Creating atmosphere through colouring shadows.

I decided to look at the Star Wars Dark Empire Comic Book series. The art has a unique watercolor style that creates dynamic blends of colour to create unique lighting schemes and atmospheres throughout the story. I think this is best utilized in the way the art uses the mix of colour schemes to create interesting shadows. This is best shown in the panel to the left. Where the main colour is a light salmon and purple, only to colour the shadows in a saturated blue. I think this approach to colouring shadows can be extremely effective, as shown in the page on the right. But I do think it can be a bit too garish at times and overpower the design and atmosphere of the image. I decided to take the panel with the blue shadows and fill it in solid black. I then put both images together and held a poll on my instagram asking which one looked better. It was overwhelmingly the black shadows that were voted better. So, my edit of the original art was arguably the more appealing image. So, I do think the colors can be a bit too bright for the shadows and it can come out a bit much.

Going forward, I do want to try and incorporate this approach to colouring, as I think it can create a very striking colour design, especially in a fantasy story.