Color Theory isn't Clicking

[Moriah]

I just don't get color theory at all and it seems like if I think about it anymore my brain will begin smoking!

Every book/tutorial about color seems to disagree with the others, so I haven't had much luck with reading about it. I found that Color theory 101 thread on here but frankly I can't understand it (the thread is too technical for me).

I do color studies from life but it seems like I keep on doing the same things over and over and that I am not actually learning anything anymore.

I'm pretty sure that a lot of people are in the same boat as me.

Does anyone out there have any exercises or ideas on how to learn about color and use it effectively?

Thanks :]

[rattsang]

first you need to get rid of all your preconceived notions about color e.g. grass is green, sky is blue, white paint is white. next you need to realize and accept that all colors are relative to the colors that surround them(and local color is always influenced by the color of the light). now you can start to see with your eyes rather than your brain. my eyes tell me that in orange light grass can be orange-yellow even though my brain perceives it as green because of the colors that surround it. putting green for grass in a strongly orange light equals fail, but your brain tells you it must be correct. rely more then on your eyes and learn from what you see, analyze and study it will come slowly but surly.

[J Wilson]

What part of color theory are you most interested in learning? Rattsang is right on the money for recognizing color and using it in a scene.

If your problem is mixing color (such as with actual paint) then you'd need to learn more about the color wheel and the thought process behind it.

If it's more a question of color as it relates to composition and color schemes then that is another issue again where you want to learn why some colors work well against other colors depending on your goal for an image.

There are other things to consider with color as well, such emotional impact and theories regarding which colors promote which reactions. At times all of these factors COULD be at odds with each other, and it's easy to see why it could be confusing. Color is a huge part of art (and everything we see) so it's not surprising that there are a lot of elements to a discussion on color.

If you need more specific information then we need to know which area of color you feel most lost in. When you say you are doing color studies, what exactly are you doing, and where do you feel that things aren't working out?

[SoufMeng]

I think its also very important to stress that color is not really something that happens on its own and that it works (almost) always in association with value.
The good thing about that is if you (impersonal) are bad at both you can practice value alone by painting grayscales and use what you learnt from that when painting with colors.

Not only there are several kinds of arts demonstrating that using only black and white can result in very strong and succesful images but it also seems to me that while one can get away with poor color choices, more often, a poor control of values is really damaging.

[Zirngibism]

To follow what S.M said, value is actually 90% of a work, with only the remaining % being the color OF that value.

Sometimes, I see people who have a good observational knowledge of color, but not of value.

So I agree, make sure your perception and rendition of black and white is spot on before you concern yourself too much with the color part.

(This is something I struggle with in my own work)

[GaussianRaider]

I think S.M's suggestion is golden, if you are having trouble try focusing on value studies!

[Sonaj]

Hi Moria

I think you already got some good advice. I would like to add the following: yes it is quite technical in the beginning. But if you really want to create realism, lighting and similar effects in a painting, especially from imagination, you will have to learn at least some of these technical aspects. Don't expect to understand it after reading one tutorial. As for exercises, landscape paintings from life are very good for getting a better grip on colour.

A very well written site you should also look up is briggsy's dimensions of colour

here is a link (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=112049)

Good thing is that if you have any specific questions, briggsy seems like a nice guy and will most propably answer it in the discussion thread here

Good luck

[karmiclychee]

As a fellow color moron, I can tell you this: you need a tool.

Training wheels: (http://www.dickblick.com/products/artists-color-wheel/)
http://cdn.dickblick.com/items/049/51/04951-0000-front3ww-l.jpg

I grabbed one of these a while back and it helps a whole ton to have this sitting on my desk. Helps, too, with my bad memory. With this, you'll have an easier time reading theory and then applying it.

[steve kim]

Sometimes, I see people who have a good observational knowledge of color, but not of value.

which doesn't make sense because you can't seperate value from color.

which is also why saying 'study ur values first' while not a bad thing in itself isn't anything really special.

op is right about all the color books contradicting each other. guess what it happens with every subject where people make things up :).

anyway unless you plan on being a color scientist most of everything you need to learn would come from getting a lot of paint and seeing what happens when you mix them together.

