INTRODUCTION

About This Course

I am here to get you excited about COLOR. The “Projects” in this course are designed to get you to learn about color theory by doing, by painting. Traditional color classes may have you paint color charts which, although a brilliant way to learn about color, can be tedious and mind-numbing. In this course we will start with the basics of Value, Intensity and Color Temperature and learn about these important properties by exploring their qualities in various “Projects.” Each lesson builds upon the one before as we develop and strengthen our color sense and knowledge. ”Owning Your Colors” means understanding colors and their properties so that you can control them at will. 

Each Project can be created with many different approaches. I encourage you to adapt any Project to your own creative interest according to your skill level. I provide links to my Pinterest boards in each class with examples of paintings using the concepts described. These will also provide inspiration for new ways of approaching your work.

Learning to see color as well as mixing what you see can take time and practice. Be patient with yourself. And paint lots. That is by far the best way to learn. Now join me on the path down the road of color and let's have some fun!  

Important Color Terms

PRIMARY COLORS: Red, Blue, Yellow

SECONDARY COLORS:  Orange, Green, Purple

TERTIARY COLORS: Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Violet, Red-Violet, Red-Orange

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS: Colors opposite each other on the color wheel. 

ANALOGOUS COLORS: Colors next to each other on the color wheel. Another way to darken or lighten a color is to add an analogous color.

“TO GREY DOWN A COLOR”: This phrase means to “neutralize” a color or make it less intense. The most common way is to add the color's complement creating a more neutral or “greyed“ version of the original color. There are many additional ways to grey down a color such as adding black or white.

HUE: Basically a color family:  Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Violet, and Orange. Every color is part of one of these color families. Thus, every color has a “hue.”

VALUE: Degree of lightness or darkness of a color. The color (hue) is not important in this definition, just how light or dark it is. (Think of a black and white photo of your painting).

LOCAL COLOR: The true color of an object, as opposed to the way it may appear in certain lighting conditions, at a distance, or in contrast with other colors.

TINT: A color to which white has been added.

SHADE: A color to which black has been added.

CHROMA: The brightness or INTENSITY of a color. Cadmium Red Light (for instance) straight from the tube is an example of high-chroma color.

Subject Matter

Please feel free to select any image provided below for any project, and of course, absolutely feel free to use your own subject matter including abstract work. All of these color principles apply to any two dimensional painting created with oils or acrylic. Also, be sure to mix and match the reference photos at will - you do not have to use the same image that I demonstrate for the same Project. All of these Projects can be created more than once and in different combinations. The more you experiment, the more you will learn!

IMAGES FOR YOUR USE

Click on any image it will open for you to view larger or download as a PDF file.

CLASS ONE

Learning To See The Value Of Your Color

VALUE

VALUE is always the most important element of color in two dimensional art. Learning to see and understand value is paramount. Let’s make sure we all understand the term VALUE as it is key to understanding color. Watch this short slide presentation.

Please Note: Each video in this course has its own unique password.

• VIDEO PASSWORD: Value

PROJECT 1A

Paint Directly On A Photo To Study Values

• VIDEO PASSWORD: Project1A

In this Exercise we have some fun with color! Watch as I paint directly on a black and white photo while matching the values with color. This can be done in oil paint or acrylic. The painting may not last forever, but this is just for fun and learning.

• Print out a photo on your ink jet printer in black and white.

• Don’t use gloss paper as the paint won’t stick.

• Any matte photo paper should work just fine.

• Set your printer to print a good quality print so that you get a good range of darks and lights—black to white—in your photo.

I use a “selfie” and self-portraits make a great subject matter for this project, but you can use any subject matter that excites you.  Just be sure to pick a photo that has a wide range of values from 1 to 10...and now you know what that means!

NOTE: In this video I say that light colors recede and dark colors come forward. This concept generally holds true for landscapes (we will get more into this idea further on), however in portraits it is typically the case that lights come forward and darker colors recede.

Examples of contemporary painters who use expressive color while matching the values of what they see.
Clicking on the image will take you to their website. 

PROJECT 1B

Learn To See Values In Your Colors By Working With A Black & White Photo As Your Reference

• VIDEO PASSWORD: Project1B

In this video I demo a colorful still life painting, however the source image is a black and white photo. The intention is to match the values of the photo with the colors that I use.  

