The secret to using the right colors
Added 2025-09-19 12:15:02 +0000 UTCThere’s a color theory tip I used in this artwork that’s crucial for using the right colors: color relativity.
In the final artwork the stem looks green right?
Your mind plays tricks on you, it's actually blue, but it looks green thanks to color relativity, which is the idea that the perception of a color is influenced by the colors surrounding it.
So how did I make the steam look green?
The stem looks green but it's actually blue.If I changed it to green it wouldn't look right. 👇
There was a first version of this artwork, and even though the stem was turquoise in it, it still looked too green.👇 So what can you do in a situation like this?
✨ To make it look green I used a blue color, but less saturated than the other blue colors in the scene. When a color is less vibrant than the rest of the scene, your mind fills in the blanks and sees the color it expects, not what’s actually there. In my case green because your mind knows it’s a plant, so it assumes the stem must be green.
Similar thing happens in this optical illusion where the coca cola can looks red but is made up of only black, white and blue pixels. Your mind makes it work.
So this is how I made the stem appear green using only blue colors. Check out this video to dive deeper into color relativity.
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