+ briggsy's stuff if you want technical info

[TASmith]

"Sometimes, I see people who have a good observational knowledge of color, but not of value." - I think I often fit in that boat

[rattsang]

which doesn't make sense because you can't seperate value from color.

which is also why saying 'study ur values first' while not a bad thing in itself isn't anything really special.

op is right about all the color books contradicting each other. guess what it happens with every subject where people make things up :).



agreed. painting in values first does not always work, in some conditions it can but really you are much better off putting in the time to understand color instead. say for example your value painting is high key, yellow is the only color you can now use high saturation for in the mids or lights all other colors will be washed out destroying any impact. so if your using value patter 1 or 2 (from loomis- creative illustration) your color options are severely limited.

plus i often hear ppl throwing around the phrase "if the value is right the color will work" this is complete bs, if the value is right-the value is right and thats it. with the color overlayed or colorize it will look no better than the black and white (and some times worse) value is only the most important property of color when you are talking about a b/w image and since its not common practice to produce b/w finished images all properties of color carry equal weight (infact as mentioned above they cant be separated) color should be treated as color not some kind of filter or overlay you add as an after thought.

[reme]

Err sorry to hjack this thread but since i dont want to create another thread related to color, im asking the question here. For colors, which old master should i study? Impressionist, Monet? Thanks!

[Moriah]

I hope it isn't too late to reply to this thread, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone for posting here. ^^ When I am a little bit more awake I'm going to pour through the replies

[Sidharth Chaturvedi]

I'd highly recommend checking out this website (http://www.huevaluechroma.com/). At least for me, I found it incredibly daunting at first and very hard to follow, so if you don't get color you may find it the same. Stick with it. The concepts are a bit hard to grasp at first, but as he gets deeper into it, everything starts to click and make sense. Extremely useful.

As for painters, yeah, you can pretty much look at any of the Impressionist masters. Another older one to check out is Velasquez.

-Sid

[shannanigan]

plus i often hear ppl throwing around the phrase "if the value is right the color will work" this is complete bs, if the value is right-the value is right and thats it.


I hear that a lot on this site and it irks me every time. I think this notion that value is most important is a product of the Digital age.... because its so easy to change and adjust colors and hues that aren't working when its done on a computer. (Unless you are one of those crazy people that works on a single layer. Suckers! LOL!)

Value is 3rd on the my to-do list while creating art... after composition and color because if those 2 are off value doesn't mean squat. Of course I do more cartoon and comic style, not "painting", but I can't imagine color not being important to say... Michelangelo... as long as his values were right.

All that said, I wish I could help you (the OP) with color theory... unfortunately I have ZERO formal art training and fail miserably at explaining how to do things. I have just sort of developed my eye for color over the years of being a product and textile designer.

I have to tell you though... I looked at the links people suggested to you here and got a migraine. Wow! I didn't understand a thing... so don't feel bad that you don't get it yet right away. 15+ years of drawing and designing and I'm still confused about this stuff. ;)

[J Wilson]

I'm one of those that does feel that if the value is correct, the HUE (rather than color) is less important.

As a test, take any painting, and put a colored filter over it. It doesn't make a difference in how successful the image is because the relationship between elements is preserved.

However, if you get the elements of color that aren't value (hue and saturation) right, but have bad values, you can have a whole mess of problems. For example, if background elements are too close in value range to your foreground, then the whole illusion of depth is ruined. No one cares if the background color shifts to blue or to red but you.

Composition may be the bones of a painting, but the value range is the muscle and sinew. Hue is just the skin, in my opinion.

[rattsang]

I'm one of those that does feel that if the value is correct, the HUE (rather than color) is less important.



this is only true when related to design and not specifically color itself. color can as you pointed out look good when the value pattern is off in the same way b/w images can look good but when colored they look terrible (take my example above of high key B/w photos) for color itself to be good all the properties of color must look right

i mean just because a b/w image can look alright when its colorized doesnt mean hue and saturation are less important, it just means you have placed less importance on them (due to the fact that we read forms using mainly value)and doing so sacrificed the quality of your painting- in a nutshell if hue and sauturation were less important people would like muddy, garish painting as much as their vibrant and harmonious counterparts.

[Elwell]

Value is the most important element for creating form. Creating form isn't the prime objective of all art, though.
Saying that value is more important than color is nonsensical, since value is one of the attributes of color. However, it is the only dimension of color that can be perceived independently of the other two.
It's just as nonsensical to talk about color independently of value. Being able to think about color three-dimensionally the key to understanding it.

[J Wilson]

Hehe, well for certain, one thing we prove is it's no mystery why different color books can have different advice. There's a lot of different aspects of color to consider, and a lot of different thoughts and opinions on each aspect.

Probably the best advice for Moriah is to post more color work in her sketchbook or post some work in the critique forum and see specifically what thoughts people have about her color useage.

