Unpopular opinion: my digital portraits looked flat until I stopped using pure black for shading

Honestly, for like two years all my character art had these harsh, muddy shadows because I kept picking #000000 from the color picker. Last month, I forced myself to only shade with dark blues and purples for a whole project. The difference after just three pieces was insane, the forms actually look round now. It's a basic color theory thing I just never tried. Anyone else have a simple trick that fixed a major art flaw for them?

2 comments

2 Comments

tessa_roberts11mo ago

Yeah that's a game changer. I started using dark browns for skin tones instead of gray.

finley9391mo ago

Wait is gray even an option for skin. That just sounds wrong. Dark browns make way more sense. Not sure this is the big revelation people are acting like it is.