Download one or more of the images from the SUBJECT MATTER Gallery* above to work from, or, of course, feel free to choose your own image. Paint the image in expressive colors matching the values of the black and white photo. Feel free to simplify and interpret the paintings in your own way. Any landscape (for instance) will need simplification. 
*The slide show with image options is in the Introduction

I am not looking for exact renderings and photo-realism!!!! I can help you with drawing skills, but the intention of this project is to focus on color and value. If you do choose your own B/W  photo, it's often more fun if you don't know exactly what the image actually looked like in color.

NOTE:  The colors I use on my palette for this demo are the ones shown in the palette below for CLASS THREE. For Sap Green I only like Winsor Newton. Colors can vary greatly by manufacturer and Winsor’s Sap Green is rich and dark and transparent, while other brands often are not.

CLASS TWO

Learning Intensity By Working With Complements

INTENSITY

The next stop on our road down the color path is to visit Intensity also known as Saturation or Chroma—it is the relative brightness or dullness of a color. A Cadmium Red Light straight from the tube is a “High Chroma” color with “High Intensity.”  The best way to make any color more neutral is to add its complement, the color directly across from it on the color wheel. Don’t worry—I will illustrate that in the next two videos. Learning to create beautiful neutrals with complements is a key to “Owning” your colors.

THE INNER CIRCLE

This short slide show presents a different way to use your color wheel. Color wheels can actually be really helpful in the artist's studio, and I often reference mine.

• VIDEO PASSWORD: Circle

PROJECT 2A

Using Complementary Colors To Mix Neutrals

• VIDEO PASSWORD: Project2A

I call this project “KALEIDOSCOPE“ as the result looks a bit like what you see through a kaleidoscope. In this demo I mix together red and green to make many neutrals and a harmonious palette. Mixing together complements to create neutrals and greys can be a much better option than just mixing black into your color. In other words, if you want to grey down a red (make it less bright) add green instead of adding black. 

Neutral colors created with mixing complements are often much richer.  Play around with all of these combinations to see how many colors you can mix!  I guarantee you will find surprises.  Feel free to use any complementary color combination in your Kaleidoscope: Orange/Blue, Purple/Yellow, Yellow-Green/Red-Violet, etc.

Before you begin this project, you might want to scroll back up to the Introduction and in the ABOUT THIS COURSE section and take a look at Paul Klee’s mesmerizing painting to see how you can turn this exercise into “art.”  

WORKING WITH A COMPLEMENTARY PALETTE

The gallery below includes paintings that use the concept of complementary colors. Things to note:

• There are MANY DIFFERENT reds and greens (for instance) in Brian’s paintings. You can use Alizarin Crimson, Cadmiums, Quinacridones, just to name a few. Plus the combinations that they make all mixed together. Don't feel stuck with just one tube of paint for each color.

• You CAN definitely use additional colors other than the two complements that you choose. The complements are just the predominant colors.

• It's often best to choose one color or the other to be predominant. For example mostly reds and then some greens.

PROJECT 2B

Use Your Kaleidoscope Palette To Paint A Painting

Paint a painting using the color palette that you created in your Kaleidoscope. Per the instructions above, it is fine to include some additional colors as well. The intention is to use the Complementary palette as the predominant palette. Use both Intense colors and Neutrals in your painting. 

CLASS THREE

Color Temperature

We’ve looked at Values and at Intensity, now we are going to look at COLOR TEMPERATURE.  Every color has a temperature, either WARM or COOL. And all colors have a warm and cool version of their hue. Let's look at the palette on the right which shows a warm and a cool of each color except orange. (An orange with more red would technically be warmer than an orange with more yellow).

If I wrapped this palette around into a circle like a color wheel, the yellow-green would go right next to the lemon yellow. This is a great basic palette for any artist beginner to advanced as you can mix almost any color from these combinations, plus white of course. You don’t need black as you can mix your own blacks. Alizarin and Viridian make a beautiful black; you can also add Ultramarine blue into it.

