Color Theory for Beginners and the Split Primary Color Wheel

1. Color Theory Basics Course Intro: Are you just getting started with painting and are totally confused and overwhelmed with everything that there is to learn about color theory and the color wheel? Do you find color temperature confusing or perhaps are still having trouble telling whether a color is warm or cool, or perhaps you're a little bit more advanced in your journey, but want to get more comfortable with color mixing, or perhaps you're interested in creating your very own color palette to work with that is original to you and the artwork that you like creating, or you're tired of having to depend on the ready-made watercolor sets that are available for you at art supplies stores that have a bunch of colors that you always end up not using at all? If you can relate with any of these, this course is for you. My name is Erica and I'm with traditional media artist and art teacher working with a variety of different drawing and painting mediums ranging from graphite to pen and ink, to watercolor, acrylics, and more. As the multi-passionate artist that I am, I love exploring and challenging myself with a wide variety of subject matter. This is what I share online. My days revolve around creating art and selling on a local level and I also constantly create helpful content to share online intended for beginner artists and intermediate artists who are really looking to level up their knowledge and skills. I share helpful posts and videos over at my website, my YouTube channel, my different social media platforms, and also, of course, my membership site. I have over 15 years now of experience working in creative and artistic fields. I obtained my BA in graphic design and right right went to work at an advertising agency. After that, I went on to work as a head art teacher in a school environment for many years. During those last few years of working in that last job, I started my own art business on the side, started selling original art, and also started teaching people out of my own home studio. I was so happy to help guide people of all different ages out as they move forward in their journeys. After a while, I left my regular full-time job and I started dedicating all of my time and effort to my own art business, and by this point, I was already starting to take what I was doing at a local level to the online space in order to have a greater impact and be able to help out more people all over the world. In this color theory basics course, I have compiled all of the information on this essential art fundamental that I wish I had known as a beginner when I was just getting started on my own art journey. I cover everything that you should know as a beginner about the color wheel, color temperature, color schemes, I make sure to bring in lots of actual examples of famous paintings created by artists in the past so that you can see how they actually made use of this information in a practical way to create great artwork. For the main project in this course, we're going to be bringing in and putting to use all of this information to create a split primary color wheel from scratch. A split primary color wheel is a color wheel that is created using a warm and cool version of each of your three primaries. We're going to prepare a warm and cool yellow, a warm and cool red, and a warm and cool blue. With those six colors, we're going to be filling in our entire color wheel, creating all necessary color mixtures as we go. This color wheel exercise is incredibly powerful because, through it, we're not only able to become more skilled and gain more confidence with mixing colors, but it also simultaneously to that challenges us to understand color temperature more deeply. Another reason why I find exploring a split primary color wheel so powerful is because they enable us more experienced artists to create our own color palettes to work with. If you're more advanced in your journey and you really want to set up your own color palette to create your original paintings with that contains only the colors that you love that you know you're going to be using and that go hand in hand with this art style that you're developing, by setting up a split primary color palette for yourself that has the six primary, a warm and cool version of each, and also perhaps a few convenience colors, browns and maybe other specific colors that you love, you're going to set yourself up for success to be able to paint pretty much anything you want with a limited amount of colors and not a gazillion different colors that make everything very overwhelming and your painting is going to be a lot more unique because you have selected those colors yourself. Now, even though you can work on this color wheel exercise with whatever painting medium it is that you like using, I am going to be working with watercolor and have chosen a color wheel design that helps us continue developing our water and our brush control when working with this medium, which are both very, very important skills to master which by the way, if you're just getting started with watercolor, I would highly recommend checking out my Watercolor 101 course, which I shared here on Skillshare a few months back before jumping into this course. At the end of this course, you're going to have a much deeper understanding of color theory and you're going to be armed with all this information that is going to help you create effective artwork no matter what medium it is that you use or what subject it is that you like drawing or painting. That is going to do it for this introduction video, I am super excited to get started on our next classes together. