Why Professional Paintings Don't Use More Color

[00:00:01]Frank Frazetta, one of the greatest commercial illustrators of all time, once said that gray was one of the most important colors in painting, particularly in his fantasy illustrations.

[00:00:12]And so, the more you study professional artwork like Frank's, the more you can start to realize color usually isn't built from these intense amounts of saturation, not everywhere, right? It's built from subtle temperature relationships. As an instructor, I see a lot of beginner paintings start to fail because every color is screaming at the same volume, whether that is loud or a little bit more quiet.

[00:00:38]And the difference between amateur color and professional color usually comes down to one thing, right? Understanding color relationships.

[00:00:48]And that is what today's video is really about, how warm and how cool colors actually work, and why gray is secretly one of the most powerful tools in any kind of painting, regardless of style and subject matter.

[00:01:04]We're going to look at how professionals use color temperature to create focus, depth, and atmosphere. And by the end, I'm going to show you a little practical demo that you can immediately apply to your own work.

[00:01:18]And so, this whole concept really comes down to three things. First is that color is built from a number of properties, value, hue, and saturation.

[00:01:29]And the second thing is that warm and cool colors only exist in context.

[00:01:34]And the third thing is that great color usually is controlled through subtle temperature shifts, not a rainbow amount of saturation. And so, professional painters usually do avoid direct color names.

[00:01:49]What do I mean by that? Well, like if I say red, red tells me almost nothing.

[00:01:54]And this is because every color has those three attributes.

[00:01:59]Value, whether a color is light or dark, the hue itself, what is the actual color family, and the saturation. Think of that as the intensity of that color. And so, for example, a red can be warm, a red can be cool, it can be saturated, it could be a muted red, it could be a light or a dark red, right? There's a lot of aspects to it.

[00:02:23]And colors are always transitioning from warmer to cooler variants of themselves.

[00:02:30]And so, in my opinion, good color is less about these individual colors and more about these relationships between them.

[00:02:40]And so, a lot of beginner paintings tend to feel noisy because everything is competing for attention at the same time and in the same way. Every area is fully saturated, fully rendered, and it just feels equally important. But a really good strong painting usually does the opposite. They guide your eye intentionally.

[00:03:02]And what this does is it creates hierarchy, right? Hierarchy within your illustration, within your painting.

[00:03:09]Uh and they do this through restraint, right? Maybe that is like quieter saturation, maybe it's softer amounts of contrast sprinkled throughout the image, and perhaps it could be simpler supporting shapes for your uh focal point.

[00:03:26]And it is this restraint, that's what gives that focal point power in the first place, right? The reason the whole image exists.

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[00:05:05]And so, back to color. If every color is intense, nothing is going to feel important. And I do think it is worth mentioning here that warm and cool colors only do exist in this context.

[00:05:18]Values usually have a much clearer separation if we're talking about those, right? Like you have light and there's shadow, right? There's a clear line between them, but color is more active and constantly shifting depending on what's entirely around it.

[00:05:32]So, warming colors do not exist by themselves. They need other colors to kind of give them that uh feeling, right? Or that context, and they really exist in relationship.

[00:05:45]I like to think of grays basically as the chameleons of color.

[00:05:50]So, when actually implementing these in paintings, right? When artists transition from warm to cool or cool to warm, there are two key ways that you could logistically go about this. One method shifts directly through strong colors, right? Color to color. The other would transition almost like through the middle of the color wheel, through a set of muted grays, like desaturated colors.

[00:06:13]And it's this second approach that usually feels much more natural because that transition is happening through the grays and through subtle temperature shifts instead of jumping directly between those intense colors.

[00:06:28]Those quieter neutrals help the warm and the cool areas push against each other without, you know, the painting feeling too intense, right? Or too oversaturated.

[00:06:39]And so, another huge beginner trap is just thinking that objects have like this default local color. Like, you know, skin could be like a peach tone.

[00:06:49]Or like snow is white. Or that rocks or other earthly colors are just gray. But, painting doesn't really work like a coloring book, if that makes sense.

[00:07:01]Light is usually the thing deciding the color way more than the object itself.

[00:07:07]This was like my big learning hurdle, you know, from back in the day that it took me a little bit longer to grasp than I wish it did.

[00:07:13]Um, and that is why here the right image feels much richer, much more believable because the lighting is actually influencing the color instead of every area feeling, you know, or staying the same flat local color.

[00:07:28]And this is why beginner paintings, by comparison, usually do feel flat. They just paint one object, not the lighting situation. And so, uh, weirdly enough, the shadows usually are where paintings get a lot more interesting. I've said this a lot in my videos over the years.

