Color Theory Practice: Playing Around with Color Relativity
When I look at my own art, one of the main critiques that I have with my process is my often literal usage of color. Meaning, that usually if something is blue, I just color it blue, green things are always green, things that appear red are always colored red, etc. But light and color are not always so consistent and look very different depending on what other colors surround them. For an example, think back to the viral debate in 2015 around “the dress” that some people perceived as white and gold while others argued that it was blue and black.
For my current picture book project, I want to use color and lighting to help tell the story. As the narrative goes through its emotional ups and downs, I want the colors to both enhance and influence this in the illustrations. Looking at my previous project Oscar Comes Home in comparison, I used a the same colors throughout the whole book: a palette consisting of bright yellows, greens, and light blues and some muted reds, tans, and navy blue. The only way that I altered and shifted the colors throughout the books was to indicate the passage of time by changing the lighting depending on time of day by applying gradient maps to the images based on whether it was morning, sunset, evening, or night. While this produced an end product that fit the story well with its vibrancy and bright colors, I do not think that process will work as well for my ongoing picture book.
In anticipation of this, I wanted to play around with color theory more, and in particular color relativity. I am certainly no expert at this concept and do not intend for this blog to be a tutorial for how use it. This is, simply, an exploration of my experiments with it and a self-evaluation of my results. I hope that this can be either interesting or informational for others, but this is no lesson. If one is looking for a more tutorial-like explanation of this concept, I would recommend this YouTube video: Power in the Grays from the channel Lighting Mentor, as it is the video that helped my mind finally “click” with this concept. Genuinely, this video is incredible and worth watching.
If you do not know what color relativity is, and color theory more broadly, let me endeavor to explain it as well as I am able. Essentially, our eyes do a lot of adjusting as we look at the world. Our brains want to see a full spectrum of colors like you see under white light/sunlight and will change our perception of what we look at to achieve that. The first time that I actively noticed and engaged with this in my life was with ski goggles (though sunglasses, blue light glasses, or any other tinted eyewear have a similar effect). I remember the first time my dad buckled me into little kid skis, strapped a helmet to my head, and snapped on a pair goggles, so tiny that I was still young enough for free lift tickets (I wonder if they still do those). I whined when my goggles came on because they turned the world orange. How could I have a beautiful snowy day if everything was orange?! My dad told me to just wait because, in no time, I wouldn’t notice it anymore and things would look normal. To my surprise, he was right. Soon enough, the world appeared the almost same as it would have if I was just seeing it under white light, despite the fact that what I was actually seeing could only be the orange light that passed through the lens of my goggles. And then, when I took my googles off, the world was so eye-searingly blue and bright that I could hardly look at it! Transfixed, I remember taking my goggles on and off, waiting for my eyes to adjust and then immediately switching back. I did not understand it at the time, but what I was witnessing was color theory (along with some optics, but I am artist, not a physicist).
Color relativity, more specifically, refers to the concept that colors look different relative to what other colors are around them. If you take a saturated color, say a bright yellow, and wanted to make a color on it that looked more purple when painted on top, then you move around the color wheel towards purple (so in the direction of orange and red) and make the color less saturated (more gray). Therefore, a gray that’s tinted orange will appear purple when painted on a saturated yellow. Conversely, if you took that same yellow and wanted to make a color that looks green, then you would move in the opposite direction towards green on the color wheel and desaturate the tone.
Note, that since green is much closer to yellow than purple is, to create a gray that appears green using color relativity, you do not have to move as far on the color wheel as you do to create the illusion of purple. (Additionally, I intentionally chose similar colors to those used in the video linked above, so that if you wish to see this palette in action, you can!)
Here is what the same colors look like without the yellow background. Additionally, take note that due to other color theory shenanigans when you add black into yellow, it looks green. But, if you look at where it is on the color wheel, it is not actually green. This is a—unrelated but still useful—tip for painting and mixing colors.
