Transcripts
1. Welcome: Did you go to art
school? I did not. And honestly, if you're like
me and you love making art, but maybe don't have
formal training. It can be a little overwhelming to hear all the language of art. And truly, kind of intimidating. There are a lot of art
vocabulary words out there. And I've even questioned
after years of painting, Do I know what these words mean? Do I know what that
artist is talking about? And does it even
matter? My name is Amy. I'm a lifelong painter
who grew up in a home with a mom who taught art classes out of our house. Though I do not have formal
art school training, I've been making
art my entire life and have been running my
own creative business, Murray Designs for
the last 13 years. I am also a mom to three kids. Woodle named Sonny and our
little bird named melody. My hope for this beginner
class is to keep it simple and focus on three art words
relating to color. Today's art words are the
three color properties, Hue, value, and intensity. We'll learn about
these three words in this quick and simple class, and we won't take
all day to do it. The project in this
class is a workbook. With a separate page and a quick mini project
for each word. I'll be using acrylic
paint on paper, but you can easily use any
medium you have on hand, like watercolor, gash paint, colored pencils, or even a
box of your kids crayons. By the end of this class, you'll have a good
understanding of hue, value, and intensity. Now, do you have to use fancy art words in order
to make beautiful art? No. Whether you choose
to use these words in your art vocabulary or not
is completely up to you. But you'll end this
class with a few tools to help you make color
decisions about your own art. Hopefully, this will be the first class in a
series of classes where we unpack art words
for art nerds like ourselves who probably
did not go to art school. Let's move on and talk a little bit more about
the class project.
2. Project and Resources: For the class project, you'll find a downloadable
and printable workbook in the class resources section. If you have the
capability to print this on a thicker
specialty paper, That might work
out for the best, but if not, don't worry about it and don't let
that hold you back. For example, if you're
using acrylics, you can print out
your workbook on a thick card stock or even acrylic paper,
if you have that. If you're using watercolor, you might be able to
print your workbook out on watercolor paper. No need to use top quality. An quality watercolor paper
will be just fine for this. I printed mine out on a
thick card stock paper, but truly use what you
have and don't let a material like paper hold you back from
completing the work. On each page of the workbook, we will talk about the
color property definition. We'll look at an example, and there's a space for
a fun mini project to help you remember hue,
value, and intensity. Feel free to share a photo of your project in the project
section of the class. You can share any
page of the workbook, but I think the most fun
one to share will be our last bonus project since everyone's will be
a little bit different. You really don't need many
supplies for this class. But in the next section, we'll briefly talk about the supplies that you
do need for this.
3. Supplies: There are not many supplies
needed for this class. All you will need is the workbook printed
out on the paper of your choice and your
favorite art medium to complete the workbook. I will be using acrylic paint. But please feel free to use any art medium you have on hand. Watercolor paint
works really well. Guash paint is
another great choice. Colred pencils or even
crayons can work just fine. You can learn about hue, value, and intensity with any
kind of art medium. Let's jump in and talk about our very first art word. Hue.
4. First Art Word - Hue: It's time to talk about our
first of three art words, and that is Hu. Hu is super simple. It is a fancy word for the name of the color.
Yep, that's it. Blue, red, green,
yellow, orange, purple. These are all hues. If a color has a name, then that is its hue. Let's look at an example
from a famous artist. This is a painting painted by Claude Monet called
Chrysanthemums. We can clearly see
contrasting hues of red, yellow, pink, white, and blue. A very different example is
the tragedy by Pablo Pacaso. This is a good example of
a monochromatic painting where the artist paints with
variations of just one hue. In this case, he used blue. Now it's time to think
about your own artwork. What types of hues
do you like to use when you paint or
make your own art? Do you like using
primary colors? Do you like complimentary colors to contrast with one another? Do you like analogous
colors that live next to each other
on the color wheel? There are a lot of
choices you can make relating to hue
as you make your art? It's important to know the
definition so that you can then think through that and think through
your own choices? For our hue mini project, we are going to fill
in the color wheel on page two of your workbook? We are just sticking
to the basics here. There are very complicated
color wheels out there, but we are going to focus on our three primary
colors, red, yellow, and blue, and our three
secondary colors, orange, purple, and green. If you don't have the
exact primary hues that you need for this, don't let that hold you back. It is more about the process than creating the
perfect color wheel. Just use the closest
color you have.
