We already know that great composition will guide our viewer, allowing us the illustrator to direct the overall read of the image. We’ve also looked at how strong value contrast establishes clear focal points. Contrast and intensity in color works exactly the same way.

Strong differences in color and highly saturated color will pull your viewers eye, every time. Remember you are making deliberate choices to tell the best story you can.  Using color to both tell the story by establishing mood and setting, and creating places of emphasis to guide your viewer is critical.

Color used for emphasis can be very dramatic.

But contrast can be used to guide the viewer subtly too.

Consider this image called Camouflage by James Gurney, creator of Dinotopia. Take a good look and be aware of where your eyes travel.

Gurney conducted an experiment concerning focal points and how different people look at the same image. By adding together the eye movement data from a group of test subjects, he was able to observe where people look in a given picture.

To create the image below, eye-tracking technology recorded the data of sixteen different subjects and compiled the information into a composite image, called a heatmap. The red and orange colors show where 80-100% of the subjects halted their gaze. The bluer or darker areas show where hardly anyone looked.

The heatmap for Camouflage shows that everyone noticed the dinosaur’s face. They also quickly spotted the hidden man and the small pink dinosaur.  According to data connected to timing, these three faces drew almost everyone’s attention within the first five seconds. The dinosaur’s face was statistically the first thing most people looked at, followed quickly by the hiding man.

Why do we look the same way at this image? As humans we are drawn to faces. This is a given. However, though the contrast is subtle, the only pink things in all that foliage, (remember green’s complement is red) are the hidden man’s skin and the small pink dinosaur.

It isn’t always necessary to use many colors in order to achieve a colorful image — the monochromatic color scheme consists of one color plus black and can be very powerful.  A monochromatic color scheme has one principle color and in all it’s various tints, shades, and tones.

1980s fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta whose work we’ve looked at in previously, makes great uses of a monochromatic color scheme in this illustration, Silver Warrior.

Note the tiny dabs of warm color he uses to create high contrast focal points within this otherwise completely monochromatic composition. Those warm spots stand out due to color temperature.

Tony DiTerlizzi’s Monochromatic Palate

Illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi often works in a monochromatic palate. For his book The Spider and the Fly he chose a metallic silver and. The beautifully rendered drawings are printed in black against a silver printed page. Silver is a gray and not, therefore, really a color. But because it’s metallic, it contributes more than a standard gray. Though DiTerlizzi’s color solution may seem basic, it is unique in children’s picture books and greatly enhances the mood of his illustrations.

For his more recent series of chapter books, The Search for Wondla, DiTerlizzi chooses a different approach. Here, there are no contrasting dabs of warm color like there were in the Frazetta piece.

DiTerlizzi again works monochromatically, but in this case he chooses a two color printing process, meaning he chooses a principle color and the illustrations are all formed by the various combinations of this ink and black 2 along with the white of the paper.