Getting the hang of it, kinda.

I think I made a lot of progress the pass week or so in terms of color. With this one I did it systematically so that I could possibly use some parts as a workflow from imagination. Although that was nothing special, it was the usual drawing, selections, local color layers, key lighting, passive highlights, ambient lighting, etc, etc. But what was different this time was that I was making my color selections way more educated and calculated than before.

I made sure that the light side of each "material" was for sure warmer than the shadow side, finally making progress in that area but I still have to nail the degree of temperature shift that occurs. My line of thought is that all objects shift a similar change in temperature because of the light source and that's what makes the light side of objects look like they are all illuminated by the same light source.The reason why I think this is because, when I painted those pink patches of light on her shirt, they didn't look convincing at first. But then, when I painted the skin and hair with a similar temperature shift (compared to their individual shadow side) it looked as if a light source was lighting them up in unison. I toggled the light layers off and on and it looked like someone was turning a flashlight off and on, very cool.

It feel's like I'm finally learning color for a change, I can see some progress even with my eyes (I think). When I wake up the next day and look at the colors again, I sometimes see a way to fine tune the colors a little more, or maybe I just see the reference differently, not necessarily better. I'll stop putting hours into this when I burn out on it, It's a shame I didn't learn about it earlier, I always thought I was just never good at color and other people were due to my lack of talent in that area, but I can believe my younger artist self just ignored what everyone with experience said about color and thought "why am I not good at it??".

Those hair highlights I know aren't painted well though by the way, I just couldn't figure them out. Also if this looks unfinished it's because it is kinda, let's call it a "color study", yeah.