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you in the next. 2. Art Supplies and Tips for Success: Hey there and welcome to this short class where I'm going to be talking about the supplies that I would recommend you have on hand in order to get the most out of this course. Even though the split primary color wheel is certainly an amazing exercise to try with any type of drawing or painting medium, I personally am going to be using watercolor. This color wheel design that I've brought in is going to help us continue developing much needed watercolor skills like water control and brush control. I'm going to have watercolor painting supplies on hand, a few sketching supplies on hand, and other random objects that I'll explain in just a bit. I'm going to be using a couple of sheets of this watercolor paper from Hahnemuhle plus a few scrap pieces of paper that I have in my studio for some color swatching that I'm going to be doing along the way. This paper is great for practice drills and explorations in smaller pieces. It is a £140 or 300 GSM in heaviness or thickness, and it is cold pressed paper, which means it has some amount of texture to it. I also have a few sketching supplies on hand. I have an HB drawing pencil. Any kind of pencil will do really. I have a soft eraser with me and I also have one of these pigment liner pens from Sadler, and this is a completely optional item. You can bring in any pen or even a Sharpie or anything like that. Because we're going to be doing some labeling throughout our color wheel. In order to draw our color wheel template, I'm going to be using a few random supplies or items that I had around in my house. Essentially we need to be able to draw or trace three circles, a larger circle, a medium circle, and a small circle right in the center. This has to do with the specific color wheel design that we're going to be practicing with. For my largest circle, I'm going to be using an old kitchen plate. I just have to make sure that that kitchen plate fits into my watercolor sheet. Then for my medium-sized circle, I found this old little Chinese bowl that I thought would be a great size for that medium circle. Then finally, for my smallest circle, I'm going to be using my camera lens protector. You can use any three circular items that you have around your house or studio that are going to help you create those three concentric circles that are going to form your color wheel. Don't worry, I'll walk you step-by-step through how to create your color wheel template in a later class in this course. Aside from those aforementioned items, I also have a couple of my watercolor sets on hand. These are pan sets that I have in my studio. One of them is from St. Petersburg. It has full pans and the other one is my half pans set from Van Gogh. The reason why I have both of these on hand is because as you can see, some of my colors for my St. Petersburg set are empty and I need to have other options on hand so that I can adequately pick my warm and cool primaries that I'm going to be needing to fill in my split primary color wheel. Don't worry, I'm going to explain all about how to pick your warm and cool primaries before we get started with our actual color wheel. What's important is that you have different options of reds, different options of blues, and different options of yellows in your watercolor set. As long as you have a few options available for each of your primaries, you're probably going to be fine with using just one single watercolor set. But you can also do what I'm going to be doing and combine colors from different sets, and that's no issue at all. Aside from my watercolor sets, I also have my paint mixing palette. I'd recommend making sure that your mixing palette is nice and clean before getting started with the filling of our color wheel. Because any color that you have leftover on your palette can contaminate or pollute a color that you're creating, and that can certainly affect the results. Color correctness is pretty important in this type of exercise. I have a container with clean water, which I'm going to be changing several times along the way, It's very important to work with clean water when you are working on this kind of exercise. I would highly recommend to keep your eye on your water along the way. Whenever you see that your water starts becoming dirty or murky, go ahead and change it before continuing. You can even work with two or even three containers if you'd like. This way, you can rinse out your paintbrush in one of them and the majority of that color or paint stays in that container, and then you can use water from your cleaner container or containers whenever you need to bring out a little bit of water into your color mixtures to thin them down a little bit more or for any softening that you might need to do. You can take that from your cleaner containers. Whatever the case may be make sure that when you're working on a color wheel exercise that your water is nice and clean. The reason why this is so important is because that dirty water can certainly have an impact on how your color looks. As I said before, color correctness is very important with this kind of exercise. I'm going to be using one single round brush for this entire process and this is a Size 12. I would recommend using anything from a Size eight to a Size 14, or maybe even having two different paint brushes on hand. One for the larger areas and one for the smaller areas in your color