Making Your First Color Painting

Digital Painting Fundamentals

Digital Painting Fundamentals(61 Lessons )
Painting in Color

Making Your First Color Painting

46K
Mark as Completed
Course In Progress

Making Your First Color Painting

46K
Mark as Completed
Course In Progress
  • Choose a Reference Photo: Pick an easy-to-draw landscape or still life.
  • Design Composition: Create thumbnail sketches to decide the layout.
  • Block in Shapes and Colors: Use rough block-ins for basic shapes and colors.
  • Refine and Add Details: Gradually refine the painting, adding details, texture, and adjusting colors.

Tips:

  • Focus on color and composition.
  • Use layers to simplify your process.
  • Experiment with color adjustments.
Newest
Kassjan Smyczek
I took a photo while we were cruising with a little ferry in Italy along Cinque Terre. (Google it, if you don't know what it is :). It's beautiful!) And I liked a little church on a rock. It took me a while to get the rocks to a satisfactory level though the rock still looks a little flat. I started imediately with single stones and I should have tried to capture bigger shapes first. Anyway - I used gradient maps, more adjustment layers and so on. I was able to keep my layers relatively clean. Looking forward to further tips. Kind regards!
@jasonj33
1yr
Really getting a lot from this course, gotta admit I've been struggling a bit w/ these last couple of assignments but I'm starting to really pick up on the process. I'm going to watch the Gray Scale Demo once more yet. I really wanna start making cool stuff but don't feel like I'm riding consistently w/ out training wheels just yet lol
@hyki
2yr
Here is my attempt. Landscape painting is definitely not my forte, but hey—that means I can only get better from here, right? A lot of what I don't like about this painting is probably the brushwork, as I still have a lot to learn when it comes to merging shapes and shape design in general. Balancing the colors was also a bit of a challenge, because I kept going back and forth between a cooler palette and a warmer one. Overall, I'm just excited to get back to drawing and painting figures.
Le Parisien
Nice job. I like the colors in your painting.
Karen Walter
this took longer than expected because in the middle of working on it my tablet suddenly stopped working! I tried to fix it myself but whatever was wrong with it was beyond my skills. So I looked for a repairman in my area and none of them had any Wacom tablet fixing knowledge. so i went to Wacom. They wanted waaay to much to fix ( i could just buy a new one with that kind of money) So i expanded my search and i eventually did find someone who could fix it. in the meantime my brother let me borrow his tablet. so I finally got this done. on to next lesson. Hopefully nothing else happens to me
Denitsa Dineva
very nice
@jacobhartley
here are two more attempts, I only have the reference for one of them, unfortunately. I feel much better at choosing colors and adjusting local hues to light now. Obviously, I cropped the mountainous reference differently for my piece, but I'm not sure if I should've.
@jacobhartley
The houses were a struggle, I wanted to use a big textured brush to give it a sense of clutter like there is in the photo, but I wasn't able to accomplish that so I just started painting individual houses. I still would love to experiment and find a texture brush that can simulate the visual noise in an interesting way for the distant houses.
@tomasmax
2yr
I used a reference number 3 for my assignment. I didn't draw a thumnail exactly, but I used a flat color mapping instead. As for the main paiting I diverged from the reference mostly in this: in reference we have two light source, the orange warn on the left and cool white on the right and in my paiting swap them as I wanted the river to receive the most light, while left rest of the foliage and rocks on the left I wanted to be mostly in a shadow. Also in the reference most of the foliage is grouped in dark values and this way the foliege on the right can have a little bit more brither values. I used a photobashing for a texture on the water. Thanks for the lesson.
Nicole Drews
Here's my attempt at the colour study using one of the references that were provided. I also included the thumbs I did. Not gonna lie, I didn't really know what I was doing with them. In theory I understand composition and know the 'rules' and strategies of it but in practice all that kinda goes out the window for me. I think I just need to be more focused and deliberate with my decisions rather than being hella indecisive and hoping things will just fall into place as I wing it. As for the process it was pretty similar to the one in the video. I started out with colour, and used a couple gradient maps, colour balances, and various blending modes throughout the painting as I rendered. For layers it was just 2, Sky and the rest of it
onigi *pronunce [on-ie-gee]*
I chose a photo as the reference which I took in a park last year. It looked like a lake while it took water from the sea through a narrow river. I don't sure what we call it in English. I decided to focus on the water, but I had to simplify the plants and the buildings around it because I didn't have enough skill to draw their details. I'm not used to setting and controlling texture brushes so I spent a lot of time drawing the bush on the front. Since I've rarely drawn landscapes this assignment was harder but also more fun than I expected!
