Choosing Color Palettes for Art #1 - Value & Saturation

Knowing How to Choose

It's easy to think that the only difference between colors in a color palette is their hue. But to make a really visually interesting color palette, you need to also understand how saturation and value work towards your palette, too!

In this example, you can see the difference between changing the color orange by its value, versus changing it by its saturation. 

Saturation is how vivid or intense colors are. In the left column, I made a color palette based solely on changing the saturation of the color orange. For the sake of making a usable palette, I modified the values slightly. The lightest color in the palette has the lowest saturation, so it looks almost gray. The darkest color in the palette has the highest saturation, so it looks the most bright orange. 

Value is how light or dark colors are. In the right column, I made a color palette based solely on changing the value of the color orange. The saturation stayed the same for this palette. The lightest color in the palette has the lightest value, so it's closest to white. The darkest color in the palette has the darkest value, so it's closest to black.

When these two palettes are applied to art, there are some huge differences right away. 

The saturation palette is a lot more visually interesting in terms of color. When our eyes view colors, they never look at them by themselves, but by their relation to other colors around them. When you put a light gray next to bright orange, our eyes start to view it as blue, orange's complementary color.

The drawback to making a palette exclusively through saturation is that the lack of value makes shapes difficult to differentiate, and it removes the illusion of depth.

The value palette, while less visually interesting, reads much more clearly. Value is the simplest way to express depth and shadow in art. 

So which is the best to choose?

Neither! Instead, use both together.

For my character Vernon, I used a combination of saturation and value to make his color reference.

A. For his skin, I used saturation to make his skintone, and value to define different areas. The base color of his skin is very gray, but the blush on his cheeks, nose, ears, and other areas are more saturated, which helps bring him some visual interest and look more colorful. I used a darker value to draw the lines of his face and represent areas like his eyelids and the darkest shadows in his ears. Placing a darker value on the edge of something you want to separate from the shapes around it can be a quick and easy way to imply three-dimensional space.

B. For his shawl, I used a combination of saturation and value to add the shadow color. The base color is very light and saturated as a bright yellow, so I made the shadow a little darker and a little less saturated. Limiting the shadows here to only one color helps to make the material of the shawl look shiny like silk. Making the shawl the brightest colored area helps draw focus to it, and surrounding it by less bright colors makes it look even brighter than it already is.

C. For the entirety of his outfit, I made sure to use a healthy variety of values and saturations to keep him from looking too stale. When put in grayscale, you can see that his shawl is the lightest & most saturated, his shorts and shoes are midtone, and his leggings and sleeves are the darkest & least saturated. Even adding small accents with different values and saturations can help bring more interest to your character.

Using both value and saturation in conjunction with hue can help you build a really visually interesting color palette. Here's an example of the exact same color palette, but one utilizes value and saturation and the other doesn't.

Thanks for reading and I hope this was helpful! Part 2 is coming soon ✨