Hi All,

This is maybe more of a artistic question rather than inkscape specific, but I am trying to set up a nice color palette for game art, especially for doing landscape items (rocks, foliage, wood tones, etc).

I am curious how some of the more accomplished artists out there select colors.

After working with the standard color palette, I am trying to define a limited number of colors to try to get some uniformity in my art. When examining the components of the standard colors, I noticed that within a color range, the saturation seems to be uniform. Is this a "rule" needed to achieve harmonious colors?

I am thinking of having just three colors for each... um... "thing", so for the leaves of a particular tree, I was going to have a highlight, mid-tone, and shadow as defined colors. When comparing the standard colors that seem to best match natural foliage, I picked one that seemed to best match and then just reduced the saturation by 20% to get my mid-tone. But for the highlight and shadow - do you usually adjust only the value to make it darker or lighter, or also adjust the color a little. In the default color palette there is an actual shift in the color (e.g. the pre-defined slightly lighter green is not just the next one down with a little more brightness, it's a slightly different color. Are there rules for how to pick create highlights/shadows once you have a mid-tone you like?

Any, sorry if this is a bit esoteric, I am trying to improve my artwork, and think my color selection needs some work.

Thanks!

There are countless tutorials on colour theory on the web.
Both for real and digital painting.

I remember watching a tutorial on youtube, that gave the advice to shift the colourwheel a bit into a cooler hue for shadows and then take down the lightness.

You can also work with blendmodes. For example bevelling on texteffects is traditionally done with Screen for the higlight and Multiply for the shadows.

Recently i have worked with the trick to desaturate the image im working on (with a black layer on top, set to the Saturation blendmode), because its easier to judge values on a black and white image.