This is a journal about technique for artists, but also for those of you out there who commission artists and then hand them a pre-made color palette and then say "USE THESE EXACT COLORS OR I WILL BEAT YOU WITHIN AN INCH OF YOUR LIFE."

I might do an illustrated example of this if anyone cares.

Anywho. Somewhere in the dozens of renditions I've done, I notice that there's...a fair amount of inconsistency between pieces. Sometimes I feel I've really nailed down the coloring for a piece, like when I do Trig's stuff, and other times I feel like a complete amateur, often when I do something for an artist I've never colored under before.

It wasn't until I started coloring my own character that I discovered the problem.

No color style is universally applicable.

Yep! What works for one art style will not explicitly work for another style! And that goes WELL beyond just how brightly or harshly or dimly or softly you shade something.

Take for example the first rendition of my sona. This was done with dim, muted colors which don't drift far away from each other. Later, I colored Unknown's version, and ended up using significantly brighter colors. I liked them so much that I went back to the first rendition and slapped them on. And you know what?

They looked terrible.

I couldn't fathom why this was. Why should it matter what the lineart looks like if the colors work well together?

But it's true. No set of colors, actual colors, is able to be applied to every art style and look good.

I hate to pick on someone for an example of this, but if you take a good long look at Docwolph's stuff, you'll notice that, despite the strong linework, and technically perfect colors and shading, the overall finished product ends up looking...stilted. The highly-polished sheen of the colors just doesn't seem to digest well with the lines.

In the same breath, some of the most notable artists on FA do wonderful coloring which have VERY little going for them on a technical level. But again, it's because the colors work with the style.

I guess what I'm saying is...artists, if you don't like how your color work is doing, change it up. You might be doing better than you think. And commissioners, let pallets be loose guidelines, not strict instructions.