Lesson 4: Colour
Don't forget that it is possible to draw without using colour. I believe that it is sometimes advisable to draw in black and white or monochrome for quite a while before adding the complication of colour to your understanding of how depth is created. For this reason I will only touch on the basics of colour and write a seperate course about colour in the future.
Colour Theory.
I am afraid that not many artists get by with out some colour theory. My aim is to keep it simple.
- Basically there are three primary colours.
- Red
- Blue
- Yellow
- There Are Three Secondary Colours.
- Orange
- Purple
- Green
There is an added complication. There are two types of each primary colour. Warm and Cool.
Because the many mixtures that can come from this complicate colour theory no end - I am not even going to attempt any thing but the simplist explanation of how colour works in drawing. I suggest that in keeping with the spirit of the course I will restrict the colour range I ask you to use and give only excercises where this added complication won't come in to play. Feel free to experiment if you want to but it is not a requirement of the course. If however you find that you want more information I will add links in the resouces section and I will also explain any thing that is asked in the discussion area at length. Later I will write a course about colour and go into the complexities of it all but just for today I will remain focused....I hope that you can too.
Please read Creating A Colour Wheel. Make your self a wheel or find one that you like on the internet and print it so that you can have the image in front of you as you read.
Warm ColoursWarm colours are those colours on the section of the wheel that come side by side - and read as yellow, orange and red. So the warm colours are red, orange and yellow and any derivatiove of them. Mixing with cool yellows can complicate this but it is a rule of thumb. [A cool yellow will be warmer than a warm blue? Hmmm! Don't complicate matters.] Warm colours have emotive conotations and they are linked to the quality of the colours and also are triggered verbally as we speak about them. So for example red is the colour of anger. Yellow indicates the warmth of the sun. It is all obvious but needs stating as you begin. Later colour combinations will come to you intuitively. It becomes its own science once we begin to experiment specifically with abstract composition and notions such as receding,vibrant,serene.
Cool ColoursThey are the colours along the side of the colour wheel Purple, Blue and Green. They have warm and cool versions too. Cool colours describe emotions such as serenity, peace, femininity.
Don't complicate anything at all. Just remember cool colours go back in space. Warm colours come forward. As we experiment your understanding of this concept will come about naturally.
