Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!

It's very often I see people posting and looking for help with coloring, and while I do have a whole thread for coloring tutorials, it's not the same as getting one on one help. So I figured giving people a place to practice and critique each other's coloring could help. The goal of this jam is to provide people with feedback and to help not only beginners, but seasoned vets to improve their coloring skills.

Art-what you may post

You may color almost anything and post it here. This can be digital or traditional coloring. You may even color other people's lineart whether it be another artist online or manga or a coloring book page. There is no shame in coloring someone else's lineart, I do it all the time to get some quick and easy practice in. The image doesn't have to be something you just did 5 seconds ago but it does need to be somewhat recent so we're critiquing something that accurately shows what you're capable of now. All that I ask is that 1.the images are safe for work and 2.you give credit to the original artist for example



Original art by Masashi Kishimoto from the manga Naruto.

Stock Images
If you would like to provide some CLEAN 300 DPI lineart, please post a link to it and I'll put it here for you guys to practice on! The scan must be properly cleaned for easy coloring.

http://zsabreuser.deviantart.com/art/Pothole-meets-Paprika-78486076 -Zsabreuser
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v154/Oldvwcamper/?action=view&current=seance.jpg -Kure ji ore
http://brograbs.dapshow.com/Images/Lineart/ -Lysol Jones

Commenting

Commenting must be constructive. No "OMG THIS IS AWESOME AND FLAWLESS" BS, we're here for learning. You must also be mature and helpful in your critique. Immature and nonconstructive critiques will be removed.

Good critique:You did a nice job on the lighting on this image, I really like the mood you set. But your color palette could use a lot of work. (keep in mind this is just a vague example)

Bad critique:This is fucking awful and you should be shot. What the fuck is this bullshit. Go kill yourself.

Remember that anyone can critique, I don't care if you yourself aren't able to color, your opinion still has value and can still be helpful. You don't have to have a Masters in Fine Art to critique someone. If you want to "redline" like I did here http://entervoid.com/board/index.php?topic=10755.msg177449#msg177449 go for it. Afterall, showing an example of how something could be made better can be very helpful. But please don't ask for "redlines", people do them when they're up to it.

Resources for students-feel free to suggest some and I will add them!

http://entervoid.com/board/index.php?topic=9939.0 my coloring thread, mostly focuses on Photoshop



Now lets get to work!
« Last Edit: Jun 10, 2009, 07:59 PM by angieness »
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #1 on: Jun 08, 2009, 03:27 PM »
And I'll start



Been trying to get better with cel shading, anything I could have done to make the coloring better?
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #2 on: Jun 09, 2009, 01:52 AM »
Sure, I'll do this.

Especially when it's fanart I'm coloring!



Lineart by Airlight. :D

(upon seeing it posted, it needs more contrast, but i'm tired and too lazy to do it.)
« Last Edit: Jun 09, 2009, 02:05 AM by Qyzex »

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #3 on: Jun 09, 2009, 02:05 AM »
Angie, the lineart and colours are really nice, and I think this is a good springboard, but it looks more like you were trying to assign colours on the character than actually colour the piece. I think you could do well to slightly diminish the current vertical light source and better stress the EXTREMELY strong light sources on the shoulder, whose glow is really lost because it doesn't extend much beyond the wispy things coming out of the shoulderpads. Casting a nice yellow glow across a more desaturated character would make that shot look REALLY nice and dramatic. You also don't account for a lot of the larger sources of shadows, .ie the shoulderpads. This piece could look really nice but you'll have to make sacrifices in your linework to create a really great coloured image, but I do think it'd be completely worth the effort to do.

Qyz, it looks like there's a giant green screen over this whole thing and the hues, though all different, are kind of extremely flat in tone. More contrast, in both shade and colour. Don't make your character and background the same colour, it just makes everything disappear and get a bit ugly, consider and complicate your shades and highlights a bit more intensely and colour with more detail and this can be really nice too. In colouring Riley's work you have a nice opportunity to look at how he colours, which is actually really great, though don't just do what he does.

