Exercises

Exercise 1: Create a simple composition and colour it focusing only on value. You can start off with just black and white having shades of grey in between. After this, experiment with filling the composition with just one colour. Your pure colour should be the equivalent of your middle grey, your tints for your light greys and shades for dark greys. There is a chart included to demonstrate the value properties of each hue. You can download that chart in the Download Resource area. You are also welcome to use the template utilized for this exercise if you wish, or you can create your own. Making the composition simple helps to keep focus just on value. Think of this as a colouring exercise!

Exercise 2: The purpose of this exercise is to explore colour temperature. Create a composition and fill with three different versions:

Using only warm colours
Using only cool colours
Choose a colour temperature to define the general mood of your composition, fill it and select a colour of an opposite temperature for one element that you want to stand out. This is important to comprehend how to use opposing temperatures effectively to achieve a strong composition.

In this exercise, I encourage you to explore saturation for each hue. As you will discover this offers a wider variation of colour, without having to go to the opposite side of the colour wheel. The line drawing of the example given in the demonstration video is also available.

Exercise 3: This exercise focuses on gradually developing colour-mixing skills.

a. Produce a CMY colour wheel from which you will mix colours to produce secondary, tertiary, and quaternary colours.

Construct a wheel divided into three arcs, Y, M, C.
When introducing other colours (I create a new layer and put it on Multiply), use a low opacity of 25%. Increase it gradually until you reach 100% at each end of the arc where you have the secondary colours. This wheel has the advantage of creating vibrant colours. At the same time mixing the colours with different opacities gives a wider range of subtler results. This is especially useful for the following exercises of colour mixing.

b. Produce a variety of semi-neutral colours,by mixing RBY with white and with black.

Mix RBY colours to achieve a general brown.
With that first brown mixture replicate it three times and make three variations where you add to each one a primary colour. This should give you reddish, yellowish, and bluish-browns.
From each of the various mixtures obtained, make two stripes. Gradually add White to one stripe and black to the other one. This should give you a variety of colours, as a preparation for the following step.

c. This exercise focuses on colour matching. Find some references from which you take colour swatches. Try to reproduce them as close as possible, by colours together. I suggest having 6 primaries: Yellow, Red, Magenta, Blue, Cyan and Green, with Black and White for shades and tints.

Before you start colour mixing, use the colour picker to study your swatch so you know what colour to begin with. Observe in the colour wheel the hue (H), saturation (S) and value (V) to help you deduce which additional colours to add and their strength. If you want a more muted colour try choosing complementary colours. Black should only be applied when more shades are wanted, so the colour is not muted in the wrong way. When it comes to validating the degree of accuracy, I give myself a 2-unit margin of error for all the properties. For example, if the initial swatch reads H=19, S=35, V=84, then I am happy to reach a result such as H=17-19 S=35-39 V=82-86. These are my own guidelines. I encourage you to find your own so you do not get frustrated, especially at the beginning. From my experience, some colours are easier to achieve closer proximity than others, but it all comes down to practice!

Colour matching is an essential skill to decipher colour and mix colours accurately. Notice how often colours are more muted than we realize. This is why colour mixing is so complex.

Exercise 4: This exercise explores rendering with colour to learn how it reacts to light. If you use Photoshop you can follow along with the exercise by exploring how colour interacts with light. The document has adjustment layers to give you the option of changing the local colour of your subjects, giving you the freedom to decide where to go for lights and shadows. Remember warm lights generally cast cool shadows and cool lights cast warm shadows. By grasping how colour interacts with light, you will be able to create more convincing and stronger compositions when it comes to rendering with colour achieving a more realistic effect.

Final Project

For the final project, please create your own composition based on a colour palette you construct or one that appeals to you. I suggest restricting your palette to 5 colours so you do not become overwhelmed by too many choices. You have the option of creating your palette from the various suggestions given in the course:

Finding an existing colour palette of an artist you admire
Creating a palette using the Adobe Colour Picker
Downloading an existing colour swatch palette that inspires you.

This final project focuses mainly on colour harmony and constructing a colour palette. However it does also apply everything else you have learned about colour in this course. You may choose just to use colours discretely, or you are most welcome to mix them to show off your colour-mixing skills! Consider what type of contrast you want to achieve, including the amount of contrast

Please share your experiences and final project so they are available in the project gallery, I will be able to give feedback, and at the same time, other students can see your work feel inspired, and become motivated especially if they get stuck. Sharing work makes the learning experience richer.

Alan Rolle

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