posted
This is something that has been helpful to me when I have to paint complex pictures. Some may be laughing at me for this, but that's ok
I really don't consider myself an artist but people bring me the weirdest things to paint, so I need all the help I can get.
I usually work from a digital picture or find one as a reference. So when there is something like a face for example, I choose a light, dark and medium coloured area of the picture then I zoom in until the pixels are about 1/4 inch on my screen. I choose one pixel, zoom in some more, and mix that colour, which is now much easier to identify. I do the same with the other areas until I have three different colours to start the painting with: main colour, shades and highlights.
You can't really get an exact match to a colour on the screen but it still speeds things up for me as it increases my chances of getting the painting "right" the first time. Anybody else ever done that?
posted
I've never done it, but in this trade, the more tricks you have up your sleeve, the better. This is another one.
At one point, years ago, I wanted to get a precision digital scale, something that could weigh down to one drop of paint. Then, record the amounts of paint used for certain colors, and write the formulas down, along with a smear of the paint. Probably more time consuming than it's worth.
-------------------- James Donahue Donahue Sign Arts 1851 E. Union Valley Rd. Seymour TN. (865) 577-3365 brushman@nxs.net
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for lunch, Benjamin Franklin Posts: 2057 | From: 1033 W. Union Valley Rd. | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Wow Lotti...what a great tip. It's so obvious now that you are mentioning it, but I've never thought about doing that.
I've been matching letter colors with a close-up of the fill flyout in Corel...That works pretty good...even tho the colors on the screen are so much more vibrant. Zooming in on colors in a picture sure makes sense. I'm going to try that.
-------------------- Jeff Ogden 8727 NE 68 Terr. Gainesville FL, 32609 Posts: 2138 | From: 8827 NE 68 Terr Gainesville Fl 32609 | Registered: Aug 2002
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It's not all that time consuming. It just depends on how exacting you want to be. I used to work in a shop that had a scale down to .001 for ink mixing. Using that system, once a color was found it would ALWAYS look the same, every run, every time. Worth it if you have the client base for it.
Mark
-------------------- Mark Sheflo Renton, Washington A-Squared Signs, LLC Posts: 145 | From: Renton, Washington | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Don't forget that most of the high end sign programs and Illustrator can "search" and return the closest match to a color library for you. Plug in how close you want it and in our case with pantone solid library, it's an easy mix from there. (with a scale) We use if for the same method, to get the primary mixing colors when doing a specialty color.
-------------------- Ron Helliar Marysville Sign 11807 51st Ave. NE Marysville, WA 98271 (360) 659-4856 Posts: 263 | From: Marysville, WA USA | Registered: Feb 1999
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. — Charles Mingus Posts: 6724 | From: Mendocino, CA. USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Lol, Rick, I actually have been scraping paint off the screen because the static will suck it right off a mixing stick if you try to hold that anywhere near the screen
Of course this isn't a scientific method to arrive at a certain Pantone colour, but try zooming in on a face and you'll know what I mean: There you will find surprisingly dark orange tones, pinkish white and (gasp) dark, dark rust tones. Not at how I think it should look like.
Here's the point: I have a preconceived idea of what skin colour (as an example) looks like, but the bigger my painting (think murals) the less I can rely on on those ideas.
If I start out with the colours I have isolated in the image I have a better chance that it will look right from a distance. As a sign painter we can not paint the way a fine artist would, we have to think distance and that means you have to use contrasts that may look unatural from close up. I always have to bend my mind around that.
But the main reason is that by looking at one colour at a time, I can much easier figure out how to match it. I used this method first when I had to paint from a black and white picture and decided to use sepia colours instead. I wasn't at all sure how to mix them, so I found myself a nice sepia photo on Google, isolated and mixed several different tones which I used accordingly for the gray tones of the photograph.
posted
COLORTONES color selector and formula guide (from 1991) Works for bulletin and lettering enamels. We bought it from someone on the bullboard. You will have to find a used copy.
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