5. Hue Mini Project: All right. I have the second
page of the workbook here. H u, and we have a really
simple color wheel. What I'm going to do might get my paint brush tiny bit wet. I'm just going to fill in each primary color
starting with yellow. I find it quite relaxing. To do coloring exercises like this where you don't have
to make any decisions. You're just kind of
filling in the color. The yellow I am using
is just a yellow light. It's kind of a lemony
shade of yellow. Use what you've got, though. If you have a yellow crayon,
use a yellow crayon. And I'm going to fill
in my next color. The red I'm using is
Naphthal crimson. I'm filling in my
primary red triangle. Now, primary colors, if
you're newer to color theory, these are just the colors
that can't be mixed. You couldn't find two colors
together to make yellow. It's primary. You could make different types of yellows
by mixing colors together. But you're never going to be
able to just mix a yellow. I'm moving on to blue. I'm using an ultramarine blue, but use whatever blue
you have on hand. It's a little
thinner, but truly, it doesn't matter if you're
using a heavy bodied paint, a fluid acrylic, a craft paint, truly makes no difference. Now I've got each of my
primary color spots filled in, and now is where the fun begins, we are going to do
our secondary colors. Fun thing about these
colors is that they are mixed by combining
the two neighbors. We can start with orange. To make orange, we are going to mix our
yellow and our red. I will say when you mix orange, You want to go a
little heavier on the yellow and a little
lighter on the red. Red can be an
overpowering color. We do need more than that. But if you did equal
parts red and yellow, you would have a very
red looking orange. I did mostly yellow
and just added in bits of red I got this
nice little orange. You can just take some time and fill in your
orange triangle. To make green, I'm
sure you can guess, we are going to mix
yellow and blue together. We mix our two neighbors. To get our secondary color. Again, yellow, yellow is just
not as strong of a color. I am doing a lot of yellow. Then I will add a bit of blue in until I'm happy
with the color. A little bit of blue will give you this lighter lime green. The more blue you mix
into your yellow, the deeper that
green hue becomes. This is a fun green, so
I'm going to use it. I'm going to fill in our little green slice of the wheel here. Our final secondary
color is purple. Purple you technically get
by mixing a red and a blue. But purple is a little
tricky. Let me show you why. If we take our primary red, add in some primary blue. It looks Yucky. I find you do need to add
just a touch of white. So I've got a little
titanium white here. So if you add just
a bit of white, it can help you actually see
the hue a little bit better. So this looks good.
It's a darker purple. Often with purple, you guys
eye squeeze it out of a tube, or else it ends up like this, kind of maybe even a
little bit grayish. If you had, like, a pinkish red that you were mixing
in with your blue, you might get a prettier
shade of purple. But we're just kind of using what we have
in the paint box, and so we are going to get
the purple that we get. Which is this. This is our little
hue mini project. It's all finished now. And it's just that
simple color wheel. We have our three primary
colors, three secondary colors. This was just a good
opportunity to play with Hue. Hue is just the
name of the color, and we've just done six
quick hues right there. We are going to use this later. So set it aside, let it dry, and we'll move on. Hopefully this was a
huge help for you. Next, we'll chat about value.
6. Second Art Word - Value: Now it's time to talk about
value as it relates to color. Value simply means how light
or dark a certain color is. To change the value of a color, we don't alter the hue at all. We simply adjust the level of white to make the value
lighter or darker. A gray scale moving
from black to gray to white shows a change in value without using
any hue at all. Let's look at a
famous example that shows a wide variety of
value in a painting. James McNeil Whistler
painted his mother in 18 71, and he clearly used a big range of light and dark values
in this piece of art. Now that you know what value is, you can think about value as
it relates to your own art. When you're drawing or painting, adding a variety of
value or a variety of light and dark can help give objects a three
dimensional look. So that's something
you want to think about when you're
creating your own art. Do you want your art to
look like it has dimension? Play with a lot of value change. If you like your artwork
to have a flat look, you want to keep value
change to a minimum. For our value mini project, you will find two value scales to fill in on the third
page of your workbook?
