An Unauthorized Art Lesson to help you be more or less confused when making art. Enjoy!
Recently I had a little breakthrough in understanding Color Theory. For the longest time, anything involving color wheels or color theory simply baffled me. When I take classes or read books, color theory concepts are often thrown around, but I simply have no frame of reference for it. Warm colors vs cool colors, complimentary colors, analogous colors, primary, secondary... they all sound terrifying!
I've tried to read about it or look things up at different times but I end up frustrated, especially when I find conflicting information or a hundred versions of a color wheel. My mind has a hard time applying logic to something like color especially when the information available isn't consistent. What I do know is that I like color because I like it. I see colors together, and they either look good or they don't. The idea that colors shouldn't go together based solely on their placement of the color wheel feels wrong to me. Don't I get an opinion? I don't like all the rules!
However, the more I study and practice art, the more I see how my avoidance of color theory is impacting my ability to understand how to make good abstract art and probably making many other concepts difficult.
The other day, an art teacher mentioned that new artists often don't understand the importance of letting warm colors dry before painting with cool colors. If both warm and cool colors are used at the same time while still wet, a painting will often end up "muddy".
When I heard this, something CLICKED. No matter how I start out, I typically end up adding more and more colors when I'm painting. I just can't stop myself. I do mix my paint colors using red, yellow, and blue so I already knew these are the primary colors. And I understood that if you mixed all three together, you will get mud. What I didn't understand fully was that warm and cool colors go way beyond "red is warm" and "blue is cool".
I FINALLY get it! It's soooo simple. I see how the primary colors MAKE the secondary colors and how which primary colors used determines if the outcome color is cool or warm. I see how mixing a secondary cool and a primary or secondary warm can absolutely create mud because all 3 primaries are there!! When I looked down at all my paints, they actually looked different to me. I could see what ALL the colors were MADE of and how those colors interact with each other.
Immediately, I grabbed all of my paints and divided them up into 2 separate boxes. One for warm colors and one for cool colors. I grabbed a new piece of paper and started a new painting. I made a conscious decision to paint only with cool colors. I let it dry, then painted details in warms colors on top of that...
MY WORLD HAS CHANGED.
It is amazing when such a simple concept is grasped and understood. It's basic but it sure is magical. I'm now grateful for all the mud I made which finally helped me to see the color.
If you are new too and have never tried to separate your paint colors, TRY IT!
~ Anna B.
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