Hi all.

I'm looking for a little help using colours. While I've read up on colour theory and know what I should be doing technically, I really struggle to make that knowledge work in practice and any attempts at colour result in muddy tones and bland colour choices.

Therefore I was wondering if anybody knew any colour exercises I could try to help get my head around the basic use of colours and how they interact with each other in a painting?

Zinc:

Hi all.

I'm looking for a little help using colours. While I've read up on colour theory and know what I should be doing technically, I really struggle to make that knowledge work in practice and any attempts at colour result in muddy tones and bland colour choices.

Therefore I was wondering if anybody knew any colour exercises I could try to help get my head around the basic use of colours and how they interact with each other in a painting?

Hmm, here's something that I do.

Periodically I'll view an image I'm working on in greyscale.

It helps me get to grips with the value range of the image and also helps me select better colours for the composition.

Trevor Claxton in issue 43 revealed that he makes his images in black and white before adding colour. While he's a pro and my images are no comparison, it's interesting that his method is another variation of seeing the values without the colours.   

Thanks Conscious Bob.

Do you convert the image to greyscale via the Mode menu or do it some other way?

Ctrl + Shift + U  is a good way to desaturate a single layer or a flattened image (easy to undo too)

There was quite a good simple video tut on one of the cover discs (charles bernard color trek on december 2008 I think).I hope that's of some help?

(also henning ludvigsen did a colour feature in the iron man issue june 2008)

This may answer your question.

Marta's advice  on avoiding muddy skin tones-  http://community.imaginefx.com/forums/permalink/180527/183424/ShowThread.aspx#183424