Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Coolorus and a Sketchdump!

I have a distant memory of colour selection not being a problem in photoshop. It was before I tried Color Picker; as I hopped on that bandwagon to solve that problem. It might just have been me being slower at digital painting and needing time to look at the colour palette to figure out where I was going.

Possibly, this led to a Van Halen-esque approach of using 'that mad colour wheel nobody uses' in Photoshop as I've been told. Personally, I want to see all the hues in a wheel, and the values in the bar. Saturation can be controlled between the two; and it makes for quick selection. 

I like darting between colours, with hues defined as a course rather than an absolute value. 'More towards red' would come into my head a lot quicker than 'CHARTREUSE!'...if ever. 

So the faster I got, and the more I knew what I wanted the more colour selection in PS seemed to really bog me down. I'd played with painter, and coveted its colour wheel with envious eyes (and slowly began to draw my plans). The sliders were tiny and fiddly, so they weren't much help. Only much later did I properly get the hang of HSB sliders, but still it felt cold and detached. 

At some point I broke, and joined the great plug-in hunt. Color Picker was excellent in CS3, but I've found later versions to be buggy as hell. Kuler never felt right, too much clicking, and felt like the digital equivalent of getting caught in sellotape; sure it does a thing, but right now it's just messing me up and slowing me down. 
Last night I got Coolorus, and so far it seems to do the job perfectly. Variable displays of colour wheels, with the complimentary/split complimentary etc add ons in there for the interested, and missing that feeling of wrestling with the UI that color picker had. No bugs so far, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled.



Between personal commitments today I've been knocking out little tests. I've been looking at artists like Pascal Campion and wanting to capture that speed and fun and this really feels like a step in the right direction.  Definitely bringing the fun in! More painting/studies, more life drawing and working zoomed out  are on the menu too. 

Oh that reminds me, I have a tiger from last week to put up! Ref'd from a photo I took (so it's totes legit XP) I'd noticed in my sketchbook that I tend to draw things at the same relative scale to my field of vision and deliberately  avoided that in this. I love doing studies like this because it really pokes you in the weak parts, and helps you round out a bit more. 

The dinosaur was from yesterday, and the black and white thing was really getting me in a funk. A quick crop later, and I add it to my pile of doodles :) 











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