7. Value Mini Project: I've got the third page of
my color word workbook, and this is where
we are going to do a little value exercise. So we have two scales
here and we're going to fill in
these value scales. Remember, value is just how
dark or how light a color is. What we are going to
do is take a color. Any color could be
the red yellow or blue that you used in
the first project. I'm using turquoise deep because it is one
of my favorites, and it is really fun to see
the drastic change that happens as we shift the
value of this color. In the very first rectangle, I am just going to fill in the color straight
out of the tube. This will be the darkest value in my row of turquoise here. We are going to take the
color straight out of the tube and add a bit of white. We're going to do
one, two, three, six shifts in value. So you don't have
to add, you know, a ton right up first. So we've shifted the
value just a bit lighter, and I'm going to fill
in my second rectangle. See how it already looks so
different than what has come straight out of the tube just by adding a little bit
of white to the paint. It has become more opaque by just adding a
little bit of that white to shift the value even lighter. We're going to add a bit more white and fill in
the next square. I am going to shift that
value even lighter, and if you want to
make it lighter, you can even start a
new blue section here. Instead of adding
a ton of white. You're just going to add a
little blue to a lot of white. This one is really mostly
white with a teeny, tiny bit of that
turquoise mixed in. So we have finished
our first value scale, and you can see how
different it is. Just by adding white
and changing the value. We didn't mix in a
single other hue into the deep turquoise blue. We have created a nice, pretty shift in value. We're going to do a value
scale using only gray shades. We're not using any color here. We're just using a gray scale. This technically is black. And we can start with a black
square, if you would like. Or you can start with
a dark gray square if that is the color
that you have on hand. Now, you'll see me do the same process where
I just add a bit of white and lighten it to it
will still be a darker gray, and I will fill in
my next rectangle. Now, I should note when
I'm using acrylic paint, the way that I lighten a
hue is by adding white. If you are using water color, The way that you would lighten a color is not by adding white, but by diluting your water color more and more as you move
down the value scale. If you're using a medium like
colored pencil or crayon, you'll just press lighter, and you'll get the same effect where you're using same hue, no hue shift, but changing the
value by pressing lighter. If you're using gah paint, Gach, you can either lighten
by diluting with water or adding white or a combination of both
would be fine too. You could make this scale
go on and on forever. You could have 100 variations of value going from darkest darkest to, like, white, basically. But I think our six
rectangles really give us a good picture of value
and how to change value. And now we have this pretty
page in our workbook that shows us a really good
example of how to do that. Now, it is a great time to
pause your video and go ahead and work on your
value scales with your favorite color
and your gray scale. Feel free to post this in the project section so that we can see what your
favorite color is too. I hope that that was
quite valuable for you. Sorry for the pun. Onto our last word, intensity
8. Third Art Word - Intensity: Our last artword for
this class is intensity. Intensity describes
the brightness or dullness of a color. A color straight out of the tube is in its
most intense form. The easiest way to tone down the intensity of a color is
to add gray to that color. Or to add the opposite color, which is also called the
complimentary color. For example, when we look at the most famous Monalisa
by Leonardo Da vinci, we actually see a lot of
low intensity colors. We don't see intense primary
reds, yellows, or blues. Everything looks a
little bit more subdued. Let's contrast this to this
painting by Pablo Picasso, which shows us high intensity. We see bright colors in probably very close to their fullest
intensity in this painting. Now you get to think
about your own art. How you use intensity in your artwork is
completely up to you. But the benefit of understanding that concept is that then you can make that
choice for yourself.
9. Intensity Mini Project: I have my intensity page of
the workbook right here. And we have two scales that we're going to
do on this page. Remember, intensity
is the brightness or dullness of a color. On our intensity page
of the workbook, we are going to use
two scales again, and we're going to shift intensity from the most
intense bright color, and we're going to tone it down to be a little bit more
dull as we progress. So I do think I will use this turquoise color that
I used on my value scale. So if I just put my
turquoise on there. This is full intensity. Just turquoise, nothing else. Muddying it up. This is
beautiful to use in artwork, but there might be times
where you don't always want the most intense
color in your artwork. And so when that is the case, you will want to choose the opposite color from the
color wheel to help tone down your color So if we grab our color wheel from
our hue project, we would see that something in the blue hue like our turquoise. The opposite color is going to be an orange or an orange red, and that is going to help to tone down the
color a little bit, reduce its intensity, and just make it a
little more dull. I'm going to take
my turquoise here. I'm just going to mix in the
tiniest bit. Of that orange. We might even want more of
an orange red for this. I'm just going to put that in the next little square here. Actually, this one might be
a little bit hard to tell. I don't know if I
mixed enough in there, but it has just reduced the
intensity a little bit. I did not tone down
this first color a lot, but on this next one, I will add even more of this orange red shade
to the turquoise. You'll see that it becomes
even more toned down. It's not really getting
lighter or darker necessarily. It's simply becoming a
duller version of itself, which sounds sad, but
is useful in painting. So this can be useful. I like, when you're
making a painting, if you find that, gosh, I finished my painting,
everything just looks so bright. Nothing is standing
out to me or you know, there's no good
focal point because everything is just
super intense. This can be a good exercise
to do because you can easily reduce the intensity of certain parts
of your painting. We have gone from this nice, bright, intense turquoise blue, and we have reduced
the intensity by adding in the complimentary
color until we ended with this kind of neutral grayish hue that still relates back
to the deep turquoise, but looks completely different
and quite a bit more dull. The nice thing about using a toned down version of your original color
rather than just adding a different brown or
a different gray is that these two colors
will relate well to each other in your
overall painting. This takes a little bit
of practice working in the right amount of complimentary color to reduce the intensity without
it just turning into, totally brown or just a color
that you didn't intend. So play with it and see some different
different levels of intensity and just see what you like and what you
don't like about this. Another way to reduce intensity is by adding
gray to a color. Let's do red for this one. We have a lot of red on the palette here
that we can use up. If we want to reduce the
intensity of our red, and this red is heavy bodied, so I do add a little water. We're going to add in
a little bit of grey. So you can see just by adding
that little bit of gray, we have taken down
the intensity. So we'll add a little more gray. Reduce that intensity even more. This kind of has almost worked itself down to a true gray, but it is a gray that has
a bit of a red feel to it. Again, say you were painting a red apple and you wanted to add some
shadowing in certain areas? Instead of just grabbing
like a black or a dark gray by using a toned
down version of that color, the colors will
relate to each other better in your overall painting. Here you have it.
