Transcripts
1. Introduction: When I was a little girl,
maybe five or 6-years-old, my mom took me to the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York City. Now, I really don't remember anything about this
amazing place, but I do remember the
souvenir that I got there. It was a simple little color
wheel with just three dots, each one on its own
clear plastic layer secured in the center
so they could spin. And I'll never forget when I spun the yellow dot
over the blue one, it turned green. I
thought it was magic. I love that little color wheel, and I often wonder
if that's what sparked my lifelong
love of color. Hi, I'm Chris Ruff, and I'm a surface designer and a graphic designer and an
all around fan of color. That's why I'm excited
about this class because it's all about color. We'll be covering things
like primary colors and secondary colors and tints and tones and shades and
complementary colors. So technically, this is a color theory class, but
I don't like that term. It sounds too dry and academic. Instead, I like to think
of it as color alchemy, because that conjures images of mixing and experimenting
and discovering new things. So I'll be teaching color
theory in a more hands on way so that you really get an idea of what's
happening with colors, and that's so helpful when you're putting together
color palettes. And once you learn the
tools in this class, you're ready for color recipes, where we'll take
what you've learned here and I'll give you
insights on how to build beautifully
balanced color palettes that are perfect
for surface design. Now, in this class, I'll be
using Adobe Illustrator, but this isn't really
an illustrator class. Everything that I teach you here applies no matter
how you make your art, whether that's in Procreate or Photoshop or even if you
use traditional media. As we go through the lessons, I'll be using this lovely
floral pattern by an artist named Nadia Grapes to help
me illustrate the concepts. And she has graciously
allowed you to experiment with
it, too, for free. So you can download
it right from the class resources and
use it in your project, which is to take
what you've learned here and create some
new color ways for it. Of course, if you prefer to use different artwork,
that's fine, too. The idea here is
just to play and explore and have fun with
color. And who knows? Maybe you'll even feel some of that magic that I felt
when I was a little girl. So let's go get started. O
2. CMYK File Setup: I'll be working in CMYK colors throughout the class
because they behave a little more like
traditional paint media than RGB colors do. So I want to take a
minute to show you how to set up a CMYK file in Procreate, Photoshop, as well as
in Adobe Illustrator. We'll start in Procreate,
and it's super simple. Just click on the button
here like you usually would. But instead of
choosing any of these, click on here, which will
get you a custom Canvas. Use whatever
dimensions you want, but the color information
is here in color profile. The default is
generally RGB color, but CMYK is right over here. So just click on that and the generic profile
is just fine, and then click Create. Once you're in here, if you
go into your color palette, it pretty much looks the same, maybe not quite as saturated as the colors you're used to. If you want to use
the values and percentages like I
do in the class, just click down here on value. Now you'll find all the CMYK
information right here. I can actually just write
in here what I want. I want 100% cyan and 0% magenta and zero
here and zero here. Now I've got pure Cyan.
I can use that here. Then if I make another layer by adding and turning that
one onto multiply, now if I go back in
here, let's do magenta. So I'll do 100% magenta. And now, when I color on top, I can see how those colors
interact with each other. And then, of course, if
I went back into layers, I could change the opacity so I can see how that
affects the colors. In Photoshop, just
go to File New, pick your size, and then
over here is color mode. So usually, often the
default is RGB color, and so just choose CMYK. Now, when you go in
here, the easiest way to work with CMYK color is to use your color picker and you'll find the CMYK
values right here. So if I wanted pure Cyan, I could just type
in 100 and zero, and now I've got pure Cyan. And if I make another layer, and put that layer
onto multiply. Now, if I went
back over here and did 100% Cyan or I'm
sorry, 100% magenta. Now if I color right there, I can see how those two colors
mix. So that's Photoshop. So in Illustrator, we do
basically the same thing. Go to File New, and the color information, the color mode is right here, just make sure
that's set on CMYK. And then in here, I'll
be showing you how to use the color menu to
specify your colors. Oh, and if you don't have
the color menu open, that's over here
under window color. And you'll want to make
sure by clicking up here that this is
also set to CMYK. And then I'll be demonstrating
the rest of how to work with color in Illustrator
throughout the lessons.
