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*DISCLAIMER this is neither 100% fool-proof or my own theory, it's an adapted explanation based off of kiwinuptuo's tutorial.

You're welcome to save the images and spread the idea around, I don't own it, but I'd personally prefer that you don't repost the images themselves, as they take a long time to make and I would like to remain credited for that much effort at least. It's probably important that you create your own visual examples anyway, I wouldn't want the whole internet to suddenly appear in only my own limited and over saturated examples XD

A tl;dr version of what this guide/reference is trying to help you achieve:

Basically, I've wanted to make some kind of reference/explanation for people about my approach to colour for several years now and I'm procrastinating like crazy today so here you go. It's actually something I think would transform art for many people, because the single most common mistake I see in digital (although it can happen just as easily in traditional) art, is that people go to the colour picker, and only pick a colour within the initial square box area, which only allows you to pick something darker, lighter or more and less saturated. However, this results in colouring like the first example above, and so even if someone has a well contrasted painting, it will look extremely flat and washed out to the human eye, which perceives colour as an incredibly intricate and well, quite honestly, very colourful way. It's also a result of reflecting colour but don't worry about getting to crazy about that, and just have a look through this theory first. It's much easier to build on this later.

What we essentially need to do is, add the black or white and saturation from that area, but ALSO move the rainbow spectrum slider to the warm or cold neighbour, depending on whether you are trying to add shadow or highlight (typically I go with warm neighbour for highlight and cool neighbour for shadow, but I'm sure you could play around and possibly get interesting effects going the other way, but maybe after you're comfortable with how I've done it here).

What may become perhaps upsetting for some people here is that my explanation actually places some colours traditionally explained as cool by traditional systems, as warm, and vice versa, but hear me out on my logic here. I'm talking cool in relation to the base colour, and warm in relation to the base colour, not whether the hue being picked is essentially warm or cool itself.

Therefore, yellow is the warm neighbour hue in relation to orange as the base colour, BUT, red is then the cool neighbour hue in relation to orange. It might sound nuts, but keep following along or if the rambling isn't hitting the right spot, check out the visual examples.

These were saved as three separate images because I personally had to save the original tutorial image and stare at it for about a year before I finally had my "lightbulb" moment (this either means it's a tricky theory, it doesn't translate well in tutorials or that I'm derp). Therefore I wanted to provide an explanation that might take out some of the mystery, and show you how to go about practically using the theory, plus was in a format you could easily have sitting on your computer for when you need to refer to it more than once, because I certainly did.

Bare in mind that you will need to actually practice going through the action itself, rather than just rely on using these examples forever, because you will never be able to represent all your art just through these alone, plus they are probably way too saturated to be of help to most people whose styles aren't that over the top. So basically I'm saying these are not meant to be "pre picked pallettes" - THEY ARE ARE EXAMPLES OF THE CONCEPT, it's really important that you can learn to mimic the idea but pick your own colours, not just colour pick back off of this chart over and over.

You'll also have to keep in mind that, even just hue shifting alone will not utterly transform your work all way from beginner to perfect pro, as there is still the need to consider reflected colours, especially depending on surface material. Therefore these will only form a base of an item/area, and then you will need to consider going in possibly on another layer, to add in colours that reflect the nearby colours, not just from a light source either, but even fabric to fabric, or skin to fabric etc, But even if you just start with this approach, it should make a HUGE difference to the appearance of your colouring.

And please dudes, some of you will probably know a way better, more sophisticated, more traditionally accepted way of approaching colour and that's rad, but I personally saw a need both for myself and many others around me, to have a theory that could quickly be learnt and applied to bring up the level of our work when traditional explanations and theories aren't clicking or are proving too difficult for us as learners. It is not intended to replace anything your own educators may be trying to explain, but rather provide an alternative for many people who haven't had success with existing explanations. Just don't freak out because some people do learn differently and the new approach might be of great help to others.

