The Trouble with Grayscale

This video is all about painting in grayscale. Discussing some of the benefits of it, and the issues you will run into when trying to go from grayscale to color.

Everything was painted in Corel Painter.

[sinixdesign]

Important comment!! After some thinking, I've decided to just edit out the spaceship and color wheel portion of the video. It's simply not accurate information and it's not super relevant to the point of the video anyway. Sorry for the awkward splice! I'll be making a quick extra video about the specific topic I removed because I spent some actual time properly understanding it.

[marcobucci]

In my classes I get questions about this topic all the time. Now I've got a video to point to. Great work, and thanks!

[victormunhozzz]

we have two spheres squeezed together... nice

[Noggo]

if you have photoshop or any other program with a *Gradient Map* then grayscale typically ends up looking a lot better
the reason why grayscale images look so dull if you just overlay a colour is because shadows and lights will be a less saturated version of the color you picked.
with a gradient map you can select one colour to every value in the painting and even make shadows a lighter colour or lights darker without ruining the work you did on the grayscale image.
one thing i recomend while using gradient maps however is to only use them in big chunks of your drawing and not making it to detailed, you can always have 3 - 5 gradient maps in one drawing without it looking to clogged with colour but any more than that is waay to much and you're just better off changing the hue manually

Edit: Forgot to mention, working in grayscale is often a lot quicker than working with colour from the start, with that technique you focus on one thing at a time; layout, then proportions, then value, then colour. if you were to focus on all of these things in one go you are more likely to do mistakes and jump back and forth between different things trying to fix something that didnt have to be fixed if you had layed all your attention on that one bit at the start. A lot of professionals work in this way to get consistent work and save time

[MidoriMushrooms]

I've been painting with color since I started, but recently tried grayscale as a style experiment. I immediately started having the exact problems you mention where color balance became really wonky and unpredictable, and while I think it works fine for certain styles (as well as doing color tests), I think I'll just go back to reincorporating color painting into my more refined art process today just because it's much easier to control my color balance.

It does mean missing out on controlling my shapes though, which is a benefit of grayscale; you can mess with color values independent of the shapes or lighting, so maybe I'll start using a mix of both for different things.

[bobbobby]

LOOOL. When you combined the two examples of lighting I literally went "OOOHHHH" cause I never thought of that when painting!!

[oscarchavezart]

"Color will become a playground you will explore endlessly." That just snapped something inside, and I have this fever to dive deeper into color. No joke, you have good intentions with helping others, and that is the other part that inspired me. I am glad to have found your channel, thank you.

[itsukarine]

i always appreciate short videos filled to the brim with useful information. cant be arsed to sit and watch someone for 20+ minutes saying the same thing.

[BryanAndKareem]

i really didnt know this at all. i thought grayscale was just what u did for values and then color on different layer with no probs. it never actually worked out that way for me because of the overlap issue u addressed. very great video thanks!

[nathanhassebroek]

"Two spheres squeezing together... Nice" LOL had me going.

[SupremeDP]

I loved that you mentioned Ahmed. You two are my two favorite youtube artists.

[lunaenoctua]

I figured that would be the problem everyone talks about grisaille. That has super easy soucion. Both in oil, acrylic and watercolor, what is called "false grisaille" is made, which consists of making the dark ones in cold tones and the light tones in warm ones (or else you only do the dark ones in cold ones, then when passing color you tone with the warm ones), in digital it is even easier, you change the dark tones to cold (violet or blue) and the warm ones to yellow or orange. After that you go to color and you will see the HUGE difference in the color at the end of doing it with grisaille. i hope this help you.

[DERyuga]

That's how I usually do my traditional painting, starting with a grayscale underpainting to get proportions right and then going over it not with flat tones, but treating it as if I were just starting with color and not just doing a color overlay. As long as you work enough layers you can still get those brighter colors because youre basically just redoing the old painting lol. That being said, I like your idea of just starting out with colors for digital, Im getting the feeling that with what you said about how digital works more with lights on a screen you really cant just treat it like traditional. What I've found recently though as Im relying less on value and more on color is that the value shifts dont actually have to be that prominent as long as you have temperature shifts. I felt like the latter half of your video showed that pretty well and is an important lesson for people to consider, because when youre first learning with black and white you'll completely miss out on all of that.

[sameoldrocket]

I feel like I just watched a Ted talk. A Ted talk on the rocket science involved in brain surgery.

[Tomsense]

All great points! Some things to keep in mind...
- The colors will appear different depending on layer type...ie Color, overlay, brighten etc. Certain colors *coughyellowcough* will be either much brighter or darker than other colors with the same layer type. To achieve the desired effects when going from grey scale to color you almost have to use several layer types.
- Sinix mentions blending issues when darkening values in the grey scale layer to achieve the right values when adding a color layer. One work around for this is to make a whole other layer specifically to blend in these edges. Though it might seem redundant (why not just paint in color to begin with) I've found that as a beginner grey scale really does help. It did for me anyway...

[LilChuunosuke]

I really love this video. I always feel this subtle pressure because I never really dedicated time to coloring in grayscale. Like I'm doing something "wrong" and like people will tell me I don't understand lighting, shadows, and form if I don't do so without color. I think I am doing just fine. Of course, if an art teacher tells me they think I can improve on my form and color from using grayscale and critique my work so I can get better, I will do it. But I feel I can understand shadows and form very well while using color, especially when you consider points made in this video. I feel like working off of the colors immediately not only helps me understand the form better, but makes it more obvious and prominent to me when i make mistakes because the coloring will look "off". (With this in mind, I still do pencil sketches and try to show depth and shading by shading with a pencil, but it's nothing I specifically dedicate time to doing)

[nsaviolis]

Love the videos as usual. The anatomy videos really help, but it would be really cool if you did a video tying them all together on simple tips to make full bodies and poses. :)

[andrefortin]

a trick is to use gradient map filters first that way you won't get into the area of other values, i can start with color or with grayscale it all depends on how complex the scene is going to be. the more complex and the more important values and lighting is then the more likly it is to me to start out with gray scale.

[jacgentile]

I find it hard to find good tutorials, but this one is really helpful. Thank you!

[Horsaz]

I know this video is a little old but I've recently experimented with grayscale+gradient maps for coloring in Photoshop which has been a really amazing experience. Probably my best experience with coloring/grayscaling ever.