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: Color Blocking for Composition
The next thing we need to do is our darkest dark, and that's that purple surface. Our fabric. Now, I want to make sure the paper's dry, and it feels dry to me. If the paper is wet, and I lay a purple tone on top of it, it's going to really neutralize. It's gonna act a little weirdly. If it's dry, that green will sit there. It won't move, and that'll make a more interesting color. I don't want to over neutralize this purple. This is gonna be basically more like the shadow tone, before I put some of the highlights on it. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. So now let's lay a purple down. We know what we're making it out of. Let me get another piece of security blanket here. We're making it out of cobalt blue, and we're making it out of permanent rose. Now, what I'm gonna do is just mix it up in kind of a nice big pile over here. I could use the cup, but it doesn't matter. I just want enough quantity to coat that shape. And I want it to be a dense enough color for it to really be dee...
p, 'cause it's gonna be dark. If it's not dark enough, I can let it dry, and I can do another layer. You can always layer another color. So it doesn't have to be done in one shot. I'm going to mix up a purple that I think is yummy. Make sure I have enough color there, if not, I can always go back and make more. So you're gonna see a color reaction here that's kind of interesting, and you're gonna be like, "Oh, MJ, you just made brown. "You don't know what you're doing." Trust me, it'll all work. So I'll show you, I'm using a kind of larger, round-tip brush, so that I can hit a lot of the surface area. Make sure that all my color is blended well. Now I want to keep this color, it doesn't have to be a super smooth surface, because that surface isn't. Just like with the charcoal drawing, the surface is textural. So I'm not gonna worry if there's texture in my mark-making or in the surface of this tone. I'm gonna leave that, the brush tell me what it needs to be, it's fine. When it comes to the pepper, once again, I'm really gonna want that pepper to be smooth. So I will not do, this is called dry brush. I mean this is called wet over dry. I haven't wet that surface, I'm just doing wet paint right on top of a dry tone of paper. It's creating a kind of textural mark. But I'm cool with it because it's really what I want. I'm controlling that. And you can see, I mean, what's your observation, what do you think when you look at that color? Does it look vibrant to you? Or not vibrant? Well, when you lay it down thick, the opaque, then it's very vibrant. Mm-hmm, that's right. It's transparent, so what's happening to the color, the two colors, what are they doing? They are canceling each other out. Exactly, yeah. The purple and the green... (Student laughing) You are an awesome student. Yeah, you're absolutely right. They're canceling each other out because the purple and the green are opposites on the color wheel, 'cause they're all secondary colors, which are all opposites of each other. Because of that, when they're transparent, you can see one color through the other, they're instantly neutralizing. You might be like, "Well why would you want neutral purple? "Look at that beautiful purple over there." It's hardly neutral. When you're trying to establish, I'm trying to establish where the shadows might be, I'm gonna start with a transparent tone. I can always add opacity after, to give us the vibrant aspect of the color. But for right now, I'm just going to lay down a shape of color that's about, what would the shadow be, it's fairly neutral, and then we'll hit what looks like kind of a vibrant beautiful purple textural reflection. There's a lot of light on that surface. There's not a lot of shadow. The only real shadow is right underneath the pepper. But let's do that first, I'm actually gonna drag this up a little higher, for compositional sake, okay.
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.
Robin B.
I had previously learned basic color theory, but this instructor took my knowledge beyond with layered instruction about value-contrast-complements-hierarchy, etc., and she does it in such a fun way with her own examples of work and great stories! I like her poise and confidence and think this series is a terrific value.
Student Work
Related Classes
Illustration