“That space, that happiness had a color: rose-pink. The pink of the sky at sunset, a vast, transparent, faraway pink whose absurd apparition represented my life. I was vast, transparent and faraway, and my absurd life represented the sky. Living was painting: coloring myself with the pink of the inexplicably suspended light…”
César Aira
COLOR
Like every element of illustration, color should serve a purpose. On the most surface level, a color illustration has a better chance of attracting attention. On narrative and conceptual levels color can help to convey the atmosphere or contradict the viewer’s expectations.
The number of colors in use works similarly—the fewer colors you have, the more significance each of them carries. A B&W drawing with a single spot color can be largely defined by that one color. A couple of tones work differently—their primary relationship is with each other. Each additional color complicates this relationship, either making it more involved or more unfocused.
ASSIGNMENT 3: COLOR VARIATIONS
Pick a photo from your phone's camera roll or from the internet and make three illustrations based on it—one in black & white, one with a spot color, and one in three colors.
It's preferable if you use your own photo, but if you choose someone else's, please make sure you change your illustration significantly enough to avoid accidental plagiarism. Even with your photos, try to steer away from using it as direct reference, and instead interpret it in a way that makes a successful illustration. Study the play of light and dark, shapes and shadows, and see how they can be drawn differently in three ways.
Focus on the concept for the thumbnails and try to come up with ideas that would work both in B&W and in color. For the sketches you can pick one of the ideas and do several rough color mock-ups. For the final you can use the same linework and apply different coloring three times, or you can have three different treatments, if the different color treatment calls for a change in drawing.
As with the previous assignment, it should essentially be the same illustration, done in three variations, rather than three separate illustrations. The change of medium may suggest stylistic or compositional shifts, but those should only happen naturally in the process of the creation.
Variation 1. Black & White. You may use grayscale, screentones or ink washes, but remember that the piece will be reproduced at a small size and should read clearly at any distance.
Variation 2. Black, with one spot color. Pick a color that contributes to the black layer and fits the concept. You may change your black layer, remove bits of it, replace areas with a spot color or delete it completely.
Variation 3. Any three colors except black (and very very very very very dark colors that may as well be black).
Format: 4x4” each, 3 in total.
References for various techniques and applications of color