Trying to get this color thing down

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ashe83:
pls don’t double post – especially if your post before it only preceeds your new one by a matter of minutes. Use the “Edit” button if you decide to make any changes to your post next time, thx.

Supergirl should have her right leg extended instead. Pic becomes more dynamic (body twist) and she’d be really throwing that punch. Right now she looks more like she’s flying into the scene.

Bats’ lower body is underdeveloped when compared to his upper body… makes his legs look flat in comparison to his chest/arms.

The light/ dark areas don’t unify the pic, but instead make it a bit hard to read. I squint at the pic and I see spots of flesh tone standing out against everything else. Perhaps work some of the blues and greys into a lighter value to help the pic read better visually?

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That’s the exact same pic I posted on Deviantart. For some reason, What’s big enough on that site is too small on this on. Sorry for the double post btw. Was at work when posting this and had my boss come in. Had to quickly put up a link before he noticed, so I wasn’t thinking about the edit.

Anyways, I’ll keep working on those issues and get em corrected.

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http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/4569/eggci8.jpg

The thing I see that you are missing is the cast shadow. No cast shadows equals no form, and creates flat space.

Think of your figures as 3d models being lit. Where would the shadows go. That is probably the first thing to look for before starting a pic. Mass the shadows and lights only, then proceed to render the colors.

I’m going to say it myself, I don’t know color theory at all. I know what certain color compliments each color. Color is a very difficult subject. Takes years and years of training nonstop. I’d have to say you can safely use any color you want for shadows and lights as long as they stay in the same value(brightness and darkness) range. If your vaues are there then it’s all gravy. Learning to control it is the hard part.

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Here’s one of the biggest problems I see… you’re not using a shaded BG to setup you shapes. Listen to MC, once he showed me shaded bgs everything started making sense to me. A shaded bg is something so important that I can’t even express, man. It’s practically the foundation for solid colors.

Biggest concern right now is getting you right for lighting and giving shape.

Here, I just painted over your drawing and such, but make sure you pay attention to your lighting(mainly comes from the setup of the bg), too many highlights/shadows can disconnect parts of a figure. I read the one deviation of Batman/Supergirl where you used the brush from my tut which is fine, but it looked like your opacity’s waaay too low. Since my brush was wet edge, you really should go any lower than 50%(30-40% hard round).

Now, how can you pick good shapes, colors, and proper highlights and such? Easy: Squint. Squinting helps blur your vision and breaks down your basic shapes, this’s a great way to help you imagine the shapes you want before coloing, especially with your colored bg.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v637/kandoken/SGSCcolorsfinal2.jpg

This is what I would imagine the lighting for my painting, now that I’m squinting, I see a fleshtone I can add to my frontal figure, and slightly darker values to my back figure.

Contrast you should also pay more attention to. If you refer to guys like Leyendecker and Rockwell, just eyedrop a few of their pieces, you’ll see a dark, and an immediate transition to light. I recommend actually doing a realistic painting, I learned how important it was to abuse contrast after I did them power rangers, hahaha it looked like smoooth crap. Anyways, here I just used Brightness/Contrast in Photoshop to show the differences in light and dark.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v637/kandoken/SGSCcolorsfinal3.jpg

See how effective contrast can be? From now on think this… Blending is the devil, and you’re good to go LOL. Keep it up, man. :tup: Phew, my bad for the long ass crit. Reff realism too, you’ll be fine.

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Thanks everyone. I’m going to really focus on everthing the next time I paint. Gotta get some drawing knocked out over the next couple of days and then I’ll get back to coloring.

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http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a4/ashe83/girl.jpg

I honestly don’t know why I can’t ever get the image big enough. But oh well:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38570922/