wheel in case you want a little bit more control. But try not to go super small with your paint brushes because you're trying to paint in those sections quickly, and if you go very small or use smaller paint brushes for those medium-sized or larger areas, you're probably going to be left with lines and undesired textures because you're not going to be able to load up your paint brush well and paint fast. That paper is going to start drying on you and it's more likely that you're going to struggle with those kinds of effects. Just like what I mentioned when I was talking about your mixing palette and your water. Make sure that you're rinsing out your paintbrush bristles completely as you move through the filling in of your color wheel. Because otherwise you can risk contaminating this new color that you're dipping your paint brush into with your previous color. As you can see indirectly, we are tackling and practicing various watercolor skills as we're moving along with our studying of color and color theory. Moving on to the next thing. I have my blue Scott absorbent towel with me. You can use any type of absorbent towel or even regular kitchen paper towels. But it is very important to have some sort of towel on hand in order to stay on top of water control along the way. That is going to do it in terms of the supplies that I would recommend having on hand to create our split primary color wheel and also to move on to the swatching exercises for our secondary colors that we're going to be doing after that. Remember that you have a whole bunch of different downloadable resources available for you over at the projects and resources tab. For this one, I've included photos of my warm and cool primary swatches, my finalized color wheel, my finalized swatching exploration for my secondary colors, templates for the split primary color wheel, and also for the secondary color swatching process. I've added in a list of actual paint colors and you're going to be able to find out there and what color temperature those paint colors are, and also my supply checklist. Whenever you're ready with your supplies, go ahead and join me for our next class where I'm going to be explaining all about the course projects that we're going to be working on together. Thank you so much for checking this one out, and see you in the next class. 3. Course Project: Hey, everyone, and welcome to this class where I'm going to be explaining about the different exercises that we're going to be working on together in this course. After Classes 3 and 4, well I'm going to be sharing essential must-know information on color theory and color temperature that are going to help you build a solid foundation to jump off from, I will also enable you to more successfully work on your color wheel and the other exercises that we're going to be doing. Please don't skip Classes 3 and 4, but after that, we're going to be essentially working on three major exercises. In class number 6, we're going to be choosing our warm and cool primaries that we're going to be using to fill in our color wheel. I'm going to be walking you through my own color selection process and I'll be sharing lots of information along the way that's going to help you tell when a color is warm, and when a color is cool. Once we're done with our color selection, we're going to be creating a split primary color wheel from scratch. I'm first going to be walking you through how to create your color wheel template using the supplies that I shared with you in the previous class, and then we're going to be filling this color wheel in with the colors that we have pre-selected, creating all necessary color mixtures for our secondary colors and tertiary colors along the way. Finally, for exercise number 3, we're going to be exploring all possible secondary color mixtures that we can create with our six chosen colors. This is so that we can really observe the difference between all possible orange, purple, and green color combinations that we can create with our warm and cool primaries that we chose. Meaning, what happens when we mix together two warm primaries, two cool primaries, or a warm and a cool primary? The outcomes for those oranges, purples, and greens are quite different. This last exercise is going to help us explore all those possible color combinations that we didn't necessarily create when we were working on our split primary color wheel. That is it in terms of the three super powerful exercises that we're going to be working on together in this course. I'm excited to move on to the next class with you where I'm going to be explaining all the basics on the color wheel, why it's such an important tool for artists to know about, I'll be explaining all about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, basic color schemes with actual examples of famous artwork, essential vocabulary on color that you should start knowing about, and much more. Whenever you're ready, I'll see you in the next class. 