10 Tips For Better Colors In Your Paintings

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Hi, I am the son of two artists and began painting in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia before I could walk. I was a rare combination of artist and athlete so I moved to Los Angeles in 2008 to play football for USC. I left the team my sophomore year to focus on painting and filmmaking, applying the same focus and discipline from my football career to my art. I primarily work in oils, and spend most free days painting "en plein air" in my new home of Sarasota Florida.
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[smasica]

What helped me understand how color works is doing the color charts exercise that the great painter Richard Schmid recommends in his book. I take them out and look them over periodically to remind myself how varied and adaptable a color can be.

[rninsyoongis]

I am primarily a digital painter but these tips helped me reevaluate how I approach color. Thank you very much!

[Roadrunner]

The white tip you made will help me massively even on sketching.

[bernardorocha]

Master, You are a very effective, practical teacher. I really appreciate the way you break it down like your talking to a 5th grader. You convert something that's complex into something digestible or applyable.

[jerrifreeman]

As usual, your tips are very comprehendible and helpful. My favorite tip on this video- starting just about anywhere with a color and you’ll still be able to get to where you want to go with mixing. Plus, value being more important than color. So helpful. Love the student example explanations, too. Nothing gets me back to painting like your videos. Gotta get in the reps.

[ChristaDawnART]

Thank you for this! I’m a watercolorist, but I still found much of this immensely helpful!

[jiyuuart]

you're the teacher everyone needs, thank you you helped me improve my painting a lot

[candidapple]

Nice video! Have you tried switching to cyan, magenta, and yellow for your primaries? You can make red by mixing magenta with yellow. You can get royal blue by mixing cyan and red. Also, with the CMY primaries, your oranges and greens come out more vibrant if that’s what you’re needing.

[eschelar]

Haha. I am a beginner with painting, although 20 yrs or more with photography.

I am working in digital with infinite painter.

I did most of my first stuff with color and watching your videos, I thought I should instead use black and white so I could learn values first.

So now I am doing that. First, create a layer for sketching out, then take the background layer and convert to black and white. Then hit it with a medium blur effect, then use a posterize effect.

Because this is in greyscale, I used a different color while staying monochrome.

However, not every color desaturates the same, so this is a nice exercise to do as well to get comfortable with values and different colors.

After this, I might even try a duochrome with this same concept.

Using very limited palettes feels very good for learning basic stuff like this.

First, I hope to train my eye for values, then I can add in true colors later on.

Lot of excellent ideas to be found in your videos.

[blessedandbiwithahintofmagic]

That is an excellent way of describing gray. Value is one of the three components of color, it is important to understand that one hue (IE what most call one color) can be played around with value and saturation to open parallel dimensions of colors to that one, it makes understanding the nature of color much more fundamental and gets people closer to how things really are.

[lbaehr]

Just found your channel. Great content, and you are SO talented! Another color trick people often don't know is that mixing warm and cool colors can also muddy the color.

[OTTERSandKNIVES]

Thank you for this advice! I just discovered your channel today! I will be binge watching your videos! I'm a third generation artist, grandfather was Ken Zylla, mother is Sandra Zylla, both have been my inspiration to continue the family art! Recently I've gotten back into art after highschool and I've been trying to learn color as I've been mainly a photo realistic graphite artist. Can't wait to learn and watch more from you!

[Ziad]

I feel insanely lucky watching this video. I can't wait to try out painting! I never had, yet I spend like most of my waking hours downloading watching painting video essays and downloading HD paintings on my phone. Your videos motivated me immensely!!!

[astrocat]

Thank you for this tutorial!! The white cloth and seagul tests are excellent! Instead of paper towels, I make and use clean "rags" from thrift stores (cotton sheets, pillowcases, bath towels, etc).

[josefinavidal]

veeery comprehensive video! summarizes all important points. Thank you!!

[shreejamukherjee]

The way you guide is so simple and easy to understand... It's very helpful 🙏

[PhantomFilmAustralia]

I used to have ha huge problem painting a surface within the painting varying in color due to the radiosity from colored objects. The radiosity changing color on other objects really did my head in, thinking it was an optical illusion or my eyes needed checking. It can be tough painting it from a picture and a lot tougher with real life. It was a lot of trial and error.
I'd love to see a tutorial in this issue.

[Anastasiabruno]

That's one of the most useful videos on color, for real...

[amandasjas]

So many valuable tips, I’m excited to see how they’ll adapt to watercolors, where you’re painting light to dark!

[MyTurps]

Just brilliant- stumbled across this and so grateful for all this advice which is so clearly and well explained