*Interesting Note:

Each of these colors is a HUE (belongs to a color family), however that word can be confusing. When you see the word HUE on a paint tube it has another meaning. Cadmium Yellow Hue (for instance) on a paint tube is actually a substitute for Cadmium Yellow. In other words, it is “Cadmium Yellow Imitation” and is a less expensive product than the original. Often it is perfectly good paint, but the pigment typically is not as strong as, and can have different properties than a true Cadmium. Just something to be aware of.

ALTERNATE PALETTE LAYOUT

For those of you who have a hard time remembering your complementary colors, this bottom palette layout is an alternative. Place your warms on the top and the cools on the bottom, opposite their complements. This photo shows them close together for illustrative purposes, but the cools should be all the way at the bottom of your palette so the mixing area is in between. Of course you could to this side to side as well. Arranging a palette this way helps many people remember their complements.

A BIT ABOUT BLUE

BLUE IS CONFUSING!!! Many many people feel this way. I’ve had lots of people ask me about Blue! As you see in the color temperature palette layout above, Ultramarine Blue is technically warm because it is closer to red, and Cerulean Blue is technically cool because it has no red in it. Red, being the warmest color on the wheel, is the determining factor. The problem is that most people don't seem to see blues that way, including me. I see warm blues as tending more towards yellow than red.  Cerulean, Manganese, and Turquoise all appear much warmer to me than Ultramarine or French Ultramarine (which has even more red in it).

Blues in shadow appear to have more red in them to me than blues in the sun which appear to have more yellow. I have wondered if this is ”California Light,” but people around the world have said they see this too. You will hear me talk about Manganese or Cerulean as being warm in some of my demos and this is why. I realize that ”technically” Ultramarine Blue is warmer on the color wheel, but in my paintings I generally choose the Cerulean family for warms. You decide what you see in Blue, but know that you are not alone if you are, or have been, confused.

IT’S ALL RELATIVE

COLOR THEORY “RULES”

1. WARM colors come FORWARD and COOL colors RECEDE

2. DARK colors come FORWARD and LIGHT colors RECEDE

3. BRIGHT colors come FORWARD and DULL colors RECEDE

4. USUALLY…All rules can be broken!

Warmer colors will appear to be “in front of” cooler colors. This is a general rule of color theory. When you want an object to look like it is behind another object, choose a cooler color, and visa versa. In the painting to the right by Hans Hoffman, he plays with his famous “Push-Pull” use of color where he painted pure abstracts with the intention of manipulating the space with color (temperature, value and intensity) “pushing and pulling” you back and forth in space.

However, all color is relative, which means it all depends on the colors that surround it. Look at the reds in the lower right. they are all technically warm, but some are warmer than the others and those come forward visually. The very dark (number 1 value) black square in the lower left comes way forward, but so does the light yellow one in the middle. He is using intensity in the yellow one to bring it forward. The dark “Forest Green” on the right should come forward because it is dark, but for me it sinks backwards because of the temperature and intensity of the colors around it. The bright yellow square in the upper right appears closer to us than the duller yellow in the left hand corner.  

Hoffman is using the concepts of Temperature, Value and Intensity to manipulate space in this painting. He has used the “Rules” I posted above and also manipulated them by the juxtaposition of colors with different temperature, value and intensity (am I sounding like a broken record?). Study it for a few minutes and you will really begin to see the power of these concepts. See what “Pushes” and what ”Pulls”  for you.

NOTE: In my OWN YOUR COLORS: PART 2 Class we will have at least one class on breaking the rules!

BONUS PROJECT

Create your own “Push-Pull” painting like Hans Hoffman

Use the Pinterest board images gathered for inspiration.

SKETCHBOOK PEEK

When working as a designer for architects we used a simple little figure in our quick sketches of building designs. We called these figures “Tornado People.“ Little heads and tornado-y bodies and long legs. You can even make Tornado Families.

I also want you to note the relationships of hips to shoulders in the sketch on the right. They typically go at opposite angles: if one shoulder is up, the corresponding hip will be down. This simple concept can be used to great affect in simple figures.

In the next video I’m going to paint some simple figures using these concepts. Then you will get the chance to play around with them too, all while learning about color temperature!

