Found a color palette trick from an old forum post that saved my portraits

I kept struggling with skin tones looking muddy in my digital paintings, so I tried this tip about sampling colors from a real photo reference instead of guessing. Made a palette of just 5 warm tones and 5 cool ones from a portrait I took at a park last Sunday, and my latest piece actually looks alive for once. Has anyone else found a weird shortcut that totally changed how they pick colors?

3 comments

3 Comments

fisher.thomas13d ago

Three color checker cards in my drawer collecting dust right now because I'd rather stare at a photo of my dog's nose for twenty minutes trying to figure out if it's more purple or brown. Started using that sampling trick last year and my portraits stopped looking like they were made of play-doh that got left in the sun. My buddy swears by the cards and his paintings look like a highlighter factory exploded on a mannequin so I'll stick with my park photo method. The real game changer was realizing I don't need fifty shades of anything just five warm and five cool.

walker.julia14d ago

Wait, didn't you hear about that whole thing where some famous painter swears by using a color checker card in their reference photos? I saw a video about it and it basically lets you match real world colors exactly without guessing. Your trick with sampling from real photos is solid though, I started doing that after a buddy told me about it and it fixed all my muddy skin issues too. Sometimes the simplest stuff like just looking at what colors actually appear together in real life makes the biggest difference, right?

zara_sanchez14d ago

Yeah I hear you @walker.julia but I actually see it the other way around. For me those color checker cards feel like overkill when you can just train your eye by sampling from real photos over time. Like yeah they give you exact matches but you miss out on learning why certain colors work together which is way more useful in the long run honestly.