Two intensity scales done two different ways, one using a complimentary color, and one adding gray to
the original color. Was that intense I mean, you knew it was coming, right? Hopefully, these three
lessons have given you a simple but thorough grasp of the concepts of hue
value and intensity. If you stick with me, we have one more fun bonus
project that will combine all three of these
color concepts together and we'll make a fun little painting
along the way.
10. A Cute Bonus Project Part 1: Now, for our bonus project, we are going to combine all three of
these color concepts, and we're going to paint
a cute little mug. You'll find this mug sketch on the last page of
your class workbook, and you're welcome to use it and just start
painting right away, or you can sketch your
favorite mug if you prefer. We are going to use hue value and intensity to make
this little painting. And the first thing
that we need to make some choices about
are our colors. I'm going to use
purple for my mug, and this is just some
violet mixed with white. And then I'm going to use a minty green for my background. You can pick whichever
colors you like. You can take a peek at
your color wheel and maybe you want to choose some
complimentary colors. Maybe you want to use hues
that are right next to each other on the color wheel or
something totally random. It's completely up to you, but the first step
is just to make your decisions about the
hues that you will use. I'm actually going to
take this violet paint, and I'm going to do a few
value changes with it because my mug is going to have some light medium
and dark values. I've got my darkest, my medium, and this can be a nice light
value of that violet color. The next decision
I need to make is where my light source is. So for this composition, I am going to decide
that my light is coming in from the
top left corner. Maybe this is where the sun is shining through a window
or there's a light. But everything that that touches is going to be a
little bit lighter, and then everything
on the other side will be a darker value. So a lot of this little mug
will be a medium value. I am going to, I think, make, like, a dark stripe on
the bottom of my cup. So I'm gonna leave
that part for now. You know, some of the inside
of the cup will be a medium. And then some will probably be darker in the
more shadowy areas. Let's mark in what should we do? Lighter or darker.
Let's do darkest. Our darker value
is going to be on that inside of the cup where
the sun is not shining. And if you notice, I'm
not blending everything. I'm just sort of
marking in the color. This side of my
mug will also have that darker value because it is not going to be directly
hit by the light source. The bottom of the handle
we decided would also be a darker value because
it's farther from the light, and I did want to make my
stripe across the bottom. Down This is where the light source would be
directly reaching our mug. I'm just painting it in, not super worried
about blending. We'll blend a little. We'll not make it such a defined
line right here. But for now, first coat, we're just marking
in the colors. Another place that the light
might be directly hitting is just right here where it first reaches the
edge of the mug, and perhaps if there
was a rim on this cup, it might hit the light because it'd be on the
top part of the cup. And I think it's already
looking kind of fun. It's stylized with
the color blocking. I might take some paint
like directly from the tube and do an even
darker, darker value. I'm just going to mark in
this bottom stripe since it's a value might have an
even darker shadow. We might get a little bit of the darkest darkest here at
the bottom of the handle, where light will
not be hitting it, and we might even get a little bit on the
inside of that cup, where It's hard for
the light to reach. And so just like we did that, we're also going to mark
in just a little bit of, like, super light value. And maybe this is where there's even a high light going on. And maybe, like, right here
on the edge of the mug. I might even grab a
little light right there. I like the look of this. You can leave it with
separated colors if you want. Or, if that is not your style, you can add like a
transition color in between your shades to
blend it a little bit more. The choice is totally up to you. I might leave mine a little
bit and not blend it in. But again, totally up to you. You can even do a mix, see how I just added a little transitional
color in there, but I didn't do a
ton of blending. A I kind of like mine like this. I don't want to overwork it. I think I want to
just leave it B. I did not change the
intensity on this. I just only worked with a value shift on
this particular mug. If you wanted to have some
really shadowy areas, you could tone this color
down and add that in. I actually kind of like
the intensity of it. So I think I'm just going
to leave it just like that. We will work with intensity when we create a
shadow for this c.
