How to Use Contrast Like a Pro
The Problem: You want your art to stand out in a sea of social media content, but your art isn’t getting noticed.
The Solution: Grab attention with contrast!
This post will focus on contrast between light and dark values, rather than the contrast between warm and cool colors. We’ll save that discussion, for another post.
The bigger the difference between dark and light areas, the higher the contrast.
See how the eye drawing on the left grabs your attention more than the eye drawing on the right?
The left eye drawing has a greater difference between the darks and lights.
The eye drawing on the right is bland and boring. The light and dark values are too similar.
⭐️ Pro Tip #1 - Pros tend to use the whole value range from white all the way to black.
Beginners tend to get stuck in the value range of 4 to 7.
My drawing, “Morning Ritual” has high contrast.
⭐️ Pro Tip #2 - Pros put the darkest darks next to the brightest lights to create focal points that grab attention.
Illustration by Julianna Kunstler
My drawing, “Society Statue” has high contrast.
⭐️ Pro Tip #3 - Pros use the right tools.
Look at the two eye drawings again. I got very different results, because I used different tools.
For the high contrast eye drawing on the left, I used 3 tools:
black color pencil
white colored pencil
white gel pen
For the low contrast drawing on the right, I used ONLY a 2h pencil.
I was doomed from the start.
Eye reference photo
💪 Challenge
Draw the eye reference photo and push the limits of contrast. Make the darkest areas as dark as you can, and leave the brightest areas completely white.
⭐️ Pro Tip #4 - Toned paper is great for beginners.
New artists often use only midtones, but toned paper helps by forcing you to add darks and lights for stronger contrast.
My sketch of black and white animals on toned paper.
At the age of 14, @mszil_art was already producing pro level contrast on TikTok.
⭐️ Pro Tip #5 - Pros choose high quality reference images.
🎁 Here are 24 handpicked high contrast reference photos for you to practice with. You’ll find more free high quality images at Unsplash.com.
Tag me @watercolorshark so I can see your progress 📈. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Lemmon8, Clapper, Youtube, RedNote, and Threads.
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