3. Color Basics: Let's start with the
absolute basics, and that would be
primary colors, which are red, yellow, and blue. And the reason they're called
primary is because you can't create them by mixing
other colors together. And the amazing thing about them is that all other colors can be created by just mixing different combinations of
just these three colors. So the paints shown
here are the colors we usually associate with
red, yellow, and blue. But it turns out
for color printing, you can get a wider
range of colors by using a specific
blue called cyan, and instead of true red,
magenta works better. That's the reason
CMY K color systems are used for printing and
the K stands for black. It's K because it comes from an old printing term key color. A quick note,
throughout the class, I'll be using the terms magenta
and red interchangeably, as well as cyan and blue. Don't let that throw
you. Let's dive in and play with some color. I've got my three primary colors here and we're going to see what happens when we mix them. Let's start by taking our
cyan and mixing it with red. Tada it makes purple. And when I mix yellow with blue, it magically changes to green. I have to say, every
time I see that, it brings me right back to being a kid and playing with
that color mixing toy. It's just super cool. Then lastly, we take the red and mix it with yellow,
and we get orange. Now, I know that
looks pretty reddish, but that's probably due to the fact we've got
magenta as our red. But for these purposes, we're
going to call it orange. So now we have three new
colors in our circle, and they are referred
to as secondary colors. So orange, purple and green
are the secondary colors. So now I want to show you
how to make these colors without using transparency
or blending modes. We can do it right
with the color menu. So to make orange, we just move the magenta slider all the way to 100% and also the
yellow slider to 100%. And, boom, there's our orange, and it's identical to the
one that we made over here. For green, we combine
the two neighbors, which are yellow and cyan, and we put each
of those at 100%. And then finally for the
purple, we use those neighbors, which are magenta at 100%, and cyan at 100%. So those are our six key colors, the primary colors and
the secondary colors. And, believe it or
not, all other colors are based on just
these six hues. But we'll get more
into that later. Now let's talk about shades. Shades are created by
adding black to a hue. So if I click on
one of our colors and move the black
slider to 100%, obviously it ends up being black because black is really kind
of an overpowering color. But if I dial down the
black a little bit, the original color
starts to come back and we end up with just
a darker version of it. So it's a shade of the color. The same thing
happens to yellow, obviously, and I always find
it interesting, though, that when you add
black to yellow, it ends up being sort of
like this greenish color. But that's the way
the two colors mix. And obviously the same goes
with all the other colors. So adding some amount of black gives you a darker
shade of the original color. And then on the flip
side are tints, Tints are created
by adding white. Now, we can't really add white to a color
on the computer, so we handle it by just
lowering the percentage, the value of the original
color in the color menu. So we do that to
each of the colors, and that's how we
end up with sort of a pastel palette or
tints of the color. What happens if you add
both black and white? That would produce a tone. So because we can't
add white here, first we lower the
amounts of the hue, and then we add some black. And we get a very muddy color. So we'll do the same here, lower the amount of yellow and
add some black back in. And here, again, lower both of the hues
that are in green. And adding some black. So that is how you
create tones of a color. Now, you might wonder
why the colors are often arranged in a wheel
or a circle like this. That's because colors don't
really have a start and end. They smoothly transition
one from another, so that's represented
by the wheel. And it also helps us see
relationships between the colors where they follow on that
wheel. So let's review. The primary colors are
blue, red and yellow, and we'll be using a
variation of that, which is Cyan,
magenta, and yellow. Secondary colors are created by mixing two primary colors, and they result in
orange, green and purple. Shades are created by
adding black to the mix, and that results in a darker
version of the original hue. And tints are created
by adding white, and that results
in pastel colors. And finally, tones are
created by adding gray, which is white and
black to a hue. And that results
in a desaturated, sort of muddy toned down
version of the color. So here's the floral pattern
again that I mentioned in the introduction. So
what do you see here? Well, it's got a lot of
different hues in it. There's green in
the leaves here, and these flowers are
in the yellow family. And this one is orange. And over here, I don't know. Would you call this
purple or blue? I think it could
be either. So I'll put it right in the middle. And how about tints and shades? Yep, it's got those too. This flower is
definitely a light tint, and so is this blue, which is sort of a tint of
this darker one here. And these leaves are a
dark shade of green, and so are the centers
of the flowers. I think the centers are
actually a dark shade of red. Okay, so that covers
hues, tints and shades.
