Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Green Kool-Aid.


Or whatever.

6 comments:

Niff said...

well done! diggin the eerie BG and red eyes. makes me wonder what else might be in that x-files mug? Hey what are you using for color? watercolor or markers?

chrisallison said...

Thanks, Sniff!

I work on cold press illustration board on a thicker stock (to make sure it doesn't bend when I'm putting down washes). I inked my drawing with Doc Marten's ink because it's one of the few inks that are really waterproof (lots of others say they are but aren't). Then I used watercolors to lay down my big washes and did a bit of detail work. Then I want back in with colored pencil and punched up some details (orange highlights on skin. Then I used some gouache for final details (because it's opaque) like the white highlight on his glasses. And finally, I went back with ink to recover some of the linework I lost when I watercolored over it.

Sorry to sound like a commercial, but I gave you brand names where I thought it was important. Hope this helps. : )

Gulzar said...

Nice tonal use of colours...wicked!

Gulzar said...

Hey Chris,
Thanks for droppin by, will surly make a wip of my clouds and send em to you soon :)

Anonymous said...

Sweet. Makes me wish I could actually paint. I've always wanted to learn that skill, but no art teacher I've ever had has taught me properly. Did you learn how to do so on your own?

chrisallison said...

Robert: I was taught by Joe Forkan, one of the most AWESOME art teachers in the world. I took a plein aire painting class in which I took paints and went out and painted simple, loose landscapes. If you get the relative colors of the foreground grass, sky, mountains in the background, you get a decent painting. But more importantly the class taught me to not just look, but SEE. You'd be amazed how psychedelic the world really is... wet sand in the morning an be purple (reflecting the sky I guess).

Anyhoo, if you want to study colors by yourself, I'd suggest:
1) doing some plein aire painting with some cheap paints (acrylics work too).
2) studying good pieces that you like. Take them into Photoshop, color swatch them and see how the colors relate to each other. With basic knowledge of color theory, analyze their schemes. Are the colors complimentary? Are they using warms vs. cools? What value range does the piece have (how much contrast... you don't need a full black to white range)?
3) Lastly, if you are serious, get a Munsell Color Book. I know it sounds tedious, but go through and map out the stickers in the book. Or at least look up and study this theory on the internet. It's very interesting how at their highest saturations, blue is a very low value, yellow is a very high value, and red is a medium value. It clearly lays out the RELATIONSHIPS of colors, because that's ultimately what's important when dealing with colors. RELATIONSHIPS. Colors are relative to the ones you put them next to.

Hope this kinda helped. I'm hoping my teacher Joe will put out a color theory book because I haven't found a great one, but you can start teaching yourself by DOING IT. If I did (not particularly well), you can learn to paint, Robert!