Base Coats

#1

In CG, would you guys recommend starting with a dark shade, light shade or in between when coloring?

Ive tried all 3 and the results were inconclusive, so Im curious what you all think.

#2

I tend to airbrush in a dark warm or cool color very lightly to cover up the white of my scanned drawings. Even if I get a nice brown texture from my newsprint sketches, I will still paint in a darker base color just to get started. I read an article by Craig Mullins who said an art teacher told him the first thing to do is “get rid of the white” of the paper.

Hope that helps.

#3

You should try to think in terms of what the piece calls for. I usually just block in the basic colors that will dominate the painting–with the correct values to begin with.

#4

What I do is try and think what key the painting will be in (high, medium, low) and put in a middle value for that key as the base color. I then pick a darker color (usually some purple ish or brown with a purple shade in it) and darken the dark parts. Then use a lighter color (blue if it’s outside, yellow if it’s inside) to rough out the light areas. Then the area colors go in, using the values as a guide (light area here, pick a light blue/yellow color…)

I think that’s a pretty common way of doing it.

#5

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