@myccal
2yr
I used one of the available references. I took a lot of liberties to make it look more like a classic landscape. I feel like I came close, but there is still something missing. Some color or texture or something I don’t quite get. I really wish procreate had adjustment layers. Though I found my use of layers was more like I would “paint” a bit, then create a layer, then just refine things more, then a new layer with more refinement. I did use a couple layers with masks for the sky. Maybe the more I do it, the more I’ll get used to the layers and hopefully it will help me pick up speed. This took like four hours to do. Still really enjoying the course. Keep it coming.
Holly Laing
Here's my assignment!  I painted this scene of the northern lights in order to utilize some of the custom brushes I made in one of the previous lessons. I mainly used normal layers with a couple linear dodge and overlay layers here and there, I also separated the foreground from the background and added a gradient map at the end (set to soft light) to make the colors stand out a bit more. I had a difficult time painting the rocky textures, so the image came out a bit more cartoony than I might have liked, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. :)  I attached the reference image to this post as well. Thanks for another great lesson, I'm also definitely going to invest in that perspective plugin, it looks super helpful. 
@jacobhartley
Hello everyone! this is my go at the reference he used in the video. I used the same reference so that I could basically start by copying what he was doing (to get a feel for it) before branching out. The perspective, relative scale, and other things were warped after my initial sketch, which is no biggie in my opinion. I'm more concerned about the clouds. I started by trying to depict the depth and many layers of this sort of 'cloudscape' but I really struggle with them. The flat forms and fudged lighting quickly began to break the image, so I decided to focus on going with two larger, appealing cloud shapes, eventually becoming whatever those big pluming clouds are (sorta inspired by jocelincarmes on Instagram, and the way he does clouds). I feel somewhat disappointed that I couldn't capture the vastness of the clouds and their arrangement in my painting. The bushes are also a bit much which is somewhat minor but feels related somehow. Overall, I'm happy with it as a first try at color painting, but I am terrified of doing anything with slightly more complex forms like the new assignment D:
@jacobhartley
I forgot to mention that by the end I sorta tried to embrace a comment from a friend I showed it to that they clouds almost look like giant, somewhat chubby hands reaching for the sun. I even added a weird sort of sleeve to one of them but I like that it isn't immediately noticeable.
Tsotne Shonia
Yo! I tried my best, but I know very little about environments. I'm looking forward to the feedback to know what can I do to improve. I willingly deviated quite a lot from the reference by pushing the colors to something that looks more pleasing to me and simplifying shapes (and changed the ratio of the image). I'm happy with the overall composition and colors, but I feel like the textures and details are lacking. Also, I didn't really understand the lighting setup from the reference, and I think it shows. It doesn't seem to bother me that much, or at least, nowhere near the texture / details thing. The original reference is a photo I found on Pexels from Quang Nguyen Vinh. Along with crediting him I wanted to add a link to his photo : https://www.pexels.com/photo/fast-waterfall-on-mountain-with-lush-trees-6136307/
John Harper
Good try. The advice I think about most is that these landscapes have "gesture" too. You will breathe life into your art when you see and concentrate on the action first AND keep that action a priority.
@valentinoz
HI, this is a painting I did a while ago. Everything on 1 layer. The reference was really complex but I liked it a lot. It looks a bit muddy.
Matthew K
2yr
The imbedded video on this site, and the download, both have serious distortions, pixilating, delays, and artifacting that's really distracting. It actively makes it difficult to follow along in the lesson because the video will stick while Jon is talking and the viewer can't see what settings or controls are used. By the end of the video it's a severely jumbled mess. I'm hoping this was an rendering issue with the output file after editing, and hopefully a new pass can provide a better file for the viewers. If someone could look into this, it would be greatly appreciated.
Sean Ramsey
Sorry about that! Fixing it now.
Nicole Drews
If this issue is already known, sorry, but just incase I'll tag: @Sean Ramsey @Jon Neimeister thanks!
Nicole Drews
Thought it was just my computer going crazy
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2D Art Lead at Hi-Rez Studios
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