While I am certainly not a professional artist, I have been studying different aspects of art and I hope this studying can help you grow as an artist.
Some parts may be opinionated, but I'll try to avoid it as best as possible.
So, as you may know, colours often evoke certain moods or correlate with certain moods.
Like, red is anger and passion. Blue is calm and sad. Yellow is cheerful and positive. The list goes on.
Well, in art, colour selection is key to creating a theme for a piece. And I don't just mean the basics of use black and white for sad things. I mean, getting pretty in depth.
As an example, we'll use the theme of horror, seeing as I still remember a piece I've seen by a friend that was meant to be creepy, but it wasn't really portrayed. No offence. The art was great. I just don't think it particularly screamed 'horror'. Something I've noticed to work well for horror, colour-wise, is dull colours. But, something that could go along with those dull colours, but also really catch a person's eye is a contrasting bright colour that is used in moderation. Our eyes are naturally drawn to things that don't fit with the rest, or that contrast the scene around it. So, it's best to use those contrasting colours around the focus area; which is usually the face, but not always, seeing as it could be other things like an orb (random example is random). A good colour to use is red- though others can be used obviously xD- because it's a strong colour with many negative connotations that fit the theme, like danger or anger.
Dull colours are a good choice because lighter dull colours make them appear lifeless or pale with fear or being dead, and darker dull colours generally look ominous.
Cool colours are, also, a good choice, seeing as they bring across a cold feel, which correlates with fear. Plus, they contrast even more with the warmth of red; if that's your choice.
Dark backgrounds are a good choice, either to a point that it's hard to see the less important parts or keeping the character visible by having the background be mainly dark, but with brighter sections around the darker parts of the character. The first one is a good choice because it plays with the mind of the viewer. First reason being that if it's difficult/impossible to see the difference between the colours, our mind will create the rest of the image, like this optical illusion.
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Our mind makes up the main triangle, despite it not even existing. It's similar with this. Our mind will make up the shape of the body, which leads on to the second reason. We don't know for sure what the body looks like. And we all fear not knowing something. We, naturally, fear the unknown. We're afraid of what we don't understand or don't know. So, creating an art piece that doesn't give us a full picture plays on that fear of being unsure of what lurks in the parts we don't see. It's why darkness is such a common fear. Because we don't know the area around us.
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So, to help you guys, here's a list of colour meanings.
Red Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.
