The area of an object that is in front of a light source is called highlight, and the area that is hidden from the light source is called shadow. Selecting a region changes the language and/or content on object is made of pigments, which define its color. Keep a color wheel handy to determine what the best complementary colors are for your next project. If you choose a color on the opposite side of the wheel, it gives whatever you color the most substantial contrast while it remains pleasing to the eye.

This is what’s called a complementary color scheme. And then picking your primary color that is opposite on the color wheel,” says Newman. “With illustration, you can definitely get away with taking the analogous color palette for your secondary colors. Luckily, digital illustration doesn’t have the same properties as traditional art, so it allows some flexibility in how you use the color palette you choose. For instance, yellow-green, yellow, and yellow-red are all vivid colors, each with their complexity, but when used together in a painting, it can look like a primary yellow. “There are mixed opinions with this approach because it’s very easy to have a calming color palette, but then you also have very low contrast, and all the colors blend together,” Newman says.

This is a simple method to develop a color system, but it’s not without its flaws. You’ll need to have the proper contrast, so most illustrators choose one dominant color, along with a second supporting color and a third color to be used as an accent or highlight. These are the four basic colors of ink used in printing color images.ĭo you want colors that flatter each other? Choose colors that are located right next to each other on the color wheel.

However, if printing is your ultimate goal, digital artists and designers can use, or convert files to, CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). The light source of a monitor or screen can create any color you can imagine with the combination of different shades of red, green, and blue. Typically, print artists use the RYB color model, as it’s best suited to illustrating the correlation between physical colors in inks and paints in the color mixing process.įor designers or artists who work in the digital medium, the RGB color palette is most typically used, as those colors are found in the photoreceptors of the eyes. There are two types of wheels: one based on the primary colors of RYB (red, yellow, and blue) and one based in RGB color (red, green, and blue). Arranged in the order the colors appear in the light spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), Sir Isaac Newton created the first color wheel in 1666. It’s the standard tool for viewing and understanding color combinations. The color wheel represents all visible colors.

Color wheel with primary colors