PROJECT 3

Focus On Color Temperature To Manipulate Space

• VIDEO PASSWORD: Project3

In this video I use simple figures as subject matter to demonstrate how color temperature can be used to describe space in a painting. The warmer colors coming forward and the cooler ones going back. I filmed this video twice as the first time I created very light values in the background which also creates an illusion of space, but I wanted to show that you can do this just with temperature and not necessarily value too. Both paintings are shown below so that you can see the different results.

If you want to see a master at creating beautiful paintings using simple figures and color techniques, look at the work of Robert Burridge. He is a great source of inspiration for this kind of work. 

As always, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PICK ANY SUBJECT MATTER for this project. The “Tornado People” are only one fun option.  

The colors I used on my palette for this demo going clockwise are:

NOTE: I don’t talk during every second of this video. I want to let you watch me paint and absorb what I am saying. So when you experience moments of silence that is intentional.

Also, I don’t talk about the “shoulder-hip” relationship in the video, however you can use it to illustrate a figure's position, movement and expression. Try just altering the shoulders slightly in your painting and see what your figures “say.”

CLASS FOUR

Analogous Colors And The Properties Of White

ANALOGOUS COLORS

As I mentioned in the beginning under color terms, Analogous colors are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. Typically about 4 colors next to each other. Yellow-Green, Green, Blue-Green and Blue would be an Analogous palette. Restricting your palette in this way can create beautifully harmonious paintings, and as a student of color theory, you can learn a lot by limiting your palette as well. (Hopefully you began to discover this in CLASS TWO with Complements.) We really have to think about the color temperature of each color (as well as our old friends Value and Intensity) when we don’t have that many colors to work with. Here are a few paintings using this concept. You will see other colors not strictly within the analogous palette the artist has chosen, but the predominant colors are analogous.

MORE ON WHITE

AERIAL PERSPECTIVE - USING THE DULL AND COOL PROPERTIES OF WHITE TO OUR ADVANTAGE.

You have all heard of perspective drawing...don’t worry I'm not going THERE in this class. (wink) There is another way to create the feeling of perspective especially in landscape paintings and it is called Aerial Perspective which is the technique of making objects in the distance lighter and generally duller and cooler.  Our atmosphere has moisture in it, and that typically creates a mist in the air, even if it is a warm day. This “mist” makes mountains and subjects further away from us appear lighter and generally cooler. This is why the rule “Lights go back and Darks come forward” is generally true (although not always) especially in landscape work.

Since white both dulls and cools, it is the perfect pigment to add  to your colors to create this effect as seen in the example below.

PROJECT 4

Use Analogous Color For Your Next Painting

• VIDEO PASSWORD: Project4

Follow me as I paint a landscape using an Analogous color palette and all of the “Theories” that we have covered so far. Even though the colors are limited to mostly greens and blues I use Value, Intensity, and Color Temperature to create the illusion of depth.

I continue to use a palette knife in combination with the brush in this demo, applying the paint thickly in areas and cutting into the trees and objects to give them shape.

For your project choose four colors next to each other on your color wheel and work predominantly with them to create an Analogous painting. Remember the color ”rules” we are working with. Try using a palette knife if you are interested and it is new to you.

After years of landscape painting I can make up a simple composition like this one. You can copy this painting, or the concept or choose a different photo from this course. And, of course, you can always use your own subject matter!

The colors I used on my palette for this demo (going clockwise) are:

Cheaper paint does have its place, however. I use a combination of high quality paint and less expensive paint, but over time I have learned how the various pigments “behave”, and what I can expect of their mixing strength. Generally you will use MORE of the less expensive paint to keep the color strong, and it can be quite a bit more!

This information is important because in order to create “High Chroma” —Intense—color mixtures you need to have a high chroma color, ideally with good pigment strength, to begin with.

MINERAL COLORS AND MODERN COLORS

Mineral colors are made from pigments that come from the ground or metals. They are generally considered traditional colors since they have been around for a long time. Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, the Cadmiums for example.

NOTE: The video lasts about 42 minutes so grab a cup of coffee, tea or a glass of wine and watch me paint!

BONUS PROJECT

Paint A Low Key Painting

CONCLUSION

VIDEO PASSWORD: Finale

Now go forth, play with color and create! And, no matter what, KEEP ON PAINTING!

Recommended for all Online Self Study Course Students