digital coloring for grimjack

[D.I.S.]

Wanted to add color to this. Tried some color theory stuff, hard light, and soft light tricks as well. Its muted, feeling like going back to the drawing board. Try a new setup.

[Giltheartist]

How about something like this. 51908101158_317d45f593_b-01.jpg

[MassivePenguin]

There’s some nice ambient (reflected) light on display, and the colours on the main character stand out from the lizard creatures and background nicely.

However, they’re much too saturated - you need to tone them down. I’m not sure what software you’re using, but if you can view the HSV palette as a square, stay away from the top 20% or so of the saturated colours (typically to the right of the square). These won’t reproduce brilliantly in print, and they almost always look artificial.

The piece is also really dark - you’re hiding a lot of detail in areas that are close to the reader. Stuff that’s closer to us should be more visible than stuff that’s further away! Try and rethink your lighting… does there need to be so much backlighting? If it makes the piece harder to read, then it’s a bad choice.

Two tricks that will help tie together your colours. When picking your palettes, try altering only one or two of Hue, Saturation or Value. When there’s at least one area of commonality between even disparate colours, they’ll harmonise more. And if you add a solid colour overlay on top of your art (in this case an orange to match your ambient lighting) and lower its opacity way down, you’ll get much better results. Try it and see!

[Simon Eskildsen]

I will second the opinion of mr penguin

also, would benefit from separating foreground and background. Either make the background lighter or darker than the foreground.. either way could work. In general it feels a bit dark still..
try loading some killer artwork up next to yours and sample colors while keeping an eye on the color wheel. As the penguin says, usually the very saturated colors should be used to a minimum with “realistic” colors.

The second version is a definite improvement over the first, so keep it up!