General Color Theory Tips

To Improve Illustration composition

Main artwork and article by: Azahraa Suliman, 806.

1- Color combinations

Some color combinations will make your artwork stand out and make the main subject pop. The easiest way to do this is to use a combination of 2 complementary colors. For example:

Blue and Red

art by: wlop

We can see that the characters in the illustrations pop out because of the high contrast between the colors red and blue. Not only is it because they are complementary colors, but also because the red is much more saturated and brighter than the blue, which makes our eyes more drawn to it than the blue in the background.

2 - Three complementary colors

By using a general three color palette, we can draw attention to some objects more than others. In the illustration, your eyes are drawn to the sky due to the purple and blue being the brightest colors, and that they are much cooler than the red and green.

3- Values

Color is not the most important thing when it comes to illustrations, values are much more important because you can have a monochromatic drawing, yet because of the different values and depth of the color your eyes are drawn to one thing rather than the other.

We can see that even when the colors in the image are very dull and muted, the character pops out from the background due to them being much darker, or lighter than the background itself.