Any Color You Like so Long as it's Black

When it comes to coloring or rendering things, one of the most common mistakes is people coloring to the center of shapes within a form, instead of coloring to the form itself.

As an example, here's a funky shape made of cylinders joined together. The overall shape is still cylindrical.

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Beginners have a tendency to look at the individual shapes within a form and color each shape almost as separate entities instead of coloring the object as a whole.

In the image below, at first glance, it doesn't seem too bad. You can see the definition of each cylinder within the main shape. However, you don't get a feeling for the overall shape of the object itself.

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It you look carefully at the lighting in the image above, it looks like each shape within the form is being lit by its own separate, individual light source instead of one single one. If we looked at a cross section of the object below, each arrow represents rays of light as they would be hitting the rendering in the image above. That coloring brings out the individual shapes within the form, but loses the overall shape of the object.

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Here's how light would realistically be hitting the object - parallel rays. And this is what we need to keep in mind when coloring. How light interacts with the object as a whole, not the sum of its parts.

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Now we come back and re-render the shape. The overall shape is brightest on the right, where the light is hitting it. The entire left side is falling into form shadow (shadow created where light doesn't reach on an object), and even cast shadow (shadow created by something blocking the light from hitting the object).

Now we have realistic lighting that not only defines the object itself, but also the shapes within the object. When coloring something, start with the entire form as a whole, then bring out the smaller shapes within that form. Your figures and objects will look much more three dimensional, and have greater depth and form. Otherwise, it will look like a collection of individually rendered parts.

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