4. Warm & Cool Colors: Here's our little wheel with
our six key colors again. Now, remember I said
that all other colors are based on just
these six colors. Well, if we blow up our wheel, it gives us a little
bit more room to put some of those colors
in between these. And really, you could
fit an infinite number of subtly different hues
in between each key color. Now we can really get a much better look
at how the colors transition smoothly from one to another around the
circle. Isn't that cool? Of course, we can
make a shade of any of these colors
just by adding black, just like we did
before, as well as making tinted versions
of them by adding white. So this larger wheel also
is going to make it easier to illustrate one other aspect of color theory
that's good to know, and that's warm and cool colors. You probably already
know that the colors from green to purple
are cool colors, and the ones from
yellow to red are warm. But what about the colors
between yellow and green and between
purple and red? Well, those are really
transition zones, and we can draw a dividing line through the middle of them. So some purples are very cool and some then lean
towards being more warm. And the same with green,
rich bluish green. And then as you move
to the other side, you get a lime green, and that's obviously
much more warm. Our floral pattern has a mix of warm colors and cool colors, but it's fun to play
with color ways that are only warm
colors like this one, that pairs warm peachy reds with greens that are also on the
warm side of the wheel, or it's fun to play with only
cool colors like this one. Here, it's nice that
there's a range of cool colors to hold our
interest because they span from a cool green to soft blues and then kind
of lavender purple color. It's also fun to start
with a cool palette like this one and then sneak
some warm colors in there, too, like the soft tan
colors on this one. And on this one, the motifs
are all cool colors, and they're set against
a warm background. So try lots of different
combinations and see how those changes impact the
emotions of the design.
5. Complementary Colors: Let's talk about
complimentary colors. You might already be
familiar with the term, but what does it really mean? Well, complimentary
colors are simply colors that sit opposite each
other on the color wheel. For example, orange and blue, yellow and purple
and red and green. Why do we care? Well,
complimentary colors have some magical properties. First, when you place
them next to each other, they each make the other
color look brighter. This happens because
complimentary colors always pair a warm color
with a cool color, which creates a very
strong contrast. But here's where it gets
even more interesting. If I take magenta and blend
it with any of these colors, I just get a variation
or a mix of magenta. But look what happens
when I mix it with green. It creates a color
that's almost black. The same thing
happens when I mix orange with blue,
again, almost black. Yellow and purple? Yep, that
turns almost black too. What's going on here? Well,
the word complimentary isn't about something being nice or flattering those shoes
complement your dress. It's more about completeness. So let's do this.
I'm going to take all of the primary colors
and put them together, and we get black. I can also do that in the
color menu by making cyan, magenta, and yellow all 100%. So now let's look at orange. Orange is made of
yellow and magenta. So to complete it, we would need blue,
and that just happens to be orange's
complimentary color. The same with magenta. Here
we have plenty of magenta, but we need yellow and blue, which just so happens
to make green, and green is the
compliment to magenta. And purple, which is made
of magenta and blue, well, that needs
yellow to complete it. So why does this matter?
