Realism via colour

The next technique that I wanted to learn was style of coloring that is used my many concept artists such as Jason Chan. The technique was to work out the values in black and white, then apply the colors individually as new layers in Photoshop.

Chan (2011), explains that working out the values first, gives the artist a clear concept of shadow and farm without having to worry about the colors and repercussions of light on color until later (Chan, 2010).

I therefore began just creating my concepts with light and shadow after the line-work. This allowed me to pay more attention to detailed areas of shadow and reflections. Once the value studies were completely finished I then began layering on the individual colours.

Below is an example of the stages in the process, Line work, value study and final colours...

The work would then go into refining the colors, this was something I had not done before. My colours in my previous work were quite flat. For my newer concepts I adhered to the advice of Snoswell (2004), who states "I build up complementary colors on top of each other to create color depth" (p84). With my fished colours I went into the detailed areas such as around the eyes and mouth and layered colors over the top ensuring they were not out of place and worked them into the existing colours. This attention to colour detail gave my pieces much more realism and depth, something they were sorely lacking before.

Another thing thing that I learned in my research was that colours and highlights are more realistic if they are less saturated and pure colors should be used sparsely. This is advocated by Cortina (2005), who recommends that colour use is approached tentatively and that stark colors should only be kept for when they are required such as in sharp highlights.(p172).