After you start to have a feel for color the various books will make more sense, and you can choose which thought processes make sense to you.

[Rist]

I have not seen this myself but if you have some cash you could buy this from Gn0mon W0rkshop (http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/rke01.html).

[hmo]

Really glad I peeked into this thread. Lots of helpful comments regarding color and how it flows from object to object. It seems to be my problem as well: disconnecting my predisposition to color as my brain interprets things at its most basic (grass is always green, etc.)

[Bowlin]

plus i often hear ppl throwing around the phrase "if the value is right the color will work" this is complete bs, if the value is right-the value is right and thats it.


I assume it means more along the lines of when you mix paint for each little area of the painting your working on. Your guessing the value and it might be a little off, just as your guessing the color and it might be a little off. But you need the value to be just right to help define the form, whereas there's a little more leeway with color. If the color is not right, one way is you can (after that paint has dried) glaze another mixture of color over the dried area to correct it and not effect the value so much.

So when you mix paint, you need to know which Hue your aiming for first, obviously, but how dark you want that hue to be will make you consider which tube colors first... for example, alrizian or cad. medium light (they're both reds) mixed with yellow ochre or raw umber (they're both yellows). So getting the value right first and then if the color on your pallete still isn't right, then add the color along the same value to adjust it.

But like you said, colors look different when placed beside other colors, so another way, painting wet on wet, you can apply the dab of paint, with the right value and then adjust the dab by mixing it with the appropriate color, like you would on your pallete.

I "think" that's what that phase means.

[rattsang]

I assume it means more along the lines of when you mix paint for each little area of the painting your working on. Your guessing the value and it might be a little off, just as your guessing the color and it might be a little off. But you need the value to be just right to help define the form, whereas there's a little more leeway with color. If the color is not right, one way is you can (after that paint has dried) glaze another mixture of color over the dried area to correct it and not effect the value so much.

So when you mix paint, you need to know which Hue your aiming for first, obviously, but how dark you want that hue to be will make you consider which tube colors first... for example, alrizian or cad. medium light (they're both reds) mixed with yellow ochre or raw umber (they're both yellows). So getting the value right first and then if the color on your pallete still isn't right, then add the color along the same value to adjust it.

But like you said, colors look different when placed beside other colors, so another way, painting wet on wet, you can apply the dab of paint, with the right value and then adjust the dab by mixing it with the appropriate color, like you would on your pallete.

I "think" that's what that phase means.

hang on there, why do you think there is more leeway with hue and saturation than value? value is used for two things describing form and design through value pattern. the values can be "off" so long a general relationship is held with the other values in the form. for example when drawing in pencil you need to change all the values as your value range is quite limited, i think you´re confusing the values being right as being some kind of copying exercise. value does not have to be an exact match to a physical object to look right it just has to hold a general relationship based on the type of light it is in.

and where you talk about glazes for color correction you are changing the hue and saturation and therefore "giving " it more importance. i think some ppl on this thread are missing the point, it doesnt matter how you arrive at your value, hue and saturation, its just you have more control over how much importance you place on the properties if you work in color from the start becauseyou wont be primarilary concerned with value. what i said about working in b&w is based on a concern that ppl get the value right and then place no importance on hue and saturation because the form reads or the value pattern reads well.

[waranghira]

first you need to get rid of all your preconceived notions about color e.g. grass is green, sky is blue, white paint is white. next you need to realize and accept that all colors are relative to the colors that surround them(and local color is always influenced by the color of the light). now you can start to see with your eyes rather than your brain. my eyes tell me that in orange light grass can be orange-yellow even though my brain perceives it as green because of the colors that surround it. putting green for grass in a strongly orange light equals fail, but your brain tells you it must be correct. rely more then on your eyes and learn from what you see, analyze and study it will come slowly but surly.

its better if you just teach your brain, that way you see both with your eyes and your enlightened mind.

[Bowlin]

Right about the value, that's the leeway for value, as long as it corresponds with the other values in the picture. (on a tangent, work with a prismacolor pencils or charcoal if your need darker drawing values? Might be easier to relate values from drawing to painting if the values are actually similar?)

It's like in "Creative Illustration", on page 168 Loomis says, "Remember, a color can't be right till the value is right".

[StephenJ]

Wow, this topic is so appropriate.

I've actually been trying to get a hold of the whole color thing myself. I'm having alot of problems with it even though I feel like I've made some real progress with value on monochromatic stuff.