Well, here's the cool part. When I lower the values of these mixed complimentary
colors, they turn gray. Now remember, adding gray
is a way to create a tone. Instead of adding
white and black, we can just add a little bit
of its complimentary color. So here, for the green, I just add a little
bit of magenta, and that tones down the color. And for the purple, I can
add a little bit of yellow. And for the orange, I'll
add a little bit of blue. Now, as far as I
know, there isn't a term for this
particular thing, but I'm going to call
it complimentary tones, since we're muting or
desaturating the color, but this time, we're not
adding black and white. We're just adding
the compliment. Here are the complimentary
pairs again, red mixing with green, orange mixing with blue and
yellow mixing with purple. Now let me make a copy of these and I'll lighten the
ones on the left. See how the center
color starts to shift, and we get a muddy
toned down version of the dominant
color on the right. Now if I go back and lighten
the ones on the right, we end up with a
toned down version of the dominant
color on the left. If I lower the intensity
of both colors, you can really see
how they cancel each other out and we end up
with basically gray. So whenever you want to
desaturate or tone down a color, adding black and white is
one way to make a tone, and now you have a second way. Mix in a little bit of its complement from the other
side of the color wheel. Let's do one last comparison. I'm going to take this
purple, and first, we're going to make a tone
by desaturating the color, which is like adding white
and then adding some black. Now I'm going to
make a shade of it. And to do that, I
just add some black. And now here's what happens when I add a little bit
of its compliment. It doesn't get
darker or lighter. It just gets richer and a little bit muddier and a
little bit desaturated. So this is a great way to create a deep rich color that's
not overly saturated. Sometimes the results
can be subtle, but it's still a fantastic tool to have in your color toolbox. So that's the magic of
complimentary colors. So here's our floral
again and this time I've just added a dark
background to it. Now, these are the three
brightest colors in the pattern, and if I tone them down, they look like this, and it starts to change the
character of the pattern. So it goes from bright and punchy to one that's
more subdued, which could look a little bit more rich and sophisticated. I think that's definitely
the case with this one. I think this is quite a
sophisticated color palette, and it's made completely
with toned down colors. And this one has a
rich boody vibe to it, and that's thanks to all
the rich tones in it. So tones can be a really
valuable resource when you're developing
a color palette. And that's true for
both traditional tones as well as these
complimentary tones.
6. Values & Contrast: This lesson, we're
going to talk about color values and contrast. Of course, the two
colors that have the most contrast
are black and white. That's why pages are usually
black text on white paper. Even at small sizes, we're able to see the words clearly because it's
so high contrast. On the opposite end
is low contrast, and that's where the colors are very similar to each other. Can you imagine reading a
book that looked like this? Contrast is based
on color values. For that, you can think
about this gray scale. On the left are the dark
values, in this case, black and on the other end, white, which is a
light color value. Now, it might seem
like color value is the same as shades and tints, and they are related, but they're not exactly
the same thing. For instance, here's
our color wheel again, and all of these are hues. In other words, they don't
have black or white added, so they're not shades or tints. But if you squint
your eyes at them, you'll be able to see
that these six hues have different color values. You see that the purple is a lot darker value
than the yellow. Let me show you a cool way
to look at just the values. I'm going to copy this and
paste it into Photoshop, and now I'll turn
this into grayscale. Now we're left with
just the color values. We can no longer see the hues, and now it's super clear that the purple is a darker
value than the yellow. And the magenta, if I put
it over with the others, is slightly darker than these. So this is a great technique
to keep in your toolbox. Viewing your design in
gray scale really helps to quickly check if you have
enough contrast in your design. So let's go back and explore a few more examples of contrast. Like, take a look at
these two squares. Even though they
are different hues, they have almost
identical values. And here are another couple
examples just like that. So low contrast can be a
problem because our eyes have a hard time distinguishing between colors with
similar values, and often will kind of
vibrate against each other, which can be really
uncomfortable to look at. So the most obvious way
to fix low contrast is to change the value
of one of the colors. So in this one, I'll just make
the center square lighter. And here, I'll make
this square darker. And now they look much better. The other way to
fix low contrast is just to separate the colors. Like here, a simple white
border breaks them up and makes them play together more nicely and reduces that visual
tension between them. So you can also run into low contrast situations with dark colors like these examples. And the fix is the
same. I'll take some of the black
out of this one. In this one, I'll break
up the two colors. And when you do that, it doesn't have to
just be with white. Here, I'll break
them up with black, or it could be another color, just as long as that color has a different value
than the two squares. Now in this example, the colors are really close neighbors, like pure magenta and
pure red or orange. You can see how
much they vibrate. But I wanted to show you
that sometimes you only need a small adjustment
to fix the problem. Like, I can just add
just 10% black or maybe 15 to this one or
even a touch of blue, and the contrast
improves dramatically. So contrast is one of the most important things to pay attention to when
working with color. If there's not enough
contrast in your design, it can look flat and washed
out or dark and muddy, or it just can be hard to
look at, hard on the eyes. Compare those with this one that has lots of good contrast. Now, that's not to say
that all of your designs need to be super bright and
contrasty like this one. Look what happens when I
darken just a few elements, the flower centers and
some of the leaves. Those small changes expand
the range of values, so it adds contrast that
really brings this to life while still keeping
its soft airy feel. The same goes for
this one. I lightened up the centers of the flowers, and that makes it more appealing without losing its
rich, moody vibe. So when you're developing
a color palette, keep in mind that contrast can
make or break your design. Choosing a range of values
is just as important, if not more important than choosing the right
hues themselves.
