:02and I'm here to help you get started
3. 0:03with using color in your digital
4. 0:05paintings. When it comes to talking
5. 0:06about color, there are three main ways
6. 0:08to modify a color. So, let's go over
7. 0:10those and talk about some terminology as
8. 0:12we do. This is a color wheel. It's not
9. 0:15very scary. In fact, my goal as a
10. 0:17teacher is to familiarize you with this
11. 0:19color wheel and make it your friend.
12. 0:21What this color wheel is showing you
13. 0:23right now are the different hues of
14. 0:25color. And that's our first term, hue.
15. 0:28the name of the color, red, green, blue,
16. 0:30purple, etc. Every digital painting app
17. 0:33you use will have a color picker that
18. 0:35shows you a color wheel where you can
19. 0:36pick different hues for your paintings.
20. 0:38Here's the color picker in Photoshop,
21. 0:40Painter, and Procreate. For now, let's
22. 0:44ignore the middle part of these color
23. 0:45pickers and just focus on the hue wheel
24. 0:47that goes around them. As you can see,
25. 0:49it's always the same progression of hues
26. 0:52along the color wheel. But wait,
27. 0:54depending on what version of Photoshop
28. 0:56you might be using, you may see a
29. 0:58vertical hue strip. But don't worry,
30. 1:00it's the exact same progression of hues.
31. 1:02They've just taken the color wheel and
32. 1:04unwound it into a straight line. Side
33. 1:06note, I actually find this format
34. 1:08friendlier to work with. It's easier for
35. 1:10me to click around those colors, but
36. 1:12that's just me. Any app you choose will
37. 1:14have this color picker at the heart of
38. 1:16it. Anyway, this is already where we get
39. 1:18into a little bit of color theory. You
40. 1:20may have heard of the three primary
41. 1:22colors, red, blue, and yellow. We
42. 1:24consider those colors primary because
43. 1:26back in the day where you could only mix
44. 1:28pigments to paint, those colors could
45. 1:30not be created by mixing any other
46. 1:32color. And in fact, any other color
47. 1:34could be created by mixing the three
48. 1:36primaries. For example, if you mix red
49. 1:39and yellow, you get orange. Going back
50. 1:42now to the color wheel, the hues on the
51. 1:44color wheel actually tell you this. As
52. 1:46you can see, orange is right there
53. 1:48between red and yellow. Violet is
54. 1:50between blue and red and green is the
55. 1:52bridge between blue and yellow. These
56. 1:55three new colors, violet, orange, and
57. 1:57green are known as secondary colors.
58. 1:59They are direct mixtures of the
59. 2:00primaries. But enough with basic theory
60. 2:03for now. Let's get back to actual
61. 2:04practice. If you're painting
62. 2:06traditionally with acrylics or oils, you
63. 2:08have to mix colors on your palette and
64. 2:10your resulting mixture is how you choose
65. 2:12your color. With digital painting,
66. 2:14though, this is not a requirement. In
67. 2:16fact, often it's not even advisable to
68. 2:18mix colors this way because most digital
69. 2:20painting software doesn't treat colors
70. 2:22like realworld pigments. So your
71. 2:24mixtures digitally will look a bit
72. 2:26different than if you mixed it
73. 2:27traditionally. For example, using real
74. 2:29paint, I could mix this blue and this
75. 2:32yellow and get a really vibrant green.
76. 2:34But if I tried that digitally, the
77. 2:37resulting color here is greenish, but it
78. 2:40lacks the vibrancy I just got with
79. 2:42traditional paint. With digital
80. 2:44painting, if I wanted that nice vibrant
81. 2:46green, I would simply pick it. Okay,
82. 2:49I've been using the word vibrant. There
83. 2:51is an official color term for that. It's
84. 2:53called saturation. Saturation is the
85. 2:56amount of color in a hue. In other
86. 2:59words, how vibrant it is or how much
87. 3:01chroma it has. And this is where I want
88. 3:04to upgrade our color wheel to this one.