How do most people here approach color? Do you prefer scumbling it lightly over a really worked out " grissaile" underdrawing, or do you kind of jump in and model forms with color?

[waranghira]

Color theory is all light science.
Diffusion, Reflection, and stuff.

Outdoors for example.
The sky gets its light from the sun. It diffuses it all around and makes it blue.
So, you have 2 main source of light: the Primary being the sun, a huge spotlight of yellow; the Secondary is the sky, a milder blue light that is coming from everywhere.
So if you block the light of the sun somewhere to form a shadow, you'll notice that the colors from that shadow is bluer from that of the unblocked parts.

Reflection is how light bounces off from objects, its the reason why we see colors on things. Hover a white paper in front of a red object's surface. You'll see that the white of the face of the paper facing the object becomes reddish. Diffusion is usually just reflection in tiny but numerous amounts (dust particles e.g.).

You might also want to observe an objects properties to see how it affects its relationship with light.

Just observe and teach yourself.

[J Wilson]

StephenJ, my first really good illustration instructor (Tim O'Brien) taught us to put down a full value rendering and paint over that with color (thin at first and then increasingly thick as needed). It's a good way to start as you work out your value problems early, giving you fewer problems to solve in paint.

These days though I work over line work instead, and figure out value and hue at the same time. When everything is going according to plan, it's a time saver (or feels like it). When it's not going as right, then I realize I could have avoided those issues by figuring out my values before hand. At the very least I recommend doing a small value study to start. It's something I've had to get back into the habit of after realizing I was having issues with it again.

[Jason Ross]

Painting in color without proper reference can be very frustrating if you don't have the mental library needed for it. Lots of real world painting translates to imaginative painting as long as you understand to an extent what light does as it illuminates an object. Those boring geoforms that we painted in oil painting class react the same way to light as objects of similar material no matter how complex they are. And studying the results in different scenarios is VERY important if you want to paint accurately from your mind. I started with the tri-color wheel (R-Y-B) and it still works fine for me. My professor said something to me almost 18 years ago and I can still hear him telling me this. If you want to darken a color add some of its complement. Red bricks...darken the red then add some dark green to it...this still looks very correct to me. But this seems to only work with the pigment tricolor wheel (red-yellow-blue) as other wheels like the munsell wheel work on visual complements and turn colors grayish when you work in the complements. Whether or not that's the way "complements" are supposed to work I don't really give a damn, it doesn't get me the results I want. Now when I want a certain color to stand out, I'll use the munsell wheel to make colors jump out from one another. I usually hear other artist use basic ideas to work from and if they work for you then use them. One I hear that I really don't like to use is that shadows are "always" less saturated than the main lighted area. True in some cases but I don't like this as a rule of thumb only because I "prefer" the look of saturated shadows. There is another color theory thread here that is translated from Chinese where the artist uses the RGB sliders to paint with. This method was truly enlightening since the artist is basically painting with light in mind instead of pigment. Very good read...

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=148355

[Bowlin]

My professor said something to me almost 18 years ago and I can still hear him telling me this. If you want to darken a color add some of its complement. Red bricks...darken the red then add some dark green to it...this still looks very correct to me. But this seems to only work with the pigment tricolor wheel (red-yellow-blue) as other wheels like the munsell wheel work on visual complements and turn colors grayish when you work in the complements.


If you want to darken a color, add it's compliment?... So if you want to darken a red color add it's complement, green, but first darken the red before you add the green? There's some sort of confusion here.

And using the RYB color wheel in pigments, adding Red and Green doesn't give you a more grey color? Can you post an example?

Not trying to sound rude, just trying to clarify what your trying to say. This doesn't sound right? :shrug:

[rattsang]

If you want to darken a color, add it's compliment?... So if you want to darken a red color add it's complement, green, but first darken the red before you add the green? There's some sort of confusion here.

And using the RYB color wheel in pigments, adding Red and Green doesn't give you a more grey color? Can you post an example?