7. Color Mixology: We've now gone through some of the most important
aspects of color theory. That wasn't so hard, was it? Now, I wanted this class
to be super concise, so I went through
things pretty quickly. So in this lesson, I want to just kind of put
it all together. So let's go through
some mixing of colors. Here we've got a green hue
and to make a tint out of it, we're just going to
lower the numbers over here. Here's a good trick. In Illustrator, if you want
to move all of them at once, you can hold down the
Shift and option keys and then just hold one of them, and all of them will
move in proportion. So we're not changing
the hue at all. We're only changing it
into a lighter color. And then over here to make it a shade, we'll just add black. To make a tone,
we do two things. We lower the amount of
color and then add black. Shift option, and we'll lower
the colors a little bit, and then we'll add some black. And now this is just
a darker version, this one is a toned
down version. And then to make the
complimentary tone, we have to remember
the complimentary color, which is red. So we'll add some magenta. Alright, let's do the
same thing with this one. So to make a tint,
we shift option, make the colors lower. And you'll notice that
the yellow moves at a different speed
than the magenta, but that's proportional, so
we aren't changing the hue. We're just making it lighter. For the shade, we add black. For the tone, we make the colors a little bit
lighter and add some black. And the complimentary tone, the complimentary color
for orange is blue, so we'll add some blue to it. And as I said before, there can just be subtle
difference between these, but you can see that
you end up with a little bit more complex color, which is kind of nice, too. And then we'll do the
same with this blue one. Tint is lowering the colors. A shade is adding black. For a tone, we bring down
the colors and then add some black and compliment
of blue is orange. So we'll add both
yellow and some red. So I hope that gives
you some good practice. This is a fun exercise
to do for yourself. You can just set up
these squares like this and try some different
variations on it. So next we're going to
kind of do the opposite. We're starting with
a bunch of tones, and we'll walk through how
to make them brighter. So I'm just going to copy them so we can see the original. So how do we make this
a brighter color? Well, we look over
here what we've got. We don't have any black in
it, so it's not a shade. And to make it brighter, we
could do a couple of things. We could either shift an option and move all of the
sliders to the right. Or we can figure out what is making it
tone down like that. Well, it's in the red family, green would make it tone down. Green is blue and yellow. If we just take out a little
bit of the blue and yellow, that makes it a little bit
brighter than it was before. This one has all
four colors in it. So to make it brighter
without changing its value, we can take out some
of the opposite. In this case, that would be red. As I take out some red, now it's brighter
than it had been before. And how about this one? Same thing. This is
kind of a greenish, so we would take out the
red to make it brighter. And this one, we've got all
of these different colors. It's kind of a purple color, and the opposite of
purple is yellow. So if we take out the yellow,
now it gets brighter. This one has a little bit of black and all three
of the other colors. So to make it a brighter hue, we can take out the
red since it's green. This one is three colors here
and it's a very warm color, so we can take out the blue, which is the cooler color
to make it more bright. This one I would probably
take out the blue as well. If that gets too orange, we can take out some
of the yellow as well. So I hope that gives
you some good practice at mixing colors. I really encourage you to start looking at colors
around you differently. Every time you see a
color, ask yourself, what colors are in that one? How would I make that
color on the computer? And how would I tone it down
or make it more saturated? The more you practice, the more intuitive
color will feel, making it easier and
really more effortless to refine your palettes to get
exactly the look you want.