Riley, work on your female anatomy.
Be nice Jack.

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #4 on: Jun 09, 2009, 02:13 AM »
Thanks for the crit Jack, I totally get what you mean. This was meant to be more of a straight up colored character piece but I think it would be well worth doing a separate version with more interesting lighting like you suggested as practice.

Qyz-I like that you're getting more adventurous with your color palettes, I think you have a really good eye for what colors work well for shading. But I do agree that the lack of contrast hurts this quite a bit. Simply making the base tone a much lighter color could make for some really nice dynamic lighting and would be a very quick fix. It's interesting to see Airlight's stuff done in a more simple cel shaded way since his linework often disappears under his colors. I kind of feel as though the texture should only be on the background so the character will pop more. Good job dude, keep experimenting, I like that you're always trying new things with your colors.
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #5 on: Jun 09, 2009, 02:28 AM »
Well I mean it's something to consider since the character has a constant light source on her. That's one of the things I like about the Metal Gear character art, is that they accurately describe the character, but do so with some level of dynamism to make the designs engaging and fit their context better. Tightening your colour schemes might be advisable too. Something as simple as just picking a yellow, blue and red to work with throughout the piece can be extremely helpful. When I help I usually don't use more than 5 pigments for the entire range of colour, and I can mix for a huge range of variation out of that while still maintaining a strong and coherent colour scheme. I dunno how you could do that with Digital, but it would be worth a shot.
Be nice Jack.

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #6 on: Jun 09, 2009, 02:42 AM »
Yeah I kind of do that the digital way by creating a new document like http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/5895/palette.jpg where I give every tone just a handful of tones. I have been trying to narrow down my color schemes to create a certain mood, I'll try and experiment by narrowing it down further in the future.
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #7 on: Jun 09, 2009, 09:47 AM »
Does it have to be coloring inside lineart? cause i did a painting over some cruddy lineart i did afew days ago that id like to get some critique on.

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #8 on: Jun 09, 2009, 11:32 AM »
Color altogether is fine, if you did a painting you want some help on by all means post it.
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #9 on: Jun 09, 2009, 11:41 AM »
Tried another method of coloring. One Jack suggested.



Lines by Lysol.

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #10 on: Jun 09, 2009, 12:23 PM »
That's looking pretty good. Be careful with the highlights though, try to make them a little more subtle or a little smaller because at the moment her skin is looking like plastic. For the most part you got the shading down but it looks like the light source jumped around a little. Like you have it coming from the upper right on most of the image, but on her right arm and back of her hair the shading gets inconsistent with the rest of the image. Other than that it's looking pretty good, just watch those highlights and the lighting.
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #11 on: Jun 10, 2009, 02:10 AM »
About above mermaids coloring.
The strong highlights on the body makes it look wet, wich is fitting for a mermaid. However the hair doesnt look wet at all. So it looks abit inconsistent.




Here is my first ever try at painting digitaly. Its a portrait of the red baron and it took me around 1 hour and 20 minutes. Lineart and all.

I first did it will solid colors and then went over it with colors at 30% opacity to try to blend em together.

here is the lineart.
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/8191/redbaronwip02.jpg

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #12 on: Jun 10, 2009, 02:28 AM »
That's some nice rendering, though it could still use a bit of tightening up, but where's the colour?
Be nice Jack.

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #13 on: Jun 10, 2009, 03:57 AM »
Hey grayscale is still color :P
The only color i did on it was as a quick joke for a friend who asked the same.

I just put up this speedpainting of it if anyone is interested. I thought it was beyond repair cause part of the recording got corrupt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5DWTIIGogA

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #14 on: Jun 10, 2009, 09:48 AM »
I am curious what needs improvement. It seems like my colouring could become my bread and butter - so I'd like to hone my skillz, btw Angie - your bad crit example made me chuckle.

