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In this tutorial, I will show you how to create palettes the way I do. Interesting palettes can make an average doll exciting, and I find my method is a quick and easy way to experiment with color. This tutorial can be followed in any program which allows you to adjust the brush opacity. I’ll be using paint shop pro. THE BASIC 5-COLOR PALETTE | |
| We’ll begin by making a basic 5 color palette. First, choose your darkest color. Make the brush 5x5 pixels or thereabouts, and paint 5 squares, like so. Try not to use totally saturated color. That is, move towards the gray side of the color picker a little bit. Otherwise, your palette could turn out obnoxiously bright. Unless you’re going for an obnoxiously bright palette—then it’s ok. But just know what you’re doing when you do it. |
| Next, choose your lightest (highlight) color. The amount of contrast is up to you, and it can take practice to get it right. Right now, I’ll simply choose a lighter shade of green. Paint this color over the square at the bottom of the palette. |
| We now have our lightest and darkest shades, but how will we get the middle tones? This part is my little trick. We use the brush opacity to create even steps between the two. First, change the brush opacity to 75%. With the lightest color, paint over the second square from the bottom in your palette. |
| Then take the opacity down to 50% and paint over the middle square. |
| And finally use 25% on the next square up. And there you have it—a palette that goes smoothly from your lightest to your darkest shade without any guesswork from you. |
| TURNING YOUR 5-COLOR PALETTE INTO A 9-COLOR PALETTE | |
| 5-step palettes may work for some things, but there are times when you need more shades. First, take the 5-color palette you’ve just created and paint 2 squares of the darkest color, 2 of the next, and so on with all the colors, except for the highlight, which should only have 1. |
| With your brush at 50% opacity, paint with the highlight color over the next square up. Use the color above that and paint over the 4th square in the palette, and so on all the way up until you have 9 different tones to work with. Essentially you are creating a new color halfway in between each of the colors from your 5-color palette. |
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EXPERIMENTING WITH COLOR This is all well and good, but what we have at the moment is an extremely average palette. And that’s fine. But we can do so much more. Many of the palettes I create are gradient palettes. This means that the colors in the palette change in hue as well as value (lightness). This can cause a variety of effects. | |
| Take this doll for example. The shadows in her hair are brown, but the highlights are a light aqua. This gives her an interesting, fantasy-ish feel. This can be achieved quite easily and requires no knowledge of natural lighting effects. It’s also a great way to make iridescent dresses. |
| However, gradient palettes can be used to create more naturalistic effects as well. Here is a skin palette that I use. The darker colors look very, very purple, don’t they? |
| …But on a base, it looks natural. Why is this? Well, in “real life,” shadows tend to have a cooler tone and highlights tend to be warmer colors. Another effect of light is that the highlights tend to be more saturated, while shadows tend to be grayer. |
| Here’s another example of cool shadows-warm highlights. This gives her a gold glow. (Base by Apitchou.) |
| …And just for review. If this is new to you, or you just want to learn more about color theory, or you can’t read my atrocious handwriting, I'd recommend Blue's lessons (color theory parts 1 and 2). |
| Aaaaannd we’re moving on. I create gradient palettes using the same method I use for regular palettes. So let’s say I take the dark green from the first palette, and instead of choosing a light green for the highlight color… | |
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| ...I choose a shade of yellow. Or periwinkle. Or gray. Whatever! Mess around and have fun. Just one thing to be aware of—if you choose colors opposite on the color wheel from each other or close to it (such as green and red), your middle tones will look muddy and brown. |
| I hope this tutorial helped you think about different ways to use color. Remember, the only real way to learn is through experimentation and practice! | |
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