11. A Cute Bonus Project Part 2: For my background color, I have this, like, minty green because
I love minty green. I always pick a mint green. I'm just filling
in like the bottom of this tabletop area. I drew an outline for you,
but you don't need to, like, use my blob
shaped outline. If that bothers you and you
want a square, make a square, if you want a different shape, make a different shape, or you can just use
what's on the paper. So I am filling in just my regular old mint
green hue on this bottom. And then I am going to change the value when we
get to the top part. For the top, like
the background, I'm going to just take
that same minty green, but change the value and
make it quite a bit lighter. And this just helps
differentiate between, you know, where the cup is sitting and the
background behind it. You can add variety
to your background. If you want some spots
to be a little lighter, some spots not as light.
That is totally up to you. It can give it, kind of
an interesting effect if you don't make it just one complete,
completely flat shade. Just give it like a tiny
bit of variety in there. Now, remember, you can use
whatever colors you like. And I think this would be
really fun to share in the project section because everyone's mug will look
a little bit different. But it's not like such a
complicated project that, you know, you couldn't finish it or you wouldn't
want to share it. It's just a simple,
fun little project. And so I think we should all shares and show each
other what we need. You notice, I even added a little bit of that lavender
into this background. It just kind of
unifies it a little. It actually kind of
tones it down even a little bit more by adding a
different color back there. I just makes it a little
more visually interesting. You can do that or not do that. It's totally up to you.
Now, we are going to play with intensity a
little bit right here. We are going to work with intensity change when we
think about a shadow. Now, remember our light is
coming in from the top left. Which means our shadow will move in the
opposite direction. Our shadow will
move to the right. To make the shadow, a lot of times
people will just use a pure gray or even
just like black. And if you look at
like a tabletop and put an object on it, that's not actually the
color of the shadow. The shadow is typically
the color of the tabletop, which in our case
is this mint green, but it's a toned down maybe slightly darker
version of that color. So I am just adding gray Now, you could also use
the opposite color, which in this case, would be like a reddish color because red is the
opposite of green, or you can just add gray
to your tabletop color, and we are going to
create a shadow. And when you create the shadow, I like to do a little bit of shadow
directly under the cup. So just like a line
under the cup, and then swoop it
out to the side, and you're going to kind of make an oval shape to connect it. If it looks weird, you can use your other paint
and paint right over. Mine might be a little bit
big for this cup here. I'm going to cut my
shadow down a bit. A little bit out
of control there. But you can add a little bit of variation with your
shadow, if you want to, you might even add
a little bit of purple to your green
like the color of The mug might reflect
just a bit into the shadow. And unify those two
colors together. I might play around
with this a little bit and add a little
bit more detail, maybe make a pattern
tablecloth or something. We'll see where this takes me, but this is just such a
fun way to look at hue, where you pick your
colors, value, where you pick your lights
and darks, and intensity, where you pick spots
that you might want to be a little bit toned down
a little bit less intense. So, feel free to play with
yours and make it your own. And I can't wait to
see what you make.
12. Final Thoughts : And that's it. You're
finished with the class. I hope that this was a
fun way for you to learn our color properties hue
value and intensity. Just to quickly review, Hue is the name of the color value refers to the light or
darkness of the color, and intensity is whether the
color is bright or dull. I don't think anyone
should have to feel overwhelmed out in the art world because they did not
go to art school or learn a bunch of
fancy vocabulary. Most of these concepts are super simple and
are probably things that you have
considered while you're making your art without
even realizing it. While, I don't
think it's crucial to use proper art
vocabulary in order to make beautiful art
I do think it's good to understand the definitions
of some of these art words. That way, you know what other artists and teachers
are talking about. And most important, you can use this knowledge to
make decisions about your own artwork and
be intentional about the way that you choose to
use hue value and intensity. Don't forget to post your cute little Mug project
in the project section, or you can tag me
on Instagram at Amy Ln Murray so that I can
like and share your work. If you liked this class, be sure to leave a review
and follow along for more. I would even love to get
suggestions from you on art words that we can talk
about in future classes. I believe everyone is an artist, and I hope that you enjoyed
painting along today. Bye.