4. Introduction to Color Theory: Hey everyone and welcome to this introduction class on the color wheel. In this class, we're going to be talking about what the color wheel is, why it is such an important tool for artists to know about. I'm going to be covering what primary colors, secondary colors and tertiary colors are. We're also going to be talking about basic color schemes. Let's go ahead and jump straight in. The first color wheel was invented by Isaac Newton in the late 17th century. Isaac Newton was a scientist, a mathematician and an astronomer among many other things. He did lots of studies on light and color. He was the one who decided to take the color spectrum and arrange it into a circular form or a wheel and of course, within this wheel, colors have a very specific arrangement or positions that are based on his findings when he was studying light and color. He was even starting to come up with theories on which were the primary colors through which you are able to create the other colors. Even though nowadays there are different kinds of color wheels and a different artists use different color wheels, they are all the same in that the locations or positions of these different colors within that wheel are very important. No matter what color wheel it is that you decide to use color wheels are so important for us artists because they enable us to understand color relationships. In other words, they help us know which colors we need to mix together in order to create other colors. Aside from this, they also help us plan great color schemes for new pieces made up of groups of colors that work very well together. Color wheels are incredibly helpful tools, not only for fine artists, but also for illustrators and designers of all kinds, from interior designers to graphic designers, to fashion designers and visual artists of all kinds can greatly benefit from understanding and learning about the color wheel. It'll help the drawing or the painting process go a lot more smoothly for those of us who draw and paint. But also the final result of whatever it is that you're creating will look a lot more integrated, a lot more harmonious and it will more effectively transmit the mood, message, idea, or story you're looking to transmit to the viewer of your artwork or to whoever is experiencing your art. At the end of the day, color is an incredibly important element of art or art fundamental to start learning about and to continue improving your understanding and use of, throughout your entire art journey. Because again, color plays an incredibly important role in making a visual composition look harmonious, look cohesive. Because as humans we are influenced and impacted by the colors that we see on a psychological level, as artists, we can mindfully and strategically make use of color to transmit the messages that we want to transmit to the viewer. At the end of this class, I'll be sharing examples of famous artworks that'll help you start getting an understanding of how artists made strategic use of colors and color schemes to create beautiful and very impactful artwork. With all this said, let's go ahead and talk more about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. I'm going to be explaining all of this with this 12 part color wheel, which is the one that so many of us learn color theory with when we're in art school or are taking some art course nowadays, sometimes you're going to come across six part color wheels and only have the primaries and secondaries. The six part color wheels are often taught in primary school to children so that they can start understanding color. But because we're older and more advanced and we wish to make the progress as artists, we're going to jump straight into the 12 part color wheel, which contains not only the primary and secondary colors. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue, and the secondary colors are green, orange, and purple. But this 12 part color wheel also contains the tertiary colors. Tertiary colors are babies of one primary and one secondary, and they are usually the colors that have a hyphen in them. Red-orange, blue-green, yellow-green, red-purple. All of those are tertiary colors. Secondary colors are babies of two primary colors. No matter what color wheel you're looking at the three primary colors, which are often referred to as the most important colors of all. Especially when you've learned the color wheel in the traditional sense like I did, because the three primaries basically, with them, you're able to create any color in the color wheel, and even browns and blacks and neutrals. But without the primaries, you wouldn't be able to create a blue or red and a yellow. In other words, if I am teaching the painting class, I absolutely 100 percent must have red, yellow, and blue paint in my classroom or in my studio because I'm not going to be able to create them. But if I have those three primaries and I run out of a green or an orange or a purple or I, all of a sudden me to make a brown, there is no problem as long as they have those three primaries. But anyway, you're always going to find the primary colors within any color wheel in a triangular positioning from each other. Right here you can see the three primaries blue, the red, and the yellow pointed out by this equilateral triangle, which by the way, we can refer to this as a triad color scheme. Wherever you're able to draw an equilateral triangle touching three colors in the color wheel, that would be a triad color scheme. Now, this is probably something that you've already seen if you've jumped into color theory to any degree or maybe learned about color theory in primary or secondary school. You've probably already heard that the color wheel can be divided into two halves, one half being the cool half and the other half being the warm half. However, it's a lot more nuanced than that. Because seeing color in this way it's not wrong, it's just that it's very generalized, very simplistic. It's leading us to think that all purples, all blues and all greens are cool and that all reds, all oranges, and all yellows are warm. If you see it in this way, Yes, it's true. However, we can also