Frostbite Studios

Studies - Value Simplification & Color Schemes

Added 2025-02-12 20:44:36 +0000 UTC

Hello Patrons!

Here are some old value simplification and color scheme exercises.

For the value simplification studies, I chose some reference photos off of Pinterest and challenged myself to recreate them using only 2-3 values (black, grey, white). To simplify the images, I tried to group similar values together and view the scene more as shapes than actual objects. This technique is super useful in painting complex scenes. If I ever feel like a piece is looking messy, I always start grouping my values and that usually does the trick! Vise verse, if I’m having a hard time understanding my reference, I increase the contrast to break down the values.

Landscape artists like Edgar Payne and Stapleton Kearns have great thoughts on this and have examples of how proportioning your values can enhance a composition. (If you’re an artist geek like me and interested!)

Anddd color schemes I would say I usually try and keep each piece to 3 main colors but I didn’t find this exercise revolutionary. Now that I write all this out it’s kind of a lot. Let me know if you would be interested in more in depth tutorials on this!

Cheers!

*DO NOT SHARE OUTSIDE OF PATREON*

This includes: sending in private/group messages to friends, saving to your phone, and especially posting to apps like Discord and Pinterest. Please respect our Patreon Community!