[00:07:47]And so a lot of professional paintings that I do study, I've realized they tend to have very clean, controlled shapes of light. Not in every scenario or every case, but they'll also have shadows that do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the actual color interest.

[00:08:03]Frank Frazetta said this himself.

[00:08:05]>> There's really so little color that I might use it very sparingly as a focal [music] point.

[00:08:13]So by comparison, you know, since everything is being relative, you see so much >> [music] >> in the sense of muted coloring, soft, tinted areas, and suddenly a a bright spot.

[00:08:25]And it's sort of the illusion is that it's brilliance.

[00:08:29]>> And so this is why master paintings often feel richer without feeling oversaturated. The color is being controlled through these subtle temperature shifts. Especially inside the grays and the shadows.

[00:08:44]And once that kind of clicks, when you see like these really good professionally done paintings, color's just going to stop feeling like a giant obstacle. It's going to feel less random. You'll have a much more intellectual approach to it.

[00:08:58]And this is where training your eye takes repetition and mileage.

[00:09:03]One of the biggest things artists tend to struggle with is realizing that color isn't just about picking pretty colors, right? It is about a number of things, controlling mood, atmosphere, of course, bringing in some storytelling with a lot more authority, with a lot more confidence, even. All right, so now let's moving into my actual little demo here. I started this painting from a study, you know, trying to make gray look interesting, which was the only objective here. So I used an overcast reference. I haven't changed anything compositionally, right? I'm just working on the color build-up using a few basic strategies in my brush work.

[00:09:44]So, with color, and especially neutrals, as I said, look far better when making them or mixing them indirectly, a lesson I got from my acrylic days.

[00:09:54]So, see, I'm alternating between oranges and blues, two complementary colors, uh with a textured brush to actually blend them.

[00:10:02]And so far, up to this point, right?

[00:10:04]This is just a strong and atmospheric and almost like a material study.

[00:10:09]It has its share of problems. The foliage grouping and the value hierarchy is still a bit noisy, and they do compete with that primary tree silhouette. So, I'm going to keep that in mind as I start to move a bit forward with this.

[00:10:23]I'm going to push the distant fog into these cooler neutral grays, and I'm going to try to consolidate the warm greens into larger foliage masses to help the tree read more clearly against the darker and softer atmospheric background.

[00:10:39]Keeping the lighting broad and understated while compressing most of the scene to these cool neutral grays will help preserve the saturation and contrast for a few narrative focal points that will truly matter in a scene like this.

[00:10:56]The obelisks, I'm starting to add those.

[00:10:59]They're starting to fit feel a bit more just like large stone props rather than ancient structures with any kind of purpose or force behind them. So, that's something I'm looking to address now.

[00:11:10]And I really want to push this scene further into like that cosmic horror aesthetic. I've just been obsessed with that stuff lately since playing that awesome game Saros.

[00:11:19]So, I'm keeping the characters visually simple and grounded with muted fabrics and restrained color to make them feel small, invulnerable against these towering unknown structures here, right?

[00:11:30]It's a little bit of contrast that always creates the drama. And so by compressing most of the environment into these uh color families of neutrals here, that single illuminated glyph that I'm kind of adding just at the very end is a very deliberate focal tool.

[00:11:49]And I'm implying something that is either awakened or responding to the characters in this moment. There's a lot uh open to interpretation here in this.

[00:11:58]And honestly, this is why a lot of master paintings still feel powerful, you know, even decades later, right?

[00:12:05]They're just not loud everywhere. That's the lesson I'm trying to imbue into my own illustration here today. It is all about subtle and deliberate control. And Frazetta talked a lot about muted color and that restraint. And so that basically putting a single accent or focal point could actually feel a lot more brilliant by comparison. Because nothing really feels bright unless something quieter exists in the surrounding areas.

[00:12:36]And this is also why, of course, why rendering can't save a weak design, you know, foundationally speaking. Color can't fix poor hierarchy alone.

[00:12:46]And complexity doesn't automatically create a stronger painting for you detail mongers out there. So, the best paintings, in my opinion at least, feel much more intentional when they're going to, of course, guide your eye.

[00:13:00]They control the color temperature, and they're maximizing or utilizing contrast throughout the painting, right? In a highly strategic way.

[00:13:09]And in this case, I'm just using saturation with purpose.

[00:13:13]And so once you can start to think in temperature relationships instead of these isolated color choices, it's just going to stop feeling much It's going to Color is going to stop feeling random and start feeling designed. And I guess that's what I really wanted to talk about here today.

[00:13:30]So if you want to go deeper into this kind of painting and and subject matter and maybe even design thinking, do check out some of the other videos and courses linked below of course and thank you again for Skillshare for sponsoring this video. Guys, let me know what subjects you want to hear next. Have a great week.