Full Tutorial: Colors vs Values artist's tip and technique in digital illustration

Colors vs Values artist's tip and technique in digital illustration

Here's an excerpt from what Craig Mullins (Master Painter) says on the matter of values:

"Decide what is in light and what is in shadow and don’t mix them up. Think like a comic artist. Two values, but if they are well thought out and designed and drawn they can look totally real. Think like that, but instead of making the light white and the shadow black, make the light a 7 and the shadow a 3. Then go ahead and use 5-10 in the light and 1-3 in the shadow to pull out sub forms. DO NOT use 1-5 in any part of the light, or use 5-10 in any areas of the dark. Keep you edges a little softer in the shadows, a little sharper in the light, you are done. (0 is black, 10 is white) Deciding what is in shadow and light for a particular object is pretty hard in words. I will leave that up to you and that is 99 percent of the struggle."

"Hierarchal significance for any color: 1. Value 2. Saturation 3. Hue" -Craig Mullins

Observations, experiments and rants on the production and practice of digital art. The open notebooks of Joseph Francis. Artists struggle over getting correct colors, yet often neglect to get correct values, in spite of the fact that of the two, values are more important than colors at revealing an object's form.

Notice in this image demonstrates if the values are distorted or wrong,
then you cannot even tell what is the picture really is (roll #3 the 2nd pic).
On the other hand, if the value is correct no matter what color you paint in
the shape and readability most likely will maintain ( roll #2, 3rd pic)