I start with bright colors, but by the time I'm done, everything looks brown. I've tried working on separate layers, but it still happens. Any advice on keeping colors vibrant?
Yeah that bright-to-brown shift is so familiar. I stopped over-mixing on the canvas so much, using fewer brush strokes and picking cleaner colors from my swatches instead of constantly blending.
Watched a friend fix this by picking new colors for shadows instead of just darkening the base tone. They stopped making mud by grabbing a fresh blue or purple from the wheel.