Reflection

It's one thing to read about color theory and see examples of the effect of color perception in art tutorials, but quite another to actually employ the techniques. I was really quite surprised when I first got into digital art and tried to study the colour compositions of some of my favourite artworks by pulling them into Photoshop and using the color picker tool on them. It reminded me of an old friend who would shade their drawings, even colorful, bright drawings, with greys and blacks and other colorless choices to horrendous effect - it seemed to me that I had also been painting blindly without carefully considering how to pick colours that would compose a harmonious picture, rather than disjoint pieces each seemingly with their own personal sun in the top-right corner. Seeing a walkthrough of the process and examining some real life phenomenon, it just drives home the point harder that colour can be a really subtle point to nail down - choosing the color in the color wheel or color gradient can feel completely different from choosing it with the context of the painting in the background.