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

*DISCLAIMER this is neither 100% fool-proof or my own theory, it's an adapted explanation based off of kiwinuptuo's tutorial.

You're welcome to save the images and spread the idea around, I don't own it, but I'd personally prefer that you don't repost the images themselves, as they take a long time to make and I would like to remain credited for that much effort at least. It's probably important that you create your own visual examples anyway, I wouldn't want the whole internet to suddenly appear in only my own limited and over saturated examples XD

A tl;dr version of what this guide/reference is trying to help you achieve:

Basically, I've wanted to make some kind of reference/explanation for people about my approach to colour for several years now and I'm procrastinating like crazy today so here you go. It's actually something I think would transform art for many people, because the single most common mistake I see in digital (although it can happen just as easily in traditional) art, is that people go to the colour picker, and only pick a colour within the initial square box area, which only allows you to pick something darker, lighter or more and less saturated. However, this results in colouring like the first example above, and so even if someone has a well contrasted painting, it will look extremely flat and washed out to the human eye, which perceives colour as an incredibly intricate and well, quite honestly, very colourful way. It's also a result of reflecting colour but don't worry about getting to crazy about that, and just have a look through this theory first. It's much easier to build on this later.

What we essentially need to do is, add the black or white and saturation from that area, but ALSO move the rainbow spectrum slider to the warm or cold neighbour, depending on whether you are trying to add shadow or highlight (typically I go with warm neighbour for highlight and cool neighbour for shadow, but I'm sure you could play around and possibly get interesting effects going the other way, but maybe after you're comfortable with how I've done it here).

What may become perhaps upsetting for some people here is that my explanation actually places some colours traditionally explained as cool by traditional systems, as warm, and vice versa, but hear me out on my logic here. I'm talking cool in relation to the base colour, and warm in relation to the base colour, not whether the hue being picked is essentially warm or cool itself.

Therefore, yellow is the warm neighbour hue in relation to orange as the base colour, BUT, red is then the cool neighbour hue in relation to orange. It might sound nuts, but keep following along or if the rambling isn't hitting the right spot, check out the visual examples.

These were saved as three separate images because I personally had to save the original tutorial image and stare at it for about a year before I finally had my "lightbulb" moment (this either means it's a tricky theory, it doesn't translate well in tutorials or that I'm derp). Therefore I wanted to provide an explanation that might take out some of the mystery, and show you how to go about practically using the theory, plus was in a format you could easily have sitting on your computer for when you need to refer to it more than once, because I certainly did.

Bare in mind that you will need to actually practice going through the action itself, rather than just rely on using these examples forever, because you will never be able to represent all your art just through these alone, plus they are probably way too saturated to be of help to most people whose styles aren't that over the top. So basically I'm saying these are not meant to be "pre picked pallettes" - THEY ARE ARE EXAMPLES OF THE CONCEPT, it's really important that you can learn to mimic the idea but pick your own colours, not just colour pick back off of this chart over and over.

You'll also have to keep in mind that, even just hue shifting alone will not utterly transform your work all way from beginner to perfect pro, as there is still the need to consider reflected colours, especially depending on surface material. Therefore these will only form a base of an item/area, and then you will need to consider going in possibly on another layer, to add in colours that reflect the nearby colours, not just from a light source either, but even fabric to fabric, or skin to fabric etc, But even if you just start with this approach, it should make a HUGE difference to the appearance of your colouring.

And please dudes, some of you will probably know a way better, more sophisticated, more traditionally accepted way of approaching colour and that's rad, but I personally saw a need both for myself and many others around me, to have a theory that could quickly be learnt and applied to bring up the level of our work when traditional explanations and theories aren't clicking or are proving too difficult for us as learners. It is not intended to replace anything your own educators may be trying to explain, but rather provide an alternative for many people who haven't had success with existing explanations. Just don't freak out because some people do learn differently and the new approach might be of great help to others.