8. Color Perception: Sometimes when you put
particular colors side by side, they change our perception
of the individual colors. In this lesson, I
want to show you a few examples of
that phenomena. Here's our floral pattern in rich shades of navy
and denim blue. And here's one with
a teal background and flowers in shades of purple. But guess what? The flowers are exactly the same
in both of them. That's a pretty good
magic trick, isn't it? So, for some reason,
the blue flowers turn purple when they're
next to the teal background. How would we need to change this for it to look more blue? Well, we know that blue
and magenta makes purple. So if we just take out
some of the magenta, then that'll bring it
back around towards blue. And here's how it differs
from the original. Now let's look at this
six sided color wheel with the primary and secondary
colors on each corner. By the way, I'm going to give you instructions
at the end of this lesson of how to
make a color wheel just like this if you'd like to. Here's a purple dot on the
cool side and the warm side, and they look the same until
we put them side by side, and they're not the same color. So depending on whether they're against a warm color
or a cool color, that changes our
perception of them. How about up here? These
two look the same as well. But when we put together,
they're slightly different. Now in this one, the
top one looks like a fairly light warm green. Down here, there's
a lot more contrast and it looks a
little bit cooler. But when we put them together, it turns out they're
exactly the same color. Now that you've seen
some examples of color perception on
the color wheel, let's look at how this works in a couple of examples
of actual artwork. This is David
Hockney'sGarden three. First, I want to show
it to you in black and white so we can check
out the contrast of it. Without color, it's
really pretty flat. There's no pure black or white, so everything kind of
blends into gray tones. The railing is sort of
the darkest element, so it becomes the focal point in this black and white version. But overall, it just
feels kind of muddled. But now check it out in color. The scene completely
transforms into this glowing tropical landscape with bold, vibrant colors. Hockney uses
complimentary colors brilliantly because when colors are placed next to
their compliment, they pop even more. So that bright red orange, it really stands out against
the blues and greens, which are the compliments and guides our eye
through the painting. In the black and white version, we didn't even notice the
flower pots or the window here. They were just, you
know, all gray. So even though I said contrast can make or break
composition, and it can. This is definitely an exception, and Hockney knew exactly
how to use colors to transcend the usual
rules about contrast. And this painting is just amazingly alive and
glowing with color. So here's a painting by one
of my favorite artists, Wayne Thibout and this one
is called Four Cupcakes. And I wanted again to show it
to you in black and white. This time, it has
great contrast. You can easily see all the
cupcakes forms and dimensions, and you might already imagine
what the colors would be, maybe pink or pale yellow for the holders or white frosting,
maybe yellow frosting. And, of course,
we can see we can imagine that this is chocolate
frosting on this one. So it's strong and works well. But again, look what
happens when we add colors. What an amazing surprise. There's little morsels
of saturated hues, like rabrant pinks
and purples and bright greens that just make the cupcakes
glow with energy. So it takes a mundane
composition and kind of subject matter and turns it into something that's
really all about color. And Wayne Tuibot was
an amazing colorist. So both of these are examples of how color can transform a piece. It can add depth and excitement and contrast there
wasn't there before. So if you'd like to make your
own six sided color wheel, here are the instructions. Go to the rectangle tool and hold down and get
the polygon tool. And then option click. And let's make it 4 ", and we want six sides. So there's our polygon. Then we're going to go back
and get the Ellipse tool, and we're going
to make a circle, Oh, about that size.
Let's see. What is that. About three quarters of an
inch on one of the corners. We're gonna go into preview,
which is Command Y, and that shows us where the
center of this polygon is. So I'm going to use
the rotate tool or R on the keyboard and hold on the option key
and click in the center. And now I'm going to rotate this circle 60 degrees and copy. And then use Command
D to duplicate it till each corner is filled. Now we'll fill the circles. So this one I'm going
to make 100% magenta, and this one, I'll
make 100% yellow. And this one I'll
make 100% cyan. So those are the primaries, and now we'll do
the secondaries. So this one is 100%
magenta and 100% cyan. And here's our orange, so that's 100% magenta
and 100% yellow. This one would be green,
which is cyan and yellow. Now we'll get rid of all
of the black outlines. So we go over here, click on
the outline and click None. And now we're going to
use the Blend tool. So we'll choose two of the
circles and then double click here and choose specified
steps and six and click Okay. And now we just click on one
of them, and then the other, and it fills in the gaps between
those. Now it's a group. So what we want to do is go to object, expand. Click Okay. So we right click
and go to Ungroup. Okay, so we'll do that
one with the next one. We'll pick this and
this. Double click here. Make sure it's the same, and
then click here and here. And then we'll object expand, and right click and ungroup. Now we'll pick the yellow
one and the green one. Double click. Make
sure it's six. Okay, and click one
and then the other. And we'll repeat that
with the others. So now you have a
great tool that you can use to put colors together and see how
they react with each other or build color palettes, or just experiment
with color in general.
