Everything that's old is new again

Things have been a bit quiet on the illustration front for me, being kept busy with work and family life... One creative outlet I've found is colorizing old black and white photos that people have been posting on Reddit. It's been an interesting way to practice photo retouching, as well as explore color theory and lighting.

Here are a couple before-and-afters of pics I've worked on:

Sidestepping the portrait for a bit

I've put the Mira portrait on hold for the moment, while I try to work out some color theory stuff in my head and on (digital) paper. I've been reviewing the sections pertaining to color in the Andrew Loomis book "Creative Illustration" and this part is what I'm trudging through:

It is obvious that all pigments of a given color do not match– we have a great variety and assortment of them, but they cannot be inserted harmoniously into a subject that did not start with them in the original palette or the three chosen primaries of the picture. Get this clear: There are three primaries of the spectrum, but you choose your own three primaries for your picture and paint the whole thing with them, and those three primaries are the parents to all your color. They are not to be confused with the spectrum primaries, since they may contain only ingredients of the primaries. They are called primaries only because they are the primary basis to all further mixture. If you will understand this you will never have to worry about relating color.

 That's one of my weaknesses, IMO, having colors relate in an image. I've usually just flung color about willy-nilly and more often than not lucked out without really understanding why it works when it does. At any rate, when I return to the portrait I think there's a good possibility I'll start over from scratch, taking into account some of the thinking about color I've been doing.

In other news, my friend Bleu invited me to check out this Figurative Illustration Workshop on Friday, and it sounds fun.