Applying Color Theory to Paint a House

Introduction

For this series of blog post around applying color theory, I want to take the reader along the very stages that I go through when creating an illustration. This will enable to reader to see how the various art theories and principles are being applied so the readers can move in a direction where they can manifest these principles on their own. With this illustration specifically I wanted to delve into color theory and highlight the importance of color modulation. Going forward with this illustration I will deliberately stay as close to the grays to strip away the saturation that will distract the reader from the point of this blog post. This can be seen in the example below where I will remain in the bounding box outlined in teal.

This will allow us to see truly how much of an impact color modulation will have with regards to the light and shadows, as well as how it can impact the composition of the illustration. 

A Simple house

Before we can begin to delve into  color theory we need a simple sketch that will server as a starting point.

I then begin to wash in the color of the background to establish a tone for the illustration going forward. It is preferable to keep things near the grays starting off to allow for the movement of color.

Exploratory colors for the house are being laid down as a starting point. It is still subject to change since it is so early.

More colors of the house is filled in as I move forward with the house.

After looking at various references of houses I decided that the walls of the house needed to be more white.

The sky of the illustration has been painted as noon daylight with some clouds that need to be worked on in the backrground. Now that we have the lighting scenario set up we can begin to determing how light will be interacting with the house.

After some time I have decided how the light will be interacting with the house. If you noticed with the white walls I have made the colors move more towards the yellow color of the sunlight hitting it.

Stripping away the lines briefly, we can see how the different values if the house are standing out on their own providing the much needed volume. When dealing with the windows the glass will reflect light back at this view with a diminished intensity. The sky will be hitting the window and reflecting that light back onto the viewer. Knowing that we can then mimic the hue of the sky seen above the house then be sure to make it darker than its light source to get a good enough effect.

For the purposes of this blog I think this is a good enough point to stop and talk about the various aspects of the illustration and how they relate to applying color theory.

Applyling Color Theory

When painting light it is important to have a clear distinction of what is light and what is dark. In a simple value based context it can be observed in the image below where I have marked what I would consider the light side and the shadow side. When turning this image to greyscale, we can then sample the average light and average shadow of the walls of the house we notice a distinct gap between in the image below. 

This same idea can be applied to the color hues when dealing with light and shadows. We can observe the severe difference in color hue with the images below. The light side has a yellow hue while sticking to the greys, while the dark side will have a green hue. It should be noted that the hue within the shadow side will have a larger range of fluxuation with the hue since there is no direct light there to bully it. Other parts of the wall have been painted with more bluer hues due to the reflected light coming from the blue sky. Since there are trees and vegetation around I can get away with adding some green in there. 

Adjusting Composition with Color Theory

Much of color theory involves studying the movement of colors, how the colors in light move to dark. This principle can also be applied to composition in illustration. Remember earlier how I mentioned that I deliberatly kept the colors unsaturated. When working with a focal point that we want to draw attention to with composition all we now have to do is make sure its colors are more saturated than the rest of the illustration.

Take this example below and notice how your eyes are now being drawn to the door.

Repeating this example again we can see your eyes are now being drawn to the windows of the illustration.

As the eyes move closer to the focal point, we observe that the colors will become more saturated. By breaking the rule that I established earlier I have managed to create enough contrast that the eyes will be drawn to the focal point.