The Secret to Painting the Right Color

Your eyes can be easily tricked by color relativity, making you perceive different colors based on surrounding hues. For example, a color might look green in one context but is actually a desaturated yellow. Jeremy Vickery shows you how this happens by explaining how colors shift in appearance depending on their environment. So, when you’re painting, use a limited palette and adjust colors slightly to achieve the desired effect. This technique helps create more believable and cohesive artwork by understanding and manipulating color temperature and relativity.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Pick That Color!
00:58 - Example 1
01:50 - Example 2
02:28 - Example 3
03:06 - Example 4
04:17 - Painting Study
07:17 - Outro

Learn more about Digital Painting:

#digitalpainting #digitalartist #color

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ABOUT PROKO:

Instructional How to Draw videos for artists. My drawing lessons are approachable enough for beginners and detailed enough for advanced artists. My philosophy is to teach timeless concepts in an entertaining way. I believe that when you are having fun, you learn better. I take pride in producing high-quality videos that you will enjoy watching and re-watching.

CREDITS:

Production Assistance - Sean Ramsey
Editing - Jeremy Vickery, Sean Ramsey
Publishing - Alex Otis, John Birchall

Music Used with Permission

"Ain't No Friend of Mine" by Bryan Teoh

[manneaux]

My takeaway: Only orange and yellow exist all other colors are fake.

[snofixart]

"They were all yellow" ColdPlay

[Revanaught]

I remember the moment that I understood color relativity and it broke my brain. I was recreating the Charizard sprite pixel by pixel and realized that it's mostly pink. Design as a whole looks orange, but it's majority pink pixels.

[MotoMarios]

Awesome advice. What I find frightening is the obvious knowledge the old classic painters had over this thing, without any color circle, without any saturation analysis without any technology. They just knew what to do out of sheer talent and experience.

[skyesfallenxx]

I guess one other tip from an artist currently in art school, is that the more you desaturate a colour, the more it will look like its complementary colour.

For example, if you desaturate red to almost gray and shift it towards orange slightly, and then paint that new colour onto pure red, it will look like green despite being just desaturated/gray orange.

If you desaturate orange by a lot and shift it slightly closer to red, then paint that new gray colour onto orange, it will look like a dull or silvery blue.

This is especially useful when colouring skin. We've all had that moment where a shadow looks blue, but then you try to paint it and ohh now they look like they have a bruise! Try desaturation your skin colour and shifting it closer to magenta, then you will get that blue-ish shadow without making it look like the character has paint on their skin.

I hope this helps at least one person out there :)

[inexistence]

I feel like I've found a Holy Grail. This is precisely the issue I struggled on with color, and now, I feel enlightened. I will put this into practice immediately. Thank you.

[WatName]

I also learned majority of my color relativity from Marco Bucci, and in one of his videos he said we don’t necessarily have to pick the exact color but as long as we move into that direction we’re gonna be ok. And that snapped something in my brain that when I tested it, it did look more like the color I was trying to go for! You’ve also proved it at 1:28 where the grass looked green but is actually orange, and if one noticed, it is going towards the direction of green somewhat desaturated etc.

Very interesting, thank you for sharing free lessons like these Proko 💕

[rubensmaximus]

I work for more than 10 years as an artist and this blew my mind! Thank you so much!

[bondvabond]

I've dabbled very lightly in digital art for a few years now and have never been able to fully grasp colour relativity, despite watching and attempting to apply several tutorials. Jeremy's explanation of this makes SO. MUCH. SENSE.
Quick and easy with an actual practical demonstration of how it works and how to choose the colours yourself. Using the eyedropper + colour wheel to illustrate what he meant was a great choice.

I've never paid for an art course before, but this is making me SERIOUSLY consider giving his course a shot, wow

[divinenonbinary]

The confusion comes from using digital painting. Cuz with real paint mixing you would essentially desaturate color by mixing in the color that u perceive with your eyes and at no point need you to discover that it’s “actually” grey bc u r mixing those up relationally already one from another

[saram]

The repainting segment has SAVED me. I’ve come across some tutorials on this general idea before but they never really explained the desaturation+relativity concept properly. Seeing it in practice with the slight shifts the either side of the yellow was immensely helpful!

[ochadeshita]

This is quite possible the most valuable art video i've ever encountered on youtube.

[syaning_]

Omg Jeremy and Proko?? Yes pleaseee😍 Thank you for this lesson💕

[ez_is_bloo]

I'm a colorblind artist (red and green in particular) so I just put the colors verbatim, adjust the opacity and hope for the best XD

[brandonstreete]

yes proko thanks for bringing Jeremy dude is really a great teacher

[asassin]

Wow, this will actually make my art bloom. I have long time like struggled to andorstand why when I colour pick the colour itself is fully opposite from what I tried, now I can actually do proper landscape study and just make it so much more better

[PhoapishSir]

OH my gosh i LOVE proko and i LOVE COLOR RELATIVITY!!! I clicked as soon as i saw this video pop up on my feed!!! I love color so much and I love messing with them, especially with grays in more saturated environments. I love practicing eye picking colors to make them look like they fit into a deeply colored environment. And I love (attempting) to teach people this concept. Color is so Great work from the proko team as always!

[cntom]

I knew about relativity and its tricks against the eyes. but I never grasped how to choose the colors and this video blew my mind!

[paulkap]

Picking the right color or just determining which color I would use, if I had to paint it, is soooo difficult for me! Thanks for this lesson!

[JoeyStrombolli]

Extremely amazing video and wonderful teacher, I've been an artist all my life and have never realized how important color relativity is! Not enough people talk about it! This video made it all click for me, and will forever change the way I make art. Thank you Proko for allowing people like me to access this kind of teaching free of charge, absolute life saver