Not trying to sound rude, just trying to clarify what your trying to say. This doesn't sound right? :shrug:


adding a compliment in the shadows is a time honoured tradition, and it does work under certain conditions but it cannot be expressed as a hard and fast rule, it does not make sense. all color depends on light, your color should be adjusted to compensate for the light source color in the light struck planes and adjusted according to reflected light color for the planes in the shadows. this means in direct sunlight conditions all light struck planes will be "tinted" yellow-orange, and all most shadows will be "tinted" blue, with the exception of objects that are in close proximity to other strongly colored and lit objects, which reflect their color into objects around them. in this case it is possible to have quite saturated shadows

so to sum up, the proper way to darken a color for shadows is to move the color towards the color(hue) of the reflected light and increase the saturation if the reflected light is the same family as the local color of the object or decrease it if the reflected light is from a complimentary family. this ppl is physics, how light works in the real world and what we as artists should strive to emulate not copy what we think is there.

further more, you cannot say green is the compliment of red, because all pigments dont act the same, and not every one uses the same pigments, this statement is to broad red includes everything from venitian red to alizian crimson- that is a big difference. add to that the fact that the compliments in digital painting are different to physical mixing

[Bowlin]

Yeah, he must be talking about shadows. It sounded to me like he was talking about simply mixing two colors to make a darker color, making a dark red local color for the brick. You can only make a color that isn't as dark as you need it, by adding a darker color. If the red and green where the same value, it wouldn't darken.

What also seems to cause a lot of confusion is if your referring more to the shadow on the object or the cast shadow. If you look at a tree's cast shadow, or a buildings cast shadow, it often looks more saturated blue (reflected color from the ambient sky on a sunny summer cloudless mid day) than the shadow on the tree or building. But even on an overcast day or indoors the shadow on the object has at least a slight hue shift which is why we try to use the warm/cool theory.

[Elwell]

Yeah, he must be talking about shadows. It sounded to me like he was talking about simply mixing two colors to make a darker color, making a dark red local color for the brick. You can only make a color that isn't as dark as you need it, by adding a darker color. If the red and green where the same value, it wouldn't darken.

Actually, it can, perhaps dramatically. This is because high chroma colors have spectral reflectance curves that peak in a narrow area, and the further apart they are on the color wheel the less overlap they'll have. So a cad red light (V5) mixed with a green of the same value made from, say, cad yellow and pthalo green, could go as dark as a V2 or V3, and shift way towards yellow.
Things get complicated when we're dealing with real-world pigments.

[Bowlin]

Elwell - man, that's intresting. I was thinking a lot of that might have to do with tinting strength or something. Feels like the reason for that would have been because the pthalo green is already such a dark color with strong tinting strength and couldn't make a true mixture. Sounds like why a lot of artist may have tried to make a pallet of mostly Cads.?

Thanks for that info!

[Jason Ross]

If you want to darken a color, add it's compliment?... So if you want to darken a red color add it's complement, green, but first darken the red before you add the green? There's some sort of confusion here.

And using the RYB color wheel in pigments, adding Red and Green doesn't give you a more grey color? Can you post an example?

Not trying to sound rude, just trying to clarify what your trying to say. This doesn't sound right? :shrug:

This is just a basic rule that relates to natural sunlight fairly well. You add in some of the complentary color after you darken it. I remember the experiment we did with watercolor. Make stripes of primary and secondary colors in a row of 6 (RYBOPG). 1 inch tall by 6 inches wide blocks of color. We then shaded those 6 colors with a dark mixture of colors in our watercolor set. The true term "shade" refers to black being added to the color, (see color wheel on first page) but the prof. wouldn't let us use blacks. After you shade the color to a value that's roughly half way from its value to black, add in some of its complementary color of similar value (post shaded) over half of the stripes (about 3 inches of it so that half is shaded and other half is not). We then went outside (afternoon sun) and blocked the light from hitting the unshaded (original RYBOPG) part of the colors. The shaded side with the complement added and the blocked portion ended up being very close in hue and value.

Beyond this basic technique, things can get very complicated very quick. Rattsang is totally right when he talked about colored light influences colored objects to the lights local color. Some of the things I struggled with is "how much % of the light color should I be using? What's too much and what is not enough. I've been just eyeballing it mostly. There's plenty of "color theory" books out there for some deeper understanding of color.

[Bowlin]

Ah, your talking about watercolor, using layers. It sounds like your talking about the warm/cool theory to get that more naturalistic look with optical mixing? If you mix paint like oils or acrylics you get a different type of mixture for a color than if you were glazing in layers, because glazing causes more of an optical effect (and often does seem to be the best way to get brilliant colors since with color composition and forming objects we're placing colors side by side). This is often why teachers give the advice not to over mix your paint, to help get some of that more naturalistic look.