In essence, when you observe a desaturated color (gray) on a saturated color, you will perceive that gray tone as a color further along the color wheel from the predominant saturated hue. Just like how my young eyes adjusted from seeing everything as orange when looking through goggles, our brains want to see a full spectrum (full rainbow) of colors, and we can use to this to trick ourselves into seeing colors that are not actually there. It is almost like we stretch out the small sliver of the color wheel that we can see to squish all the other colors inside. So, with the goggles on, all I could see were different shades of orange, but my brain perceived almost a full spectrum of colors just within the small variations in the saturation of those I could see. And then when I took the goggles off, everything looked overwhelmingly blue because my mind was still overcorrecting, trying to see the other colors (especially orange’s compliment, blue) more.
If you are color blind, like my partner, your milage with color relativity may vary. Every time I have tried to show him an example of this wizardy, things just ended up looking gray (which, technically, the colors used are gray, but they aren’t supposed to look like it).
My Color Theory Studies
Study No. 1, Blue: Marine Curiousity
In terms of applying color relativity, this is the most successful of my studies. I think that this is largely because, with each successive study, I grew more ambitious with my color palette. Therefore, each piece progressively became less a study in specifically color relativity and more an illustration that utilized color theory in parts.
For this illustration, my initial impetus was thinking about what wave lengths of light penetrate through the ocean. Opposite to my ski goggles’ orange lens, I wanted to filter out warm colors from this piece, as if it was being lit by blue light. As for the subject matter, I wanted to draw brightly colored tropical fish, challenging myself to achieve their many colors while under the constraint of using just a narrow sliver of the color wheel. They are not quite as vibrant as I would like in a best case scenario, but for a first try in intentionally pushing color relativity, I am very proud of the result. I could have changed this lack of vibrancy after the fact, using correction layers to push the saturation and brightness to exactly where I wanted them, but as a self-imposed constraint, I did not use correction layers for any of these studies. Instead, I wanted to train my ability to color-pick and create this affect without the aid of the software. Almost like I was mixing paint on a physical palette as opposed to drawing digitally.
As for the dragon (well, wyvern, technically), I had the idea of a series of curious dragons interacting with different animals as a unifying theme (perhaps a tiny preview into what I am planning with my current project). It took several iterations, but I am mostly pleased with where this dragon ended up. I really like the pose and its perspective: it imparts a sense of motion, like the dragon really is swimming towards the viewer. Additionally, I am very proud of the wings, especially the lighting that makes parts of them appear partially translucent. The joints where the wings meet the back, however, are awkward, and I could have done more to make the tail look farther away from the viewer to give the piece a greater sense of depth.
A closer look at some of the colors:
Study No. 2, Red: Autumn Meeting
Drawing timelapses of the full process and an edited version of the footage on Instagram.
While the first study was inspired by the way light interacts with water, for this illustration, the palette is based on the lighting in a New England November. My window overlooks a swamp (it’s more picturesque than this description sounds, trust me), and I am fascinated by the different ways the frequently gray weather interacts with it. It is incredible how many different variations in color I can see out the window over the course of one seemingly dreary day. Yes, I do greatly prefer the sun, and yes it is all gray, but it’s all different shades of gray and that’s what matters!
In particular, I love the evening light that can make the world look like its floating in an almost chocolaty warmth. Where the trees look like a deep red and the sky takes on a slightly purplish hue (which, in terms of color relativity, this tonal purple is trending towards blue from red) which reflects off of the water, and this is what I used as a starting point.
As for what I like about this piece, first of all, I love the cat. Additionally, I like the trees in the fore- and midground and their storybook quality, which is something that I was actively trying to achieve. Finally, the small dragon (for which I used a squirrel as reference) is, in my opinion, a fairly successful application of color relativity. If you look below at the labeled image where I have isolated several individual colors, you can clearly see that while the dragon appears quite green in the greater context of the drawing, when you isolate the colors used, they very clearly are not. Instead, what looks green is actually a very dark orange-gray.
