- Starting with grays
and then working toward color
is my favorite way of bringing color
into an illustration or a layout.
And I use this method of colored development
whenever I can because it prioritizes
the critical importance of value
within any color scheme.
So, value, that's the lightness or darkness of a hue.
And it's the value structure in the colors
within an image or a layout that establish visual clarity.
Without good value structure,
things get mushy and confusing really fast.
So, whenever possible, I start my search
for good looking color schemes
by focusing exclusively on value structure.
And I do this by working only with grays
until things are looking good
and then, and only then, do I turn my attention to color.
So let's see what this process looks like
with a real world project.
So, I'm in Illustrator and I've used
an imported thumbnail sketch to guide my creation
of an illustration of a steaming eight ounce
double americano.
And I've carefully shaded everything
with six values of gray.
You can see my gray swatches off to the right.
And we're going to be using that in just a minute.
Looking at the illustration,
notice how its value differences are strongest
within the coffee cup.
This emphatic range of dark to light values
helps draw attention to that part of the image.
And the look has been kept quieter elsewhere
by limiting value differences.
And since the image looks good in grays,
it should also look good in color
as long as the colors that I apply have
the same values as the grays.
So let's color this thing.
I'm going to start by assembling
a triatic palette of color choices
based on the yellow, orange,
the blue, green,
and the red, violet slices of the color wheel.
I'll click on these colors from within
the color wheel that I've pasted into my document
and then, I'm going to go to the pull down menu
in the Swatches panel, and tell it to add these colors
to the panel.
From this point, here's what my routine's
going to look like.
I'll click-drag a copy of one of my gray swatches.
And then, I'm going to color it
by clicking on one of my triatic hues
in the Swatches panel.
Next I'll double-click on a swatch at the top of the panel
to bring up the color picker.
And once here, I can click within this panel
to come up with all different versions of my color.
See these two rectangles near the top?
The bottom one is the current color,
And the top one is whatever I've changed into.
I'll aim for a color that's about the same value
as the gray square that I copied a few seconds ago.
I'll hit Okay, and then visually compare
the value of my new color with it's gray neighbor
by squinting at them.
Squinting limits the amount of color
that reaches our brain.
And it helps us focus only on value.
It's a neat trick.
I need to make the color a little lighter,
so, back to the color picker.
And there.
I'm going to keep doing this kind of thing
until I have at least one or two versions of each color
that matches values with each of my gray swatches.
In the end, I'll have a set of color choices
that look something like this.
Now we're going to color the image.
I'll start by selecting a mid-value gray
from within the illustration.
Then I'll go to Select, Same, Appearance.
And all the same grays will be selected.
After that, I'll click on the eye-dropper tool
and click on one of the colors that's next to our gray
over to the right,
which is also selected when we used the Menu command.
What about this color?
Or this?
I'll keep doing this with all my grays
and try out different colors
and changing my mind here and there.
And maybe modifying a color or two as I go.
And I can also break the rules if I want.
Just select an individual element of the illustration
and color it however I like.
But mostly, I'm selecting groups of grays
and swapping them with colors of the same value.
And I'll do this until I end up with something
I'm really happy with.
And there you go, that's my favorite way
of coloring an illustration or layout.
It's a method that firmly establishes a piece's
value structure before colors are brough
into the picture.
Give it a try sometime.
I think you're going to like it.