It’s difficult to describe the colour theory in such a short tutorial. But you can recognize the difference between the image with colour and the one without colour. (Fig.06) I think the first part of image06 is without colour though you could see blue tone in it since only one colour tone describes sketch relations rather than colour relations. Light is in all the guises in which we encounter it on a daily basis. There are hundreds of colours. Which colour shall we choose? It’s a general rule that combination of warm and cold colour makes the image alive. Then, let’s talk about “Set out for Lover”. It is a green-tone image which belongs to neither cold tone nor warm tone. Most area of the image are filled with green and cyan, so the warm area in middle of the image which is the key area and visual Centre seems to be prominent.
Moreover, we usually think the area without lightening should be dark. But extremely dark in the painting is uncomfortable. In fact, everything in the scene is illuminated. Some areas get less light while others get more. The less that receives the light from environment reflection is in cold tone rather than extremely dark.
Then, how about warm tone. In my work, fire brings the warm tone. Red, orange, yellow are all in warm tone. The place near fire should be bright yellow while he place far away from fire should be dark red.
Fig.06
Skill 4: leaves:
Here I will show you two photos. (Fig.07) The first one describes the back light effect of hundreds of leaves. The leaves on the edge are bright and saturated. The second one describes the different between the front side and the back side of the leaf. The front side appears darker with high reflectivity. The back side seems to be translucent. That’s all! Actually, we can paint leaves now. But before we start, we’d better know something about shading.
Fig. 07
Shaders are used to determine the relationship of colour and illumination. What is the relationship of translucent and colour? It seems to be more saturated near the terminator when objects look translucent. And the front side and back side of leaves have different relationships. The picture below shows five shaders.(Fig.08) The last one is the shader of leaf. You also can see the relationship of colour and illumination.
Fig. 08
Then, let’s get started. It’s hard to get the breath-taking result by painting only one time. More times you paint, more levels you get. (Fig.09) You could paint leaves step by step:
Define a leaf brush. Paint leaves’ shape. If you have a tablet, it ‘s easy to use pan pressure . One stroke forms one shape.
Add brighter saturated colour to the middle of every leaves.
drop rough shadow of every leaves.
Add darker and saturated colour to the front surface of every leaves.
drop highlight of front surface. Attention to distributing of highlights.
If leaves are less than enough, add some.
Don’t forget the backlight effects. The light is warm and bright. You can see the photo above for consideration.
