A Guide to the Basics of Art
- Pinned by Dark22978 on May 3, '20 1:39pm
Thread Topic: A Guide to the Basics of Art
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I will break everything up into categories and subcategories, and each category will be a different post. I'm not a professional artists and I'm not claiming to be, I just want to make something that will help those who might not know where to start. For the first category, let's talk about:
☆☆☆COLOR THEORY☆☆☆
How should you color a character? Or perhaps a background? What type of colors can you use to give the character life, or what colors should you focus on in their design that will bring them to life based on their personality and backstory?
1. The Color Wheel
Color is percieved by the way light reflects off of a surface. There's a tool called the color wheel that shows the relationship between colors.
This is a color wheel:
2. The Meaning Behind Colors
Colors give off different meanings. You could draw the exact same lineart for an illustration but fill them both with different colors and give off entirely different moods.
▪Red: Angry, danger, passion, violence, blood, fire, energy, war, strength, power, desire, and love
▪Orange: Enthusiasm, creativity, determination, encouragement, fall, harvest
▪Yellow: Bright, optimistic, sunny, happiness, positivity, clarity, energy, optimism
▪Green: Money, greed, jealousy growth, freshness, safety, fertility, environment
▪Blue: Sad, melancholy, calm, serious, truth, depth, stability
▪Purple: Royalty, mystery, magic, independence, luxury, nobility, creativity
▪Black: Dark, evil, grief, strength, seriousness, power, authority, elegance, prestige
▪White: Light, goodness, innocence, purity, virginity, cleanliness, perfection
The meaning behind colors can change depending on the vibrancy and saturation. Pale yellow can mean sickly or untrustworthy, for example.
3. Breaking Down Color
■Primary colors are red, yellow, and blue
Primaries are colors that can't be made by mixing other colors. They are the base colors and you can use just those three to get every color on the color wheel and more. (There's also cyan, magenta, and yellow that are sometimes called the "true primary colors", but those are more sciency colors usually used by printers and stuff, not by artists)
■Secondary colors are the colors orange, green, and purple. These are the colors you get when you mix the three primary colors.
Red + yellow = orange
Yellow + blue = green
Blue + red = purple
■Tertiary colors are the colors yellow orange, red orange, red purple, blue purple, blue green, and yellow green. These are the colors you get when you mix a primary color and a secondary color (as you can probabaly tell by the names). The thing about the names is that the name of the primary color comes first (It's yellow orange, not orange yellow)
4. Complimentary Colors
Complimentary colors are the colors red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple, yellow orange and blue purple, etc. These colors are the colors that are on the opposite side of each other on the color wheel:
You don't have to use straight up complementary colors when you color an illustration or a character. Let me provide some examples using the compliments orange and blue (probably my personal favorite combination, my least favorite being red and green)
Here is the regular color palette of one of my characters (unnamed):
Here is a version of her colored with orange and blue:
See the difference? It wasn't just straight orange or straight blue, it was more subtle. Complimentaries are often used in movies/posters/scenes for dramatic lighting effects to make them pop:
Another way to make art from compliments is just using them straight on (I know I JUST said not to do that, but hear me out..) This really makes your artwork standout if you're really going for that pop effect like in movies. Here's another example, it's one of my older characters:
The character doesn't express any emotion in this particluar artwork, but just from the colors you can conclude that they pop off from the bright world around them as something sad and full of depth.
5. Analogous Colors
Analogous colors are simply a set of colors right next to each other on the color wheel. The two main groups are cool colors and warm colors. A group of analogous colors usually consists of only three or four colors.
A group of analogous colors can also be purple, red purple, red, red orange, and orange. It doesn't have to be limited to just warm vs cool.
Analogous colors are especially used when drawing backgrounds and abstract art. Unfortunately I don't have any examples of an analogous color artwork because I rarely draw backgrounds or abstract art, but that's something I plan to improve on.
6. Split Compliments
Split compliments is a 3 color group of a color and the two colors next to that color's compliment. For example: Blue, red orange, and yellow orange. Or red violet, yellow, and green.
Here's an example of a split complimentary artwork by Hikasawr on deviantart:
As you can see, they used the split compliments blue green, orange, and red. Using split compliments is a way to make your artwork cohesive and memorable.
7. Other
Instead of making like 3 more subcategories, I'll just keep these last few points all together because it's not that much.
A monochromatic color palette is when you choose one single color and use tints and shades of that color to create an artwork.
Shade: When you add black to a color and its becomes darker, you get darker shades of that color
Tint: It's the variety of a color. You can get variety by mixing certain amounts of white to the color, or black to the color, making it lighter/paler or darker.
Sometimes the shade of a color can be made by mixing a little bit of it's compliment; if you add too much of the compliment though the colors will cancel each other out and you'll be left with brown.
Here are value scales of monochromatic colors palettes:
A value scale is a scale of from the lightest to the darkest value of a color.
When you use a monochromatic color palette you set the tone of the artwork to a specific color.
Here's an example of a monochromatic color palette artwork by annmariebone on devianart:
The color purple really shows the mood of that color, as explained in the very first subcategory. Depending on what color you choose you can get an entirely different mood.
Here's another example, by the youtuber kasey golden:
The two different artworks give off entirely different moods because they're entirely different colors. -
Omg!! XD The post above was actually exceeding the word limit so here's the last bit:
Depending on what color combination you want and what colors you choose, you can really make a character that stands out, or a peice of art that can be recognized. Don't hold back, and don't be afraid to break the rules every now and then- but remember, you have to know the rules before you can break them!