Anywho - here's my most recent.




Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #15 on: Jun 10, 2009, 11:20 AM »
You have a nice technique and this looks very close to professional comic coloring. Your problem however is that you don't really have a specific light source. Like you have shading but I can't really figure out where your specific light source is at. I'm not a fan of the color dodge but I understand that it's used quite a bit for this particular style in comics so I can let it slide as I know what you're going for and it doesn't look bad. I think you could change the palette up just a little to make things feel less saturated, I look at http://liquidology.deviantart.com/ and http://martegodpopo.deviantart.com/ a lot when I'm coloring, they both have a lot more variety in their color schemes and are pro comic colorists.
« Last Edit: Jun 10, 2009, 11:22 AM by angieness »
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #16 on: Jun 10, 2009, 11:41 AM »
Thanks for the crits! I'll work on defining my light-source, as well as colour choices. I have an idea for colours that may come in handy for future projects, ever hear of Kuler?

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #17 on: Jun 10, 2009, 11:48 AM »
But what about traditional colouring?

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #18 on: Jun 10, 2009, 11:52 AM »
But what about traditional colouring?

You should start a school of Traditional Coloring.

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #19 on: Jun 10, 2009, 07:56 PM »


Man I haven't shaded like this in forever

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #20 on: Jun 10, 2009, 07:58 PM »
But what about traditional colouring?

This thread is for all coloring. It doesn't have to be digital. Added a note on the first post to clarify that.

And Corny, I like that you're toning down your colors some, they feel a lot more natural and a lot less oversaturated. It may have helped to make the shading a slightly darker tone so it stands out a bit more and really feels like shading. It also could have been cool to give the shading a slightly purple tone to better go with the background. But that may make the shading a little too harsh for what you want.
« Last Edit: Jun 10, 2009, 08:07 PM by angieness »
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #21 on: Jun 10, 2009, 08:06 PM »


Oh shit sort of double post cause angie asked for an example of traditonal.

I touched it up a bit digitally though... does it still count? :o

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #22 on: Jun 10, 2009, 08:18 PM »
Yeah that's fine, I'm cool with any variety of media being used. I think the coloring got a little muddy here, I don't know if it's where the scan may have eaten it or your work or maybe you went a little too far with the digital touch ups. It looks like maybe you bumped the saturation up a little too far when you touched it up so you lost any subtle change in tones you may have had.
Kittens wearins mittens

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #23 on: Jun 10, 2009, 11:54 PM »
Acrylics water paint & a bit of markers ontop
of digital linework.Layer based coloring.
perhaps this gives some inspiration or something




& some lineart for whom it might concern
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l306/ali40/water.jpg
« Last Edit: Jun 11, 2009, 12:01 AM by Helftan »
helftan.deviantart.com

Re: Void Coloring School-Practice Your Coloring and Help Others!
« Reply #24 on: Jun 11, 2009, 12:30 AM »
@Corny: the traditional one, while well drawn, looks very dark and as angie said kind of saturated. As for your digital one I think it looks pretty good, but I think it could use more shadows as well as more contrast...hmmm, perhaps even a more defined light source.

@helf: I don't know a whole lot about water colors, but this looks  good to me, what bugs me though is actually how easy it is to spot the wrinkles on the paper. Not sure if you used watercolor paper for it or not, but I suggest getting something that won't wrinkle as much.



I'm actually a bit rusty with my soft shading; I used to only soft shade stuff, but then I realized I liked my cell shading more and that I no longer like coloring in photoshop that much...So right now I'm trying to get back into soft shading, but I'm using painter.

The top left and bottom image is just soft shading practice, but I am usure of how to place the red shade on the bottom image x.x as for the top right image, I was just trying some sort of impressionistic style, but I don't know what to think of it.
« Last Edit: Jun 11, 2009, 12:36 AM by dimension »

 

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