Lessons
Class Introduction
01:56 2Understanding the Basics of Color
04:10 3Color Contrast and Hierarchy
15:18 4Saturation or Vibrancy of Color
09:27 5Ground or Surface Color
07:32 6What is Color Harmony?
11:00 7Color Palette
11:11 8Set-up Chalk & Charcoal Demo
03:40Demo: Sketch Simple Still Life
05:48 10Demo: Establish Value Structure
09:06 11Demo: Find Temperature Balance
09:47 12Demo: Shadow & Highlight Placement
17:10 13Demo: Establish Dimensional Form of Object
04:49 14Set-up Watercolor Demo
11:50 15Demo: Establish Color Ground
05:26 16Demo: Establish Colors for Object
05:30 17Demo: Sketch Object onto Watercolor
03:20 18Demo: Color Subtraction & Value Range
04:42 19Demo: Color Blocking for Composition
04:25 20Demo: Establish the Shadow Tone
05:11 21Demo: Utilization of Opaque Color
11:51 22Desaturate Image in a Picture
05:37Lesson Info
Demo: Establish Colors for Object
That's fun, I've never done that before, painted while I was blow drying. You can see that the color on the right is a vibrant purple, because that's permanent rose and cobalt blue. Even when it's the pinker version, it's still really vibrant and it looks a lot more, to my eye, like our setup than the one to the left, which is cad red, cadmium red, and cobalt blue. Same blue, two different reds. The cadmium red, because it's very orange, has neutralized the vibrancy of that blue and it's sort of a plum tone. So you wouldn't, I wouldn't choose that for that. That doesn't, to my eye, there's the choice. Okay, I definitely am gonna use the permanent rose to paint with the cobalt blue to paint that purple, because that nails it. That's perfect and that's just to show you that not every primary is gonna make the same combination of secondaries as a different combination of primaries. So which were the ones, just over on there that you combined that you did like? So the permanent rose, w...
hich is a very pink colored red, and the cobalt blue made our vibrant purple, and our cadmium red, which is super warm, and our cobalt blue made the more neutralized plummy brown tone. When I look at the pepper though, it doesn't look to my eye like, and here's, you know, where you do a little color adjusting. That seems really pink, like I wouldn't choose that as my, you know, that's a pretty primary looking red pepper there. So like, well, which one does? Well, there may be other reds, but I know my warm red here, my cadmium is probably a closer, yeah, that's it. So now I have two choices sort of made. I'm gonna use a cad red. I'm gonna use cobalt blue and permanent rose for the purple velvet. More cad red plus that green is gonna make the light and the shadow for the pepper. Now the background is kind of a neutral brown. Right. So it may work with, I probably need to bring a yellow into this equation. Now I have a cool yellow and a warm yellow. When I look at that background, it looks pretty warm to me, so I would probably, if I want to make a brown, let's just say I'm gonna make a brown with lemon yellow. I'll start with lemon yellow. We know that we make browns and grays, the tertiary colors, with mixing three primaries or two complements. So let's just try the yellow and then the blue we're using, which is our cobalt. So far we don't really need to have any other blue. So now it's kind of green, and then, all right, I'm gonna turn this brown. How do I turn it brown? Well, I need to add a red. Well, I know it's a warm color and it looks kind of like the peppers. I'm gonna guess it's cadmium, right, not permanent rose because permanent rose is so pink. So if I add those two, I'll see if this looks pretty close. Well, it doesn't look bad but it's not warm enough. To my eye, it looks kind of brickish. There's too much red in there, and I think that yellow is too cold. It just looks cold to me, so I'm gonna try if I mix it with the cad yellow. Oh yeah, I think the cad yellow is the secret, so I'm gonna use cad yellow. I'm gonna try blending in just a tiny bit of cobalt blue, because that background is pretty warm. It's got only a tiny bit of blue in it. That's that and then I'm going to mix. What would my red be? My cadmium red, because again we're pushing that background is pretty warm. Okay, it looks like the pepper. Okay, so this feels closer, but I think it needs a little more yellow. Yeah, this is gonna, I think that'll work out. I think that's pretty good, maybe a little more red. So what I'm doing here is I'm testing my palette to see which are the colors I really need to use. Why pull from every color if I don't need every color? So you could see, yeah, there's that background. Oh, that's my brown. Yeah, I think that looks pretty close. So I now know, and I'll just point them out again, I now know, that I can use, for this picture, permanent rose, put cobalt blue right here, and that's for the velvet, and then cadmium red, which will help with the pepper, and cadmium yellow, which will help with the background, and what'll try to do is integrate these colors in different ways and use them reflectively in the light just to make sure that the whole piece is harmonizing. It will harmonize because there's a green surface, it's gonna be the underpainting, but you also want to make your other colors harmonize. So let's start with the drawing. Yeah. And that's kind of what I was wondering again if you could clarify, because you're drawing onto your green ground, but you're testing the colors on a white, does that-- Have an effect? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I know intellectually I'm going to have to make adjustments when I go to here, but I know the basic equation-- of what you're looking for. Yeah, I'm gonna shift the amounts, because it's gonna react to the-- Okay. Yeah, so absolutely, yeah. And typically I might lay down a green just to test, but because I already know that that's the only purpose for testing those, I'm not too worried about it, but yeah if you use the tone like we did with the gray scale on the brown tone paper, it's best to work on a surface you'll be actually functioning on, the color I should say.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Anna Kotzè
I really liked the informal demonstrations and I also liked the way she set out her pallet with warm and cold colors. This was not only an informative class but inspiring. The casual and relaxed working style, encourage playfulness. Thank you for an awesome class.
Laura
I’ve had foundations in many of the color instruction that was presented here so the information was a very good revisit. I also think it was explained better in this presentation than in the other training I’ve had. I enjoyed listening to the lecture, thankfully they weren’t drawn out until you want to stop listening. The demonstration was best after we moved off the charcoal drawing (although that was interesting to watch) because using the paints really brought home to me the application some of the lessons learned. I wish that part would have been more robust so that all of the elements in the lecture could have been directly called out in the demonstration. The instructor was most effective when not trying to multitask too much. Overall, I recommend this course.
Eve
Excellent instruction! Most helpful to me in terms of establishing the focal point of an image through use of value, color harmony. Also helpful to understand transparency and opacity and how that relates to highlights and shadows. MJ is fun and likable.
Student Work
Related Classes
Illustration