Understanding colors...

#1

You are now dealing with a really uncreative and unartistic person but who want to be an fantastic artist some day. You can say I am a IT nerd. I’m either busy playing my games or learning IT stuff (like programming). No time for arts. Even though I know nuts about arts, my favourite pastime in front of my computers is to surf this forum and admire those art pieces. I know how to model (beginner-intermediate level) in 3DS Max and only model. I always try to add simple colors to my model but always end up choosing wrong colors. Same goes to designing websites. I seldom choose my own colors, mostly rip from others places. If I choose it will turn out really ugly. If I look back in my childhood, I couldn’t remember anytime I am happy with the colors of my artwork. My lack of understanding of colors really haunted me badly even till today.

So, anyone could guide me into understanding colors? How to better choose colors? Any recommended reading? or anything related? Could I know how you guys decides on which color to choose from when you guys doing your arts/websites/etc?

Thanks in advance…

#2

Most of my ability to choose colors comes from observation. I like to see what goes good with what. You can also look at the mood that a color creates. Warm and cool colors. This can have a huge effect on your project. I would just look up stuff on google about complimentary colors as well as shades of colors. There is a lot to learn, but it just comes from experiencing the fun.

Hope this is helpful.
Jon

#3

One thing that helped me was to learn all the colors, and not just the regular ones. To be able associate a color to a name helps more than one could expect :slight_smile:

#4

If you take a look in the sticky thread “Art Tutorials, Theories, and Book Recommendations,” you’ll discover enough learning material equivalent to years and years of art school. Many of which deals with color theory.

#5

Just wanted to encourage you with getting into “art”. I used to think it was either a “you got it or you don’t kinda thing”. To a degree it kinda is, I suppose… but you’d be surprised. You might “have it” and not know.

I used to be horrible at composition and design. Couldn’t figure out where to start. But I took a class and the teacher exposed us to alot of design theory. I ended up fairly good at it.

You might be a great artist… whatever that means… and just not know it yet.

As far as colors…

General stuff:

  1. Color wheels are useful for picking out color combinations. Too much info with that to list here, but there’s probably alot of info about it around the net.

  2. Generally colors will communicate some type of “feeling”. Red is hot, angry, passionate, violent… Blue is calm, collected, cold, indifferent… Green could be lively… like trees… could be disgusting… like puke or boogers. Black and white are really strong colors. Errr… they’re not really colors but… anyway there’s a start.

Look at ads and try to figure out what they’re trying to say based on the colors they use.

–Arvin

#6

A good way to look at colors in a slightly ‘cheating’ kind of way is to take a nice pic with good colors and use the color picker to see where the colors are in the color picking area…you know what i mean.

(here) When this window is up, just select areas of the pic and see where the colors come up. You may have some surprises.

#7

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.