These illustrative Journals are my way of sharing tips and tricks and knowledge that I've acquired over the last few years in the illustration industry. I'm simply sharing it with you all in the hopes that it helps somebody. If you too would like to offer some tips and tricks, please note me and I'll include it. This is for those who wish to learn after all.

First of all I need to apologize for the lack of art journals lately. I like to stay on schedule with these but to be perfectly honest – due to being in a transitionary point in my life, these have definitely not been a huge priority for me compared to everything else. They should be a bit more regular from here on out though. Or so I'm hoping.

Anyway, here we go.

One year ago, I worked 3 contracts for a gaming company. I enjoyed the majority of the work, and they were a smaller group – so it was quite fun getting to really push the work to what I hoped would really help sell the products – but then they began to fall short on their contracts and many artists, myself included – did not get paid.

They approached me again, quite recently, and asked if I could do some work. I declined. Due to the extra effort that I included last year with those 3 gigs, they listened to my concerns and went the extra mile to fix the issue in a rather timely manner.

I mention this because as artists we have the chance to produce work that is in great demand. And if we put in the extra effort, we can influence changes that not only affect our own lives for the better, but for others as well. Don't take just any job, take the ones that work out for you – and while I really really wanted to take on this project, I needed them to hear what I had to say and to understand the weight of the actions their previous management took. If they follow through with our agreement, and progress is made to rectify the issue, I will be working with them again. And hopefully many other artists will too.

Stand up for what you believe in. Sometimes you truly can make changes happen. Artists have far more power than they often believe. I hope you remember that when you face opportunities like this. And believe me, they will likely present themselves to you. This is definitely not a sterling or organized industry.

So. With that aside, what should we chat about here? I remember somebody having a question about colors awhile back. Let's go there.

A lot of people make a person that creamy salmon color because mentally we think, “well, that's what the person looks like”. But we don't actually take into consideration how the color is made by the things around us. There's different lighting, which affects your shadows, both of which taking heavy influence on the skin color. And that's just the obvious stuff – how about temperature of a setting? How about dust and debris in the area? There are factors that change skin color. Skin color aside, this applies to all things. Ask yourself what something is made of? Is it reflective? Refractive? Concave? Convex? Is it thick? Thin?

Think about it. It's important.

With the thought process aside – lets touch on some basic color theory for those who aren't up to date.

Here's a dictionary representation of some color terms, I'll provide my personal commentary afterwards.

Main Entry: primary color
Function: noun
: any of a set of colors from which all other colors may be derived

Main Entry: secondary color
Function: noun
: a color formed by mixing two primary colors in equal or equivalent quantities

Main Entry: tertiary color
Function: noun
1 : a color produced by mixing two secondary colors
2 : a color produced by an equal mixture of a primary color with a secondary color adjacent to it on the color wheel

So you have primary, red, yellow, blue. You have secondary colors, green, orange, purple, and tertiary which is what is between each of those, blue-green, red-orange, yellow-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, yellow-green. I have in the past called secondary colors tertiary, but this was mostly for simplicity of explanation. Generally speaking they are closer to what we consider tertiary than the primary. And introducing 3 sets is often too much for some people right away. For the record, these three groups are the solid three main sets.

Now, you gain a secondary by mixing two primary colors. This is proven by 5 year old finger painters everywhere. You can mix two secondary colors to achieve a tertiary. As per the description, you can also take adjacent primary/secondary colors on the color wheel to make said tertiary..... but honestly, I've found it hard to get the mix just right.

What you must aim for with each of your color combinations is a harmony. A coexistence of colors that is pleasing to the eye. Despite what some people may thin, you cannot just use any color you want to achieve a nice looking picture. Understimulization to the eye will make a picture boring and visually unorganized, destroying a composition. Overstimulation of the eye will be so busy that the brain quickly moves on as well.... it's this middle ground that you must aim. Artistic freedom or not, you can't claim that either of these is your style in the efforts of making people like your art.... if it doesn't click for the brain, then your style is to suck with colors apparently. It worries me how many people out there still need to accept this (some of which I've had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting in the professional field – how they got there, I do not know).

This harmony is best created using complimentary colors. That is, on the color wheel, one color directly adjacent (or right across from) one another. In this case, we'll pick green. Adjacent from our sexy green friend, is red. With this in mind, they must be of the same value (greyscale tone) in order to truly harmonize well. What does this mean? A vibrant red is useless if you pair it with a dull washed out green. You can pull it off if you know just how to balance it, but this usually takes a lot of experience. Start similar if you can. If you don't know values well (It clicked easily for me, many artists aren't so lucky, or so I've learned) you can digitally desaturate your work (just don't forget to undo when you're done looking!). This will help you see how close they are. They need not be exact, but try for a similarity. I have little solutions for the traditional painters out there, digital is the common medium right now, at least here on DeviantART. Traditionalists will need to experiment.

You should also remember that one color (for our example, we'll pick orange) will look completely different depending on what you layer it on. Say you put it against red. It will visually blend a little, layer it over blue and suddenly it's far more brilliant and flashy. Over black it has life, but is the sole attention grabber now since it's not visually contrasting itself now (black doesn't really register as a counter color, often enough). One way of really seeing an example that you can learn from? Go to the craft store and look at their matting material for pictures. They often have precut matting at standard frame sizes, and you can see how they try to balance out each color with a counter color. Double matting is crazy. I've learned this by selling prints – I can sell a print with one set of matting, and then I can't give away a print with another set. It all depends on the colors. And after years of working with this matting material, I'm still amazed and fascinated at how it can make or break a picture.

So, going back to the beginning, there are materials, reflective capabilities, and so on that every object has. And most objects are made of multiple colors. As an illustrative journal I'd like to point out that most successful illustrations use interacting colors in the same objects – oil painters especially use multiple colors in an object. How do they do this? Alas I can't provide a tutorial... I'm still learning it myself. What I can tell you is that this is something that is done to provide color mixing through the eyes of the viewer. If we mix it for them an image can appear boring. But by leaving the colors on the canvas (be it traditional or digital) and let the viewer mix it for us, often it will gain more depth and dimension. Metal will take on colors of the things around it, the more reflective, the more you can add. Alternately you could introduce a complimentary color here that likely doesn't even have representation in many other spots on the picture, and still make it look right. For some reason the brain organizes it for us in a “hey that makes sense” sorta way. I have seen some of the oddest colors used in a way that visually works. With leathers that are made of purples and greens and skins made of blues and reds, sometimes even teal. There's no end to the possibilities, if you can make it work.

But this is definitely something that takes practice and work. Want to learn it? Then stop being afraid of the colors. Puddnhead once said something to the likes of, “you have to make a lot of crap before you make anything half decent” - and this applies to all things art. Screw up your compositions, screw up your anatomy, screw up your colors..... that's just how you learn. You must do your picture, reflect on it, and ask yourself how to do better next time. Unfortunately it can suck the fun out of a lot of art..... but you will learn fast, and it will drive you so very far.

I would very much like to hear some color questions, so that I can do a second part to this next week. If you have anything, lets have em. I don't care if it's a basic question that you think is dumb, or a complicated question based on something that you've never been able to make work. If it's color based I'd like to cover it. It will not only help you, but it'll help me - I learn from doing these bloody journals too hehehe

Take care all. See you next week.