Update: I thought my art looked flat because of my colors
For months, I kept trying to fix my digital paintings by changing the color palette, thinking that was the problem. I watched a lot of tutorials on color theory, but my work still felt like a sticker on a screen. The real change came when I saw a speedpaint from an artist I follow, and they spent almost half the video just on the sketch and value study. They said, 'If it doesn't work in black and white, it won't work in color.' I started doing a full grayscale layer first, focusing only on light and dark shapes, and it was like a switch flipped. My first piece after that, a cityscape, had so much more depth just from getting the values right before I even touched the hue slider. How do you all plan your values when you start a new piece?