I was trying to explain and understand the phrase that rattsang said, "if your values are right the color will work" and why people say that. Rattsang doesn't like the idea of giving value more importance than hue and saturation. Maybe the confusion here is the different process' of painting (traditional, with pigments). Rattsang sounds like he's trying to paint from life and do direct painting, get the hue, saturation, value right the first time before it's applied, like Richard Shcmid would do. But most fantasy/sci fi and concept artist processes that I've seen is when they try to BUILD an image from different references and visual memory. These types of pictures are not usually made extremely naturalistic to give that illusion like "trompe loel". The more you can make it naturalistic, the better, but you have to build the picture so it's more of a refining process. You make thumbnails, to rough sketches, tight sketches. Working on the tight drawing using reference you don't want to rely on the photograph "too" much and just copy a picture... so you often make choices on how to refine the form of an object here and there. To try and figure out the form first, you have to be more concerned with value. So unless all the color information is from the reference you have to figure out the value pattern of the forms first. So when mixing paint (oils and acrylics) I'll try to make sure I have that value right in comparison to the tight drawing trying to make sure the hue and saturation is right, but not as worried about it at the moment as with value. If the value looks right when I apply it, then I'll try to refine the hue and saturation if needed.

But that's just how "I" do it and I "think" how a lot of artist do it as well as what Loomis is trying to teach. The direct painting technique from life, trying to get it all down right that first time is a great idea, i think, but that's from life reference. To build an imaginary picture, it seems your constantly refining.

Also it looks like you use corel Painter from your blog. It looks to me when you mix complementary colors (from Painters type of color wheel) on the mixing pallet you get a darker colour because the "value" in color picker isn't right. If you use the color picker and get the most intense yellow, it is not a 50% value when converted to greyscale.

[Jason Ross]

This is where it can get pretty complicated. Especially dealing with digital painting. Photoshop and Painter color work on an RGB system. Red, green, and blue are the primary colors. Mixing all 3 primaries in relation to "light" (additive mixing) will produce white. Mixing all 3 primaries in relation to pigment (subtractive mixing) will in theory produce black. Painter and Photoshop mix colors by thinking the opposite of the additive mixing of RGB. In RGB yellow isn't a primary color, instead it is a mixture of an equal amount of green and red light with no blue light present. To check, open the "color info" in painter and display RGB. Pull the R and G slider all the way up and pull the blue all the way down. The result is yellow. Yellow is in the middle of Red and Green in the spectrum. So when you add in the opposing blue to your yellow you are technically adding all the colors together (Yellow (R+G) + Blue) which gives you ...black. Or a dark greyish in this case. Also notice that the complement of yellow here in Painter and Photoshop is blue whereas the complement of yellow of on the color wheel on the first page is violet. These programs mix colors based on "real" light which can make things hard to relate to in the real paint mixing world. Pigment mixing is very differnt than light mixing and is not just opposite...No pigment will mix to get primary yellow.

I've also noticed this about the values not displaying "correctly". I used photoshop for this but if you lower the saturation (Hue/Saturation) of that yellow all the way down then the value will be a 50% gray...but if you change the mode to grayscale then the value will be around 5%...I'm not really sure how to make sense of this.

[Elwell]

What Painter calls "value" should more properly be called brightness (and is in Photoshop).
Again, the Dimensions of Color (http://www.huevaluechroma.com/) site has detailed info.

[Bowlin]

Right, that's what I was trying to imply, that Painter doesn't simulate real world paint. Which seems to be the whole aim of Painter. Giving a traditional painter a problem with values. It's as if they can't give you the colors in the greyscale mode.

Also...
Some of the things I struggled with is "how much % of the light color should I be using? What's too much and what is not enough. I've been just eyeballing it mostly.
That get's back to the phrase. In Tim Hildebrant's technique book, he mentions about imagining a white dress in the same light, and simply add those to colors to your local color of an object to make it appear in the same type of light. How much percentage of that, your right, you have to make a guess. But isn't that how all drawing and painting is done? It's about making choices and the ones you pick make your own individual style. Artist often separate a tight drawing and a color rough trying to separate the "value" and the "hue and saturation" and then refine it in a single image. Obviously a tight value drawing has to be done before a color rough and it's the same when mixing the paint and applying it. Plus, if the warm/cool aspects of light on an object are off in comparison to other objects, it just looks like reflective light or another local color, looking as if that was the artist intentions. That's why there's a leeway with color.

Also, you can try looking at it this way... A lot of professionals, like Michael Whelan, for example, his work looks like comic art in comparison to someone like Bouguereau. That's no disrespect to Mr. Whelan whatsoever. How they approach to drawing the figure has to be very different, the same with color. How much percent of light color they use would still be just relative to how they approach everything else in their painting.