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Contrast: (kon-trast)
Latin for “stand against”.
In art, to juxtapose (or place adjacent) in order to emphasize a difference in color or form.
In Amy’s English: Contrast is the difference between your lightest light and your darkest dark.

Ahhhhh, but where is the contrast?

CONTRASTING CONTRAST

Have you ever had a perfect coloring day?

Everything went smoothly— no, it was better than smooth! You couldn’t ask for a better coloring session. The blends turned out amazing. You got some really good depth and more dimension than usual.

The angels still sing about your coloring that day.

And yet, the finished project?

In the end, it’s just kinda… meh.

This happens a lot at Christmas. Amazing coloring sessions with ho-hum results.

It happened to the photographer here too. It’s practically a Christmas curse. You pull out your red and green markers and you do your very best coloring.

And this is what you get:

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There’s nothing identifiably wrong with it. Your eye goes item by item and individually, everything looks fine.

But as a whole?

The image just doesn’t sing.

And this isn’t the first time— Every once in a while, one of your projects starts out great and then kinda fizzles.

Maybe it’s the line art???

Nope.

Here’s what’s wrong:

See how everything is all kind’a the same?

This is where your friendly internet guru, the crafty coloring expert says

“Silly child, You need more contrast!”

Add another red marker to your blending combination! Add two more! Expand all your green combos while you’re at it. Get all your blending nice and contrasty.

Contrast makes the world go round, right?

<sigh>

Eh, hem…

I have a public service announcement to make.

ATTENTION COLORERS:

CONTRAST DOES NOT CREATE REALISM!!!

Now I don’t know which colorer first heard about contrast and started telling everyone to add extreme contrast to all their blending combinations… but the sixth circle of Hell isn’t called the Pit of Bad Ideas for nothin’.

Just this morning, I watched a YouTuber color a teeny-tiny Christmas image with big blending combinations. Her green blend was G00, G02, G03, G05, G07, Go9.

Amazing coloring. Her skills were top notch. The result was garbage.

The sad thing is, many of you do it too. You’ve been told that contrast makes objects look dimensional so you use five markers to color the simplest of shapes.

Contrast does not make dimension. Dimension and contrast are totally unrelated concepts.

Don’t believe me? Go look in the mirror.

Look at your face.

Your skin is not E0000000000 to Special Black 110.

You look real to me, even on your least contrasty days.

Here’s what really happened.

You colored the tree with green markers ending in 6, 7, 8, and 9.

You colored the red ornaments with markers ending in 6, 7, 8, and 9.

And then just for kicks, you used markers ending in 6, 7, 8, and 9 on the pinecones.

And contrary to my rant just now, this actually is a contrast problem.

But not the kind of contrast you’ve been warned about.

I’m the world’s worst photoshopper but look at what happens when I use the Burn Tool to make the greens darker.

Yes, I “pushed” the greens but I’m also adding…

CONTRAST!

Ahhhh, grasshopper, I added the right kind of contrast!

It’s not that you’re not using enough red markers on the red stuff and it’s not about the number of greens in the green. You could use 3 markers or 30, it doesn’t matter.

The contrast needs to be between objects, not on objects.

Darkening the greens by several steps makes the red pop.

If there’s no pop, your projects fizzle.

Here it is in black and white. Even without the red, that ornament still pops and it’s because the ornament is a lighter value which contrasts with the darker greens around it.

See the difference the right kind of contrast can make?

You don’t need 42 reds.

Just look at the markers in your hand and make sure they don’t all end with the same numbers.

Color the reds with a different value range than the greens.

Ornament: R27, R29, R39 (a dark value blend)

Tree: G12, G14, G16 (a light value blend)

Or switch it around and use lighter reds and darker greens. Just get some contrast between the ornament and the stuff around it.

It’s not that you don’t have enough contrast. That was never the problem.

You need it in the right place.