Have you ever noticed how rich colors – the green of leaves, the blue of snowdrops, the pink petals of blossoming apple trees – lift your mood?

So too, in painting, traditional or digital, color plays one of the major roles. Competently chosen color combinations set the atmosphere and command the viewer’s attention. And it can be learned! You just need to know a few ground rules, develop a keen eye and, of course, practice more.

Significantly simplifies the work with color knowledge of color schemes – combinations of colors that allow them to exist harmoniously within a single image.

Six basic color schemes: monochromatic, analogy, complementary, triad, split, and tetrad. We show them on the color wheel for clarity:

Each of the schemes has its own peculiarities. For example, monochromatic uses a single spectrum, only the saturation and brightness changes. Quite often used in concepts for movies, games, cartoons, especially good for environment concepts. Imagine the ice of Antarctica or a hot desert – they are associated with certain colors.

The most popular scheme is the complementary scheme. In it, the colors on the color wheel are arranged opposite each other. The colors are contrasting yet complement each other well.

Two examples from classical painting: in Levitan’s painting different derivatives of red are diluted with muted emerald, and this gives an expressive contrast. And in the portrait of Princess de Broglie, the combination of yellow and blue is eye-catching, but the contrast doesn’t look heavy.

Another combination of red and green – this time in a modern illustration by Vasily Zorin. It looks expressive! And in Thibaut Denise ‘s work, the combination looks so harmonious because it is borrowed from nature itself – cold snow that looks purple and a warm, rich orange sunset.

In our 2D graphics courses, we put a lot of emphasis on learning about color.

On
2D Basic
(by the way, in this letter you saw a small fragment of a lecture on color theory from this course) we understand the basics of color spectrum, tone, saturation, learn how to harmoniously combine colors.

On
2D Middle
and the course
Stylization
we also study in detail the topic of color and understand how color can convey the general idea and atmosphere of the project.

In the course
Character Design in Animation
touch on the importance of color in character design – his appearance, costumes, details of the image.