Color Practice by me :)

[Archsider]

Colored by me
lineart : clayton-henry.deviantart.com/


Colored by me
lineart by carlosgomezartist.deviantart.com


lines by vagnerskyblue.deviantart.com/
colors : me


lines by guinnessyde.deviantart.com


lines by : zurdom.deviantart.com/
flats : xganglyx.deviantart.com
colors : moi

[Archsider]

I have been practicing coloring for some time
a few criticisms would be nice

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Archsider

I have been practicing coloring for some time
a few criticisms would be nice

Be careful what you ask for. You might well receive it.

Your attempts at manipulating or emulating lighting are killing your work.

On the one hand, I want to love that Cyclops at the bottom. His costume has a rich sheen, an almost velvety quality, to it. But, I don't love it.

I look at Magneto standing behind him. No love. None, whatsoever.

Yet, you're really not tapping into broad swaths of the neon range, as many budding colorists do. But, as I look across the various pages of colored samples here in this thread (as well as sorting through numerous pages of your deviantArt gallery, the thing that keeps coming back to me is the lighting (or attempted lighting).

The end result is that the coloring comes across as being largely lifeless. There's no real visual punch. No real visual energy of substance coming through from the coloring.

Your Green Lantern at the top might as well be holding a bouquet of flowers. Granted, the art, itself, didn't provide this Green Lantern with any epic utilization of his ring's energy. Nonetheless, it's almost fading to yellow, the anti-thesis of the Green Lantern Corps. The light outlining of the energy is obliterating its visual impact. Rather than raw energy, we are treated to a pastel Lantern.

Superman might be the Man of Steel, but your coloring of him transforms him into nothing special, visually speaking. Once more, the play on lighting, that whitish vertical swath running across the blue and the big red "S" visually neuter this Man of Tomorrow. The blah of a background doesn't help matters any. Is the circus in town? The visual circus certainly is.

Even the women - they have nice curves. They are anatomically blessed - except for their faces. The black body suit is looking pretty good, but even still, even with that much cleavage on display, it's a visual "no sell." Again, the lighting is the villain, here The coloring of the big girl's breasts isn't bad - but light, light, and more light draw the eye away into a nether void of distraction. Look at her face? What do we see? Light bursting off her cheeks. What the Hell??

The Spidergirl's hair has some visual vibrancy to it - but, then the eye gets drawn down to that pale ass costume of hers. What happened? The lighting washed the colors out of her costume. Either that, or maybe she used bleach when she washed it. The colors of her costume didn't hold up in the wash - and neither do they hold up in the visual wash, either.

When it comes to backgrounds and environments surrounding your characters, your coloring is visually muted. It's as bland as the bland and faded costumes of your characters. Plus, look at the blonde girl's hair in the panel she shares with Magneto and Cyclops. Her hair looks dingy. Even Ben Grimm can't command visual respect, due to his skin being treated to an overdone visual wash job.

Until and unless you redress your obsession with lighting, not much else that you do with your coloring will help.

[Archsider]

Originally Posted by Charles

Be careful what you ask for. You might well receive it..

wow
so many pointers , Thank you very much for these ,
and yes criticism IS useful ,
people(/friends) saying "good job/nice color" will never help me improve ~
I wont even know what I am doing wrong~
I'll go through all the points ~
thankyou for taking the time to comment ~ :') ^^~

[Robert_S]

Charles drew my attention to the things he saw wrong and I agree, now that I see it.

Specular lighting is too much on everything.

Specular Lighting

Specular lighting is the bright, shiny spots that appear on smoother surfaces. Usually they are the color of the light, but occasionally will take on a component of the material they are reflecting off of. Specular lighting can be kind of tricky to perform. This is because unlike diffuse lighting, specular lighting moves around, depending on where the viewer is, as well as where the light is. The math for it is a little more complicated.

I'd say to tone it down and let the tone of the material take over more. Highlight, instead of lighting. For the two women, they are actually faced away from the moon, yet they have a high degree of specular lighting that shouldn't be there. The specular washes out the color.

The differences between the specular and diffuse is too delineated. They should be more gradient.

[Archsider]

yes , now that I look at my colors , I put too much shiny highlights on everything ,
thank you for the advice will keep them in mind

[thedanhale]

I think you have some good techniques going on, I think just focusing on your flat colors and then not making the rendering too extreme. I really like the Thing on the comic page and your use of graphic shapes/selections (don't use the soft brush!). On the comic page I think just taking down the brightest highlights on Cyclops and Magneto would help a lot. Also making the color around the panels a little brighter, if the artist wanted it dark they would have blacked it out. Study the colors of Marte Gracia and Dave Stewart

[Archsider]

Thank you for the advice
will definitely look into their works , I am a fan of Marte Gracia, I have to check out Dave Stewart