89. 3:07I like this color wheel because it shows
90. 3:09us two dimensions of color, hue and
91. 3:12saturation. And this is where that
92. 3:14middle part of our color pickers comes
93. 3:16back into play. Any hue can have a
94. 3:19variety of saturation in it. For
95. 3:21example, I could pick a red that is very
96. 3:23saturated or a very vibrant red or I can
97. 3:27go the opposite way and pick a very
98. 3:29desaturated red. Desaturating a color
99. 3:32like that introduces a very important
100. 3:34aspect of color theory. When you
101. 3:36desaturate any hue, you are bringing it
102. 3:38closer to gray. And going back to our
103. 3:41color wheel here, we can see how
104. 3:42important gray is because, as you can
105. 3:45see, every hue has gray in common. That
106. 3:49makes gray a very convenient way to
107. 3:51travel from one color to another. To
108. 3:54quickly intro that idea, let's take a
109. 3:56blank canvas and quickly paint a bunch
110. 3:58of very saturated colors or hues onto
111. 4:00it. I don't know about you, but to me,
112. 4:02this is the visual equivalent of eating
113. 4:04too much sugar. Yuck. That's because the
114. 4:07more saturated colors are, the more
115. 4:10distance they have from other colors.
116. 4:12You can see this on the color wheel. If
117. 4:14I plot out some very saturated colors on
118. 4:16there, the path to get from one color to
119. 4:19the next, especially colors on opposite
120. 4:21ends of the color wheel, becomes very
121. 4:22long. But if you desaturate these colors
122. 4:25and bring them closer to gray, suddenly
123. 4:28those paths get a lot shorter. A
124. 4:30desaturated color that is not perfectly
125. 4:32gray is often referred to as a neutral
126. 4:35color or as a verb neutralizing the
127. 4:38color. A neutral color can have some
128. 4:40saturation to it, but generally it's
129. 4:42close to gray. Visually, desaturated or
130. 4:45neutralized colors translate into a more
131. 4:47pleasing visual aesthetic. For example,
132. 4:50these are the same hues I painted
133. 4:52before, only this time they're
134. 4:54neutralized or desaturated, and suddenly
135. 4:57they feel like they belong together a
136. 4:59lot more.
137. 5:00That's the power of gray or neutrals or
138. 5:02desaturation. Yeah, different artists
139. 5:05use different terms, but they all mean
140. 5:06the same thing. It's now time to add a
141. 5:09very important third term. That term is
142. 5:12value. Value refers to the lightness or
143. 5:15darkness of a color. Actually, you don't
144. 5:17even need color to discuss value. Here's
145. 5:19the grayscale chart. It's a list of
146. 5:21tones from white to black and all the
147. 5:23tones in between. These are values seen
148. 5:26without color. Value is easily the most
149. 5:29important element of your digital
150. 5:31paintings because value determines the
151. 5:33light and form of what you see. And
152. 5:35that's why if we switch this video to
153. 5:37black and white right now, you can still
154. 5:39tell perfectly what's going on. You
155. 5:41don't need color. In fact, it's an
156. 5:43extremely common practice regimen for an
157. 5:45aspiring artist to only work in
158. 5:47grayscale or black and white at first
159. 5:49before adding hue and saturation into
160. 5:51the mix. Now, value can be a bit tricky
161. 5:55as far as the color wheel goes because
162. 5:56the color wheel doesn't show us value.
163. 5:59For example, this color and this color
164. 6:02appear to be two different colors, but
165. 6:03in fact, they are the same hue and
166. 6:05therefore appear in the same place on
167. 6:07the color wheel. This further
168. 6:09illustrates how value is part of color,
169. 6:12yes, but also on its own island. And
170. 6:14it's always worthwhile to do pure value
171. 6:16studies to heighten your understanding
172. 6:18of form, which in turn will elevate your
173. 6:21color work. Digital painting can be
174. 6:23tough, so don't beat yourself up if
175. 6:24you're struggling. If you want to get
176. 6:26better at this stuff though, we have
177. 6:27more lessons, demos, assignments, and
178. 6:29extended videos over at
179. 6:30proco.com/digitalpainting.
180. 6:33Check it out, and we'll see you there.
181. 6:38[Music]