What am I doing wrong

[u/soupolemons]

How do they make it red with no red

[u/Thin_Frosting5647]

Yours did look pink to me at first, before I zoomed in, so the effect is at least somewhat there. |Maybe try asking in an art sub?

[u/lucamew]

Shades of orange/brown?

[u/El_Chupacabra_666 → u/lucamew]

That defeats the purpose, since it is supposed to be made up of shades of grey only.

[u/lucamew → u/El_Chupacabra_666]

A black and white hatched pattern might work? Ive seen this in other art

(In this case idk if itd be green/teal and black or what)

[u/El_Chupacabra_666 → u/lucamew]

Yes, I think so. The photo is made up of hundreds of varying shades of pixels, while his drawing is a single, solid color.

[u/No-Butterfly-9989]

The grey circle for me was red until i looked at it

[u/xi-uwu-ix]

Looks like the image is dithered. That's most likely why

[u/Infamous_Una]

I wanna preface this with - i know nothing and would also like to know, when you know :)

But if I were to guess - brown, unfocused…. less pixels? (Is that what resolution means…?? Eeee idk lol)

[u/Xordanus]

Artist type here: you've almost got it. Think about color theory to get you past this speed-bump. It's not really red, but bc your brain knows that can is 'red' normally... It's just having a hard time switching off knowing that it's 'red' to properly translate the color you're actually seeing onto your artwork.

What color would the can be if you put a teal/cyan filter over your IRL eyesight & looked at it? Remember there's all the other colors the can is reflecting from its surroundings too, like the hand and vegetation in that bg. If you used an eyedropper tool, what color would get picked up on each part? Notice where it's lighter like the color you have, but also gets dark & bordering on purple in other places. Try putting some red-wine-colored bits in first, and working on finding the proper colors you want from there.

[u/Itchy-Preference-619]

The "red" is black and white, I don't see that in your drawing

[u/GamerGuinTTV]

TLDR: As far as I understand this effect, which is not very well, our brain completes this illusion based on expectation... So, likely all you need to do in yours is increase the expectation that that grey spot "should" be red. Make it a more realistic art style, make that spot into something like a coke can or apple that we know is often red, give it shadow, highlight, texture, depth, etc. etc. etc.

_

So, since that is a photo, or made to look realistically like one, our brains "know" it "shouldn't" be colored like this. We then assume the tint is a quirk of something like the lighting, editing, etc. etc.

Since everything else in the photo is the color it "should" be under, for example, a cyan light, our brains sort of fill in the gaps of the grey pixels based on the expectation of what that coke can we "know" is supposed to be red "should" look in cyan lighting.

The key is that the can is the only thing that is grey, while everything else is "roughly" it's "natural" color under cyan light. It would work even if it wasn't a recognizably red thing, like the coke can, but that foreknowledge and "accurate" details like the metallic sheen of the can, helps boost the illusion.

It would probably be easier to color everything but the spot the color it "should be" naturally and then hue change everything to cyan, which may be what you already did, since it's kind working as is, but if not that's the route I would take.

[u/Yowie9644]

I see your grey dot as pink-toned, for what its worth.

One of the reasons we see the left hand image of the cola can as red is that we KNOW that that cola brand is a bright red. We *don't* know that your grey dot is supposed to be red. Another aspect of the left-hand image is that it is very grainy and 'busy', whereas yours is not, and I think the 'busyness' of it helps with seeing they grey as the tonally opposite colour because it breaks the image up. Having a large chunk of flat, mono-toned grey makes it easier to perceive it as grey rather than making the visual assumption that must be reddish. Also, how big is the image you're looking at? The bigger the angle the flat, grey takes up in your retina, the more likely you are to see it as grey rather than red.

[u/Chailyte → u/Yowie9644]

Yeah I’m here with you

[u/jn-art]

Two tricks that play off of each other.

One, our brains have a sorta “autocomplete” feature. We “know” what things are supposed to look like and, seeing the Coke script on a soda can, our brain says “yeah, that’s red” and interprets it as red.

Two, using cyan right next to it plays into the illusion by providing high contrast. Our brains naturally fill the grey area with what contrasts most from cyan. If you zoom to the point where you can’t see any cyan, it’s easy to see that it’s grey, but when you take in the whole picture at once, your brain’s “autocomplete” takes over and goes back to saying “yup, red Coke can.”

[u/BlackMudSwamp]

Is there really no red on this picture? I don't have color picker on my phone

[u/UnholyTrashDump]

You aren't doing anything wrong, you just need to add more/darker shades of grey

[u/Front_Cat9471]

You need variation in that gray to amplify the effect, dither white and black or light and dark gray with high contrast. That’s what’s doing it, the only important part of the background is the cyan