Colour theory
join us to learn how to take control of your colour
what if you could really
take control of colour in your artwork?
with our program
you can
Learn to
Mix
Match
Fix
Blend
any colour
course description
In this workshop students will learn how to take control of colour in their artwork, whether it be through mixing, matching, or design.
Using the Munsell System, unmatched in it’s logic and simplicity, we’ll get to know the qualities of hue, value, and chroma, and how they can be used to clarify our understanding of colour.
Through in-class exercises and analysis of great works of art, we’ll explore colour as it is used for realistic rendering, impressionistic interpretation, and as a means to describe atmosphere and space in a painting.
information covered
- The history of colour theory and an introduction to the Munsell System.
- Hue, value, and chroma: the identifiers of colour description.
- Colour matching, a systematic approach: Learn in a logical and precise way how to mix any colour that you want.
- Understanding palettes: Successful artist palettes can be comprised of any number of different colour combinations. We’ll look at a range of different palette options one might choose and help you decide which one is best suited for your artistic purposes.
- What’s in that tube?: Learn how to choose your colours based on a knowledge of pigment properties.
- Colour scheme basics: Triads, analogous colours, warm/cool, split compliments etc. We’ll explore these basics to make sure they’re solid in your understanding.
- Colour Gamuts: Making a conscious choice regarding a picture’s colour range through gamut mapping helps an artist to choose which colours to utilize and importantly which colours to leave out of a work.
- Controlling colour for realistic painting: When modelling form, an artist must logically map out colour in various tones. Achieving this without the colour going haywire can be a real challenge. We’ll learn how to “control the local” so that there’s colour constancy across our rendered forms.
- Impressionistic colour effects: No doubt about it, impressionistic colour effects can be very exciting to look at in a painting. Learn how to amplify colours, or logically deviate from reality using some tricks out of the impressionist playbook.
- Learn how to observe colour: We’ll learn to use a conceptual approach to observing colour so that decisions about light, shadow, the colour of objects, and reflected light all make sense and work together.
classwork
All classwork will be based on direct observation or analysis of great works of art. For those of you that are more comfortable with working from photographs, we’ll wrap up the workshop with some practical tips for making better artistic interpretations of that kind of reference. Throughout the course we will work with a variety of still life reference and light sources to hone your colour observation, mixing, and paint application skills. The artwork created during the workshop will consist of:
1. A colour map, made to help students gain clarity of where their paint tube choices fit in colour space.
2. Poster studies to learn how basic, first impression colour sketches are vital to the artistic process.
3. Exercises covering: observational colour matching, form modelling, warm and cool light sources, realistic vs impressionistic colour interpretation, gamut mapping, and reflected light.
4. Colour studies of master works by great artists.
