Sunday 25 September 2011

Gamut Mask Tool

I'll share this here too. Mr. Ossi Hiekkala, Illustrator extraordinaire, suggested that I'd try this out as I was getting a nervous breakdown with the Alice pic. Still haven't had the time to test it properly but it looks promising. I think it could help all of us.

Free Interactive color harmony tool for painters and visual artists 



"What is it?
The Gamut Mask is a great way to created harmonic color schemes. It simplifies your color choices and saves you lots of time and paint in achieving unified color palettes quickly and easily.

Who made it?
This Gamut Mask Tool was developed by me (Richard Robinson) and is provided to you free to use. The original concept of the Gamut Mask was developed by James Gurney (www.jamesgurney.com), artist and author of the fantastically illustrated Dinotopia books (www.dinotopia.com).

How do I use it?
Below are some samples of harmonic color schemes achieved by using the Gamut Mask. First I designed an image with a limited value study. Then I decided my most powerful color would be the orange in the foreground and I made a triangular mask with yellow orange as the dominant color, supported by a grayed red and a grayed green. I could have mixed intermediary colors located midway along the sides of the triangle, but I decided to keep it simple and mixed just three color strings of five values each. Then I removed all other colors from my palette so I wouldn't be tempted to dip into them, and painted the first little study (just 2.5" wide). Satisfied with that, I made two more studies, and you can see what different color schemes were achieved by the different gamut masks. Each painting is harmonious, yet each has a slightly different mood. "

3 comments:

  1. Been studying that myself, looks very handy once one gets familiar with it.

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  2. I must admit I still have no idea how to use it but I'll get there. I hope :D

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  3. I am still experimenting with it, too. Ossi said he had tested the YURMBY variant.

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