9. Homework Time!: Okay, guess what?
It's homework time. This is different
from your project, but I just wanted to give
you some way to sort of test what you've
learned in this class. So here's a color quiz, and I think it's going
to be kind of fun. In this first one, I
want you to play with colors just like I did at
the beginning of the class. You can see for yourself
what it feels like to take that yellow and add blue and come up with a magic green. That's
the first one. Second square over here is, can you answer these questions? I have no doubt you'll find
this easy after this class. We've got things like what
are the primary colors and secondary colors, and
how do you make them? And what are a shade
and a tint and a tone and questions about
complimentary colors. That should be easy. Then down here, instead of
sliding the colors around, I'm asking you to create them
using the sliders up here. Purple would be
magenta and cyan. And then once you've done that, add some black to these to
make shades out of them, and do the same
for tints in here. Then like we did in just
the previous exercise, take these colors and
tone them down by adding some of their
complimentary colors. Down here, this section
is all about contrast, and it says the center squares
have very similar values, and it causes that
unsettling buzzing or vibrating effect in the eye. I want you to fix these by
changing the contrast or by creating a boundary between the two colors like we
did a couple lessons ago. And then finally,
use the sliders in the color panel to
transform these brown squares, make one warmer and cooler, and this one more green. So have fun testing yourself
on all of those things. So this worksheet is available
in the class resources. There's a couple versions of it. There's an Adobe
Illustrator version, if that's what
you're working with, or there's also a JPEG version. So you can download
that and bring it into Photoshop or into
Procreate to work with it.
10. Review & Project: Congratulations. Now you
have all the tools you need to create your own
magic color alchemy. Your project is to create a
couple new color ways for Nadia grapes pattern
or choose one of your own that you'd like to make
multiple color ways of. They could be a mix of bright
hues and lots of contrast, or you could try one
with toned down colors. Maybe you make one with
all warm colors or all cool colors or
combination of both. Whatever you choose,
make sure that your color palettes
include a range of values to avoid it being flat and washed out
or dark and muddy. And look out for colors that vibrate or buzz in
an unsettling way. If you're a little intimidated
about getting started, let me just walk through how I would do it if I wanted to, let's say, make this into a pattern for a
little girl's dress. So I want everything to be
very pastel and very soft. To start, I think I would
want a colored background. So I'm just going to make a box around it and make
it a soft pink. And now my white flowers
aren't showing up very much, so I know that I should make
it a little bit darker. Now, I feel like these colors here are too dark for a
little girl's pattern. So I'm going to
choose one of them, and I can go up to
select same fill color. And that will give me all of
them that have that color. Now I'll use Command H
to hide the outlines, and I'm going to just grab all of them and
make them a little bit lighter first and maybe take out the black because that's
making it kind of a shade. And so I want it a little
bit more towards green, and it's got some red in it, so that's kind of
toning it down. So if I take that out, it'll get a little bit
more green, too. Then I'll do the
same for this one. Rather than always
having to go up here to select same fill color, I've actually given
it a shortcut, if you want to make a
shortcut too, in Illustrator, you can go to edit
keyboard shortcuts. Here rather than a tool, that is a menu command, and you could go down here to select and then here it is here, open that one, and
there's fill Color. You can put whatever shortcut you want. I'm using
Command five. And I actually use same
stroke color a lot, too, so I made that one Command
six, and click Okay. So back to this, I'm going to grab this one and
use my Command five shortcut to select
all of them that are that color and hide the guides. And I'm going to do the
same thing. I'm going to bring it down and maybe take out some of the red so
that I get a purer hue. Next, I think I want to
lighten up this color. So Command five, and
I'll just lighten it up. And then maybe make
this one lighter, too. Command five, hide, and
I'll make it lighter. There, now it's starting to
feel a little bit softer. This maybe I'll
try making yellow. So I'll grab all that
and take out the red, so it turns yellow. Then maybe these could
be pink instead. So Command five,
and I'll take out the yellow to bring
it down to pink. And I think I'll take
out the blue, too. That'll make them
a little brighter. So lastly, I think
is this color, Command five, and we'll make
that a little bit lighter. And now, as I look at it, these centers, they're too dark. So I'm going to command five and make those a little lighter. But I don't want to make
them too light because then I don't have any
definition anymore. So I'm going to
bring them up, and maybe I don't want them
to be kind of reddish. I want to take out that red and maybe make them more purple. So I'm going to take
out the yellow, too, and bring them back up.