☆☆☆☆That's all, folks! Until next time I guess because explaining the basics or art into one post is impossible. Next I plan to cover perspective -
I didn't really need to read all of this bc I knew everything, but when I did read it, I was impressed that you got everything, especially the tints and shades, (BLACK AND WHITE are not colors), and the whole making of the color brown, because I feel like people don't know how to make brown and they just jumble a lot of random colors in.
And I love the quote you used on the second post. I was just about to say that but you beat me to it! This deserves to be pinned!! -
Thanks rvelez!! I just hope it helps artists on the site, I tried to cover everything I could :)
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wooo, giving rules about rudimentary technical art stuff everyone learns in elementary!
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she made this for me bc I didn't learn any of this from elementary thru high school 😔
this is really nice, thank you for your time and effort. I will try to get better with my upcoming art projects! -
@1714
I actually didn't learn a lot of this until 10th grade, sorry if it's unhelpful for you ;(
@dark
No prob! I actually won't be making a next post right now because I have to study for a math test, but I will when I can -
I'm going to be continuing this soon <3
Hopefully perspective won't be as long as colors 😥 -
This is such a great resource, thank you Katqueen 💞
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Thank you! I'm not the best at drawing.
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Okay, moving into the next category, let's finally talk about
☆☆☆PERSPECTIVE☆☆☆
How do I draw backgrounds or buildings using the correct perspective? How can I stop making my drawings look so flat? What methods are there to improving my ability on making things look more 3D?
1. The Vanishing Point
The vanishing point is also called the point of convergence. It is a point on a drawing, usually somewhere on the horizon line. From this point is where things diminish/get smaller.
Looks simple, right? It is, this little dot makes life so much easier. With the vanishing point you can draw some sketch lines and follow them for all the horizontal lines to make the illusion of something appearing closer. Any vertical lines you draw, though, don't go towards the vanishing point. They remain vertical.
Here are some examples where I don't just use squares and I use this technique for a whole background:
What you're looking at right now is called one point perspective or frontal perspective. As the name suggests, this is the type of perspective that uses only one vanishing point. More than one point can be used in an art peice (anything over three points is called multi-point perspective), though I recommend using just two points maximum. Two point perspective or angular perspective is a good type of perspective for backgrounds and realism. Here's a few examples using cubes:
Using the vanishing point system is a good way to make backgrounds for cities, buildings, or even just inside a room or school or office (anything really!). It doesn't have to be all square and straight either, you can use this method to make forests and greenery, with a lake that can fade into the distance in the horizon line. It works every time if you know what you're doing, and you can draw beautiful realistic looking scenes.
2. Foreshortening
This is something that I don't have much practice with myself, but it's basically where certain parts of a drawing (a character's arm, leg, or maybe just an object in the picture) gives the illusion of being closer to the viewer by being drawn larger. This foreshortening effect can also be done by shrinking something, and putting whatever's supposed to be viewed as farther away closer to the vanishing point. An extreme example is The Lamentation of Christ painted by the renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna:
Here are more examples:
Drawn by NikiPaprika on deviantart
Drawn by robertmarzullo on deviantart
The things all these examples have in common is the simple rule: Closer, bigger. Farther away, smaller. If you aspire to be a comic artist, then you could use foreshortening to spice up your panels and add visual interest. This can also make your character or your art in general look more dynamic and realistic.
If you want to try and draw a foreshortened character but don't know where to start, I suggest using the box method. Draw a box and connect it to a vanishing point or two. Draw said character in the box, and try to follow the dimensions the box has since the box is following a line of perspective.
Or if that doesn't work, just look up "spider man poses" because I guarantee that'll get you a plethora of foreshortened pose references at the ready.
3. The Grounds
Foreground is the part of a piece of art that is located near the front. It doesn't necessarily have to be the most noticable part of a drawing. A simple tree branch in the foreground of a drawing of a forest can really make the art feel realistic. The object in the foreground should be very large though, as this is the object that is right in front of the viewer. Imagine it as if you were seeing the drawing in real life situations; you can't see the full body of a person who is close to you, just the head and torso at most (unless you glance down, but drawings can't glance down, they're like still images that you've captured via a pencil or paint brush or digital brush)
Midground is usually the most recognized part of a drawing. These are things that are in the middle of your line of perspective rather than in the front or far away in the back. Unless you're doing a drawing where two characters in the foreground are talking or something, and everything in the mid and background aren't supposed to be noticable.
Background is the part of the drawing that is at drawn to look farther away. Drew a house? The background could be a forest or a gate. Drew landscape? The background could be mountains in the distance. The background, contrary to what you might expect, should be colored lighter than the other grounds (not in all cases though). More on that in the paragraph below about aerial perspective.
Backgrounds and foregrounds can also be blurred a bit to put more focus on the scene or object in the midground. (Unless of course the focus is something in the foreground or background. Just blur whicever two grounds the focus of the viewer is not supposed to be at)
4. Extra
▪Aerial perspective is a technique where you represent distant and very far away objects (mountains or hills are a good example) as fainter and more blue (to blend in with the sky). Here's a painting by Bob Ross that uses this technique:
▪Perspective was first founded/used by Fillipo Brunelleschi and Masaccio during the early 1400s.
Brunelleschi used a baptistery in Florence as a guide
But as always, you don't have to stick to these "rules". Use whatever method you want to make art. Art doesn't have to have a method or a technique, as long as you're making something and you're happy with the result. It's better to know the rules first before you break them though!! <3 -
Thank you so much for posting this! I needed to revisit the basics! ❤❤
This is very helpful! -
Quick question: What other art topics do y'all think I should cover here?
We've had color theory and we've had perspective so far. For the next ones I'm thinking shading, anatomy, and realism vs cartoonism. I could look through my old art folder for more ideas, but does anyone here need specific help or want to request a specific category? -
I'd like to request shading and/or lighting next. 🙏
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[l]hi[/l]
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