Colour Theory

Asslessman

Asslessman

Member
OK, this Weekend I tried to give colour theory a go, but since I'm lazy as hell, I decided to experiment a little by myself first. My goal was to get inspired by Frank Frazetta's painting in which you often find unexpected colours in skintones like blue or green.

I am painting a horse with swamp brown as my base colour. I chose one warm colour (cadmium red which is orange) to highlight the base and a deep blue to make the shades. It was the first time I was trying to use "unusual" colours to do this but it turned out more than OK (pics to come).

After doing it it seems the colours I chose to make the highlights and shades were quite compatible from this wheel (thanks Axiom ;))/

Can those of you in the know explain to us how this all works an dwhy the great painters can only wear by their colour wheel? I get the complementary parts what happens with contrasts of light/dark, saturated or not? I will get in depth with this by reading what I can find but I would appreciate some highlights (no pun) about the matter as starters.
 

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Asslessman

Asslessman

Member
Nothing extroardinary here an dI rushed on the blendings since I nly wante dto see if it worked. The result is not marvellous but at least I know it works. I'll try to take pics however just to prove the point.
 
ardyer

ardyer

Member
Pm me a personal email addresses and I'll send you the notes I took from a 3 day class under the tutelage of Jeremie Bonamount Teboul (wide name I think I horribly misspelled). It's not all color theory, but they're is a fair bit there on it. It's in word format, but I can turn it into a pdf if you need.
 
Asslessman

Asslessman

Member
This would be great. Jérémie is a very great painter and I actually followed him a bit since I used to see him in the hobby shops of our city. PM incoming
 
Asslessman

Asslessman

Member
PIcs fo rth epics god :

The colours I used :

2014-01-13+20.56.53.jpg


What it looks like now (still WIP) :

w68Hhk5ZY3rnVwznWxiMU2WEjFMlt3s2RMNxsYIeeiOF=w944-h793-no


The pics tend to tune down the blue because I still have yellow light bulbs (this should change soon) but here it is.

Comments, advices, critics,...
 
Tzigane

Tzigane

Member
Nice! Adding blue or purple to brownish/red colours as shading brings a miniature to life. :grin:

I'd suggest making the shading a tad darker. Don't be afraid to darken it, the purple will still be visible in the transition between darkest and basecolour, and that's the subtle touch you're looking for.
 
Asslessman

Asslessman

Member
Tzigane":taoubh3z said:
Nice! Adding blue or purple to brownish/red colours as shading brings a miniature to life. :grin:

I'd suggest making the shading a tad darker. Don't be afraid to darken it, the purple will still be visible in the transition between darkest and basecolour, and that's the subtle touch you're looking for.
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Thanks, I agree with you, the sahde could benefit from a darker tone. I don't know why but I rushed on this to see what i was going to look like. If I had spent some little more time on blendings I could have had a darker tone with the blue appearing just before the base colour as you say. One other thing is that I started working on the shades and then "pulled" my lighting towards it because I was afraid to show too much blue...
This is plastic and it's a model I want to finish soon so I don't plan on going back to it but I will definitely try to do as you say on my next big metal piece. I'll get my hands with undead and chaotic stuff and then we'll see if something can be done with this marauder giant of mine...
 
cheetor

cheetor

Member
Blue or no blue, the horse looks great. Very few things that I paint can stand up to high magnification like that.
 
Asslessman

Asslessman

Member
Thanks guys, I've been linked to some very intesting sites which i'll have to explore in depth but I think about making a round up of what I found for those who could be intersted.
The horse is okay for now, I'll see if some more blue is needed once I've worked on the armour and some other details just to make sure I have the right "balance".
 

Timbor

Member
That is a nice technique, I will have to try something like this in the future. Did you blend the paints together for a smoother transition or just keep them to separate layers?
 
Asslessman

Asslessman

Member
Timbor":1tq4lalv said:
That is a nice technique, I will have to try something like this in the future. Did you blend the paints together for a smoother transition or just keep them to separate layers?
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I blended blue to swamp brown and then red to swampbrown. I use a wet palette (a cheap home-made version which works great) and I used matt medium. The result could have been better with a little more time. I had given a Agrax eathshade wash just before to make the shapes clearer and easier to read. The mlatt medium reaaly helps to blend without doing too much layers (though the result is obviouly not as good).
One thing I found hard is that most of the time you are used to how ligt falls on shapes but I realised I'm not used to consider a model head down to place shades...
 

Timbor

Member
Thanks for the reply. I have used a wet palette before, I just tend to be too lazy to put one together or get out a new piece of parchment paper when the old one is too full of old paint. Might be good motivation to try something new. I usually just limit myself to monochromatic shades and highlights, so this could be something fun to try.

Do you mix the matt medium into the paints, or do you glaze it on afterwards? I have some I just hardly use it.

Its crazy though, when you look at the triad, your highlight almost looks like it should be darker than the base colour. At least to me, it does.
 
Asslessman

Asslessman

Member
Timbor":adsdsk5k said:
Thanks for the reply. I have used a wet palette before, I just tend to be too lazy to put one together or get out a new piece of parchment paper when the old one is too full of old paint. Might be good motivation to try something new. I usually just limit myself to monochromatic shades and highlights, so this could be something fun to try.

Do you mix the matt medium into the paints, or do you glaze it on afterwards? I have some I just hardly use it.

Its crazy though, when you look at the triad, your highlight almost looks like it should be darker than the base colour. At least to me, it does.
Click to expand...

I usually leave a drop or two of Matt medium to add some in the colour mix so that it get sa littel more transluscent, with water, pigments tend to want to go in the recesses (liquid tension thing I guess) so Matt medium helps to get a "flat" effect. I used PVA glue in the past for that effect. Matt medium comes handy in many a situation, only discovered it recently but it's proven very useful.

I agree changing the baking paper for the palette is sometimes a pain but I find it really useful especially for those kind of shades and highlights where you can keep a mix wet long enough to do the job properly.
 
ardyer

ardyer

Member
Timbor":3h4shuit said:
Thanks for the reply. I have used a wet palette before, I just tend to be too lazy to put one together or get out a new piece of parchment paper when the old one is too full of old paint. Might be good motivation to try something new. I usually just limit myself to monochromatic shades and highlights, so this could be something fun to try.
Click to expand...

I find it helps if you pre-cut a bunch of sheets at one time. That way you have some extra fresh sheets to swap out as necessary.
 
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