Color Style #6: Add Color with Your Background
Lesson 10 from: Color Techniques for DrawingCleo Papanikolas
Color Style #6: Add Color with Your Background
Lesson 10 from: Color Techniques for DrawingCleo Papanikolas
Lesson Info
10. Color Style #6: Add Color with Your Background
Lessons
Color Introduction
06:25 2How to Apply Color Using Watercolor
11:42 3How to Apply Color Using Gouache
07:06 4Color Materials & Setup
04:33 5Color Style #1: Pen and Watercolor sketch
06:05 6Color Style #2: Doodle style using Pen
07:01 7Color Style #3: Brushpen
06:26 8Color Style #4: Chalkboard Technique
15:23Color Style #5: Spot Coloring Book
07:44 10Color Style #6: Add Color with Your Background
03:07 11Color Style #7: Create Color Combinations with Metallics
07:01 12Color Style #8: One Color Value Study
06:25 13Using Multiple Colors for Shading & Highlights
19:56 14Develop your Style by Showing Your Work
06:04 15Ways to Display Your Art
22:03 16Turn Your Drawing into a Digital Product
09:16 17Paper Crafts with Your Drawings
15:50Lesson Info
Color Style #6: Add Color with Your Background
This one, there's really not a lot of technique to it. But I just wanted to give you the idea that you can mix more striking pencil drawing with your watercolor, or with your gouaches because from here, we've just been doing this tiny little sketch and maybe the pen has been the dominant thing, or maybe the color has been the dominant thing but you can actually do a pencil drawing with just a tiny bit of color or in our case, some bright color. So as you can see, I had my sketch, and I did it just like in our sketching class. I'm just gonna finish drawing in my blueberries, just a little bit. So I'm using watercolor paper and it's uncoated, and I'm just drawing it as I would have done a regular pencil sketch, finish drawing that in. And then just to give you the idea of, again, looking at the negative space. Before we were looking at negative colors, the highlights were different when we were trying to paint in the highlights instead of the shadows. Here, we're gonna paint in the backg...
round and not the object itself. So maybe that's just what you need when you're looking at it and you're like, I really like my sketch. I kinda don't wanna ruin it but I kinda wanna make it colorful. This also tells you, you don't have to be quite so literal when you're thinking about how to apply color. So blueberries are blue but you don't have to paint the blueberries blue. You can paint the background blue. So I just mix up a nice blue color and just paint around it. And this, it's kind of thinking much more figurative about how to apply color or not be quite so literal with where you place it and what color you make things. The last one we did, it was like, let's be really straightforward. Let's put the color on the little section that is provided for that color. This one, we're gonna paint blue, everyone's gonna think of blueberries but it's not gonna be on the blueberry. So basically that's what you do, just paint the background in and as you can see you end up with something that looks like that. You can go in a little bit more with your pencil, go over the blue for a shadow if you want. But it kind of gives you a big pop of blue without having to be so literal about how to paint a blueberry. Another way of, just kinda shaking up your brain and breaking out of the box on where to put the color.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
marcelle gray
I love this class!!! Cleo is such a natural, enthusiastic and funny teacher. She shares her ideas very freely and makes learning so much fun. She likes to explore her materials by experimenting and also making charts. In art school I always thought this was a little boring, but Cleo makes it fun. It is a good way to warm up and prepare to draw and then begin paint. I have learned to enjoy this process so much by taking this class. I would recommend this class to both beginners and experienced artists.
user 43495d
Cleo does start quite nervous, and not very clear in her explanations. Thanks to the guy asking the questions throughout the class…I guess he was as confused as us in the beginning. BUT…the class does get better!! She gets more confident and does give good examples to take your simple drawing to a colorful piece of art you can sell on products or share on social media. I really enjoyed later lessons. And I always say-if I can get a least ONE good advice or trick – then it was not a waste of my $20.
Student Work
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Fundamentals