This study, however, is too dim. I left out the “saturated” part of color relativity, and the entire piece is essentially nothing but different shades of dark gray. While this does create an interesting affect, and I am proud of the delicate color picking this required, I think that it looks too muddied. Like an oil painting that was overworked while the colors were still wet (just as a random example, not personal experience, of course). If you are looking at the drawing on a screen with lowered brightness, I am not even sure how much of the illustration you can make out. I use two screens while I work: my laptop which I keep at a middling brightness and a much larger monitor that I keep quite bright and use for my drawing application. When I first rendered this drawing and opened it up on my dimmer laptop screen, I remember the palpable disappointment I felt. Hours of hard work, and it felt like all of the detail had been sucked out of the image in a way that I have never experienced before in any of the other many drawings I have looked at across my two screens. Obviously, images look different when you look at them on different screens with different settings, but never before had this difference made one of my drawings look dead. I try to draw with enough clarity that, no matter what screen its viewed on, the subject looks how I had intended. Again, if I were altering these studies after the fact with correction layers, I would have made a lot a adjustments. And in my opinion, to be considered a successful study, it should not require heavy alteration afterwards.
A closer look at some of the colors:
Study No. 3, Yellow: Beneath the Canopy
Drawing timelapses of the full process and an edited version of the footage on Instagram.
Alongside color theory, I really wanted to play around with perspective and light in this drawing. Every part of the drawing: the trees, the figures, and the light, all point towards the same spot in the space (called a vanishing point). The vanishing point in this drawing is located about a quarter of the way down from the top, centered left to right. I have always really enjoyed perspective drawing; my mother’s love of architecture and design is enduring. I, however, often use it for drawing structures, not landscapes, and applying it to this context worked even better for me than I had hoped.
When shading, often you think about what the light hits and what is cast in shadow, but because this drawing is being lit so intensely from behind by the sun, transparency also plays a large role in lighting. As I was shading this drawing, I thought about not just what the light would shine on but also what the light could shine through. Light will interact with the solid trunk of a tree differently than it will with leaves, feathers, or skin.
My favorite part of this illustration is actually a combination of the way the lighting and the perspective interact. If you look at the robin’s lower wing, you can see where the tip of it is darker, cast into shadow by the dragon’s wing above it, and the way that the rays of light (coming from the vanishing point) break around it.
Color relativity, on the other hand, is not as apparent in this study. Unlike the previous two where achieving color relativity was my main goal, I wanted to see if I could more subtly apply the same principles. There are two places in which color relativity are the most pronounced: 1) the sky which is a very light reddish-grey and 2) the dragon which is a tonal red and magenta, but looks like a soft lavender color. If you look at the individual colors below, though, you will see that I used only about one quarter of the color wheel, keeping the palette quite limited. Also, the previous two pieces were quite dark, color-wise, and I really wanted to mix things up and draw something light and bright instead.
Overall, I am very pleased with this study and think that it was largely successful.
A closer look at some of the colors:
Study No. 4, Green: Verdant River
Drawing timelapses of the full process and an edited version of the footage on Instagram.
As the last piece in this series, it was the most ambitious. Even though I used green as the base for the palette, I wanted to use its contrast, red, as well. Additionally, this was by far the most detailed of the dragons, and I spent a long time rendering it. As for whether I consider this illustration successful, well, sort of.
There are parts of it that I love: the deer, the tree in the foreground, the vegetation in the background, and the composition. And there are parts of it I do not like: the river, the trees in the midground, and the rays of light. As for the dragon, I really like it on its own. In the greater context of the rest of the piece, however, I feel like it does not fit. It looks like it belongs in a different illustration. This is due in part to the way that I rendered the mane growing around its head, which is unlike anything else in the drawing, and because I should have foreshortened the tail. The perspective of the dragon does not match that of the river it’s standing in, and every time I look at this illustration, that is all that I can see. Compare this to the dragon back in the first study: it is clear that the rest of the body and especially the tail are farther away from the viewer.
Like the previous study, No. 3 Beneath the Canopy, my intention with this piece was to employ what I had learned about color relativity into a piece that was broader in scope. With exception of the red mane, every other color in the drawing is a shade of green (or in a few instances, yellow green). This is most noticeable in the deer, the rocks, and the dragon’s antlers, none of which look green despite being different tonal shades of it. The teal color of the mane, however, is too close to blue, and that takes away from the effect of the largely monochromatic green palette and the contrasting red.
A closer look at some of the colors:
Thank you for reading! If you are interested, please subscribe to my blog down below, follow me on Instagram @acbodnarart, or check out my illustrations in the children’s picture book Oscar Comes Home!
