Color Theory Quickie 1

So, I am going to try and do one of these each day on my lunch break. We'll see how it goes.

I really need to develop my color theory, and the way I employ color, since I am pretty sure I'm terrible at it, and most of the time I have pieces that succeed because of dumb luck, or a limited palette accidentally (which is basically dumb luck). Once I get back from vacation next week (yay florida keys!) I am probably going to be taking a painting class here in town, so I can actually learn some traditional techniques. I'll be posting the stuff up with my thoughts as I do them, I hope I learn things!

On creation: So, this was kind of a new technique I employed. I started out with a super loose/rough grayscale, just to kind of plan things out. Once the composition (which I wouldn't call amazing or anything) was in place, I made a new multiply layer and laid in my base color for the whole piece, which was a dark blue. I wanted the image to be pretty cool, so the bluish/greenish tones dominate most of the piece, other than a bit of orange lighting, which I used since it is the complement of the blues/greens. The main thing I tried to pay attention to, was keeping my colors pretty pure from the color wheel, mostly just lightening and darkening them with white/black. Also, any contact colors (like, skin for example), I made sure to work up from the blueish wash that was over the whole piece, so it would all have a good consistency (which I usually have problems with).

Edit: I may rework this for the first episode, as its kind of a scene in it, but I hadn't planned it out yet. Could just be a shot from Sol's perspective... is that really how I want him to look? I need to do some mockups of this dude. I even forgot to draw glasses on him, sheesh.