Maybe more like that. And then maybe our flowers. They're not quite white, so I'm going to command
five and just maybe make those pure white by doing that. And actually, I don't
like this color anymore, so I'm going to command five and take out some
of that yellow. And also, I want to
change this color. Let's see what
that happens if we make that yellow, the
same yellow as this. So I'll use I on my
keyboard to fill them, and then maybe make the centers. Let's try white. No,
that's too light, I think. Let's try the blue. Well, let's see.
Maybe the green? Yeah, I like that
better. Let's try the other green.
Yeah, I like that. And now I just want to warm
up the background, I think, a little bit by adding some yellow and maybe lighten
it overall. There we go. Now we've got a new pastel
pink version of it. So I hope you'll just dive in and have
some fun with this. And I'd love to see
what you create. So don't forget to post
them to the class page. It'll be super fun to see everybody's different versions
of this floral pattern.
11. Final Thoughts: So thanks for taking this class. I hope you enjoyed exploring color as much
as I did while I was making the class because even after a career of
working with art, I learned some new
things, and it was really kind of good to revisit
these fundamentals. The next step is my
class color recipes. So think about what you
learned here as ingredients, and the next step is
to sort of cook up beautiful palettes for
your surface designs. I think you're really
going to enjoy it. I do have a favor to ask. I would love it if
you would just take a sec to write a
review of the class. That really helps me
know what resonates with you and helps me plan
for future classes. And thanks for all
your past reviews. Hearing you embrace
what I'm teaching and your enthusiasm for it has
really been inspiring to me. So thank you for
that. And lastly, I want to plug my digital guide, the professional repeat, a surface designers guide
to print production. It's quickly becoming a go to resource for
professional designers who want clear
practical information about how to get their art
files ready for production. You can find a direct link
from my profile page, and while you're there,
don't forget to follow me. So you'll know about
upcoming classes or better yet get
on my email list. And you can do that
at chris rough.com. So in the meantime,
happy Designing.
12. One More Thing...: Hello. Hi again. I'm popping back in to
let you know that I'm now available for one on
one coaching sessions. So if you like this class and would like to work
with me individually, you can now do so by
booking a session right from my skill
share profile page. I offer two kinds of sessions. The first one is a 1
hour portfolio review where we'll look at
your surface designs. I'll let you know some strengths
and areas to focus on, and you'll get the opportunity
to ask any questions you'd like about art licensing or
the surface design industry. Now I know it can
feel intimidating to show your work to somebody, but it's so smart to get
professional feedback. All the artists that I've
worked with have felt energized and ready to move
forward after our sessions. I also offer a 30 minute Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop
instruction session. If you're struggling
with any aspect of the software, I can help. We can walk through tools, I can demonstrate techniques and workflows that are going
to help solve your issues. So whether you're looking
for a one time session or an ongoing opportunity
for feedback on your work, coaching is such a great
investment in your career, unlike some of the expensive online courses that
are available, coaching doesn't have
a fixed curriculum, so I can give you
exactly the information and guidance that you need
exactly when you need it. I hope you consider coaching. I would love to work with
you and I can't wait to meet you and support you and guide you on your creative journey. You can learn more about
my coaching sessions at chrisrug.com slash CoachE.
Kris Ruff, Surface Pattern Designer & Coach