have warm and cool versions of each color. We can have warm and cool blues, we can have warm and cool purples. We can have warm and cool reds, warm and cool yellows, et cetera, and so forth. That is what we're trying to understand and develop that skill to be able to tell whether the pigment on hand is warm or cool bias because this is going to have a great impact on our color mixing that we do throughout the painting process and also on our end result. Another thing that is super, super important to understand is that whether we judge a color to be warm or cool bias is really going to depend on the colors around it. The other colors that I have also been used in that composition. What I mean by this is the exact same color can be used in two different paintings. If the colors around that color are very different, we're going to judge that color completely differently. It may look warmer in one painting and it may look cooler and the other. Makes sure that you check out the next class in this course because that one is a 101 on color temperature. I talk much more about this topic in depth. Explain how to tell if a color is warm or cool and lots of must know information on color temperature with examples. But for now, let's go ahead and move on to the last thing that I want to talk about in this class, which are color schemes. Here are the seven basic color schemes that you should start familiarizing yourself with. Color schemes are essentially groups of colors that work very well together. These color schemes have been used by artists throughout history in order to create a harmonious, interesting, well balanced compositions that are able to transmit a mood, message, idea, or story. Once you know about these, you're going to be able to find these color schemes in artworks that you come across. But also a couple of these colors schemes are essential for us to know about because they will help us with our color mixing and with arriving at the color that we want, especially when it comes to shading. I'll explain more about that in a bit. Let's go through these. First of all, we have the monochromatic color scheme. The monochromatic color scheme is when an artwork has been created with one single color, or primarily with one single color in different tints, tones, and shades. In other words, the artwork has been created with different variations of the same color. A tint is created when you mix a color with white, a tone is created when you mix a color with gray and a shade is created when you mix a color with black. Moving on to the analogous color scheme. Analogous colors are groups of three to four colors that are next to each other in the color wheel. Wherever in the color wheel you have three or four colors next to each other, those are analogous colors. Because these colors are right next to each other on the color wheel and oftentimes have a little bit of the same color in them, they oftentimes lead to less contrasting results. At the end, It's almost like these are part of the same family. They lead to a beautiful color harmony that tends to be less contrasting than say, the complimentary color scheme, where the colors are very far apart in the color wheel. Of course, the artists can always play with value, meaning the lightness to darkness of the color on hand, and also play with saturation levels for the different colors used in order to make them more different from each other visually. Analogous colors are also important to know about for painters because you can make use of analogous colors for shading purposes. For artists who are looking for very fresh, vibrant, and lively colors in their work, using analogous colors for shading can be incredibly powerful. Mixing analogous colors together is always going to lead to very vibrant colors. You can always use analogous colors to do shading. It's going to depend on what you're painting. For example, if I were painting an orange, I can use my lighter orange as a base color for my orange and use a red-orange or a red to do my shading in those darker areas throughout the orange instead of bringing in brown or black, which is going to mute the color down. Moving on to the complimentary color scheme. With this one, we have two colors that are sitting directly opposite to each other in the color wheel. Anywhere where you can draw a straight line, crossing right in the middle of the color wheel and touching two colors, those two colors are complimentary colors. You can imagine that because they are complete opposites to each other on the color wheel, if you use complementary colors in a piece, you're going to create higher levels of contrast. However, a beautiful color harmony is still going to be created. It depends on the level of contrast that you're after. A complimentary color scheme can certainly be very impactful. Another thing that is important that you know about when it comes to complementary colors is that when you mix two complementary colors together, you're going to get a brown or a gray because complementary colors mute each other down. This is also a key piece of information for those of us who paint or use color in our work because this means that whenever we want to tone a color down, we can bring in a bit of its complementary to do it or if we're looking for a brown or a gray, we can also just mix two complementary colors together. You can also do shading by bringing in your base colors complementary. Of course, this is going to lead to less vibrant results in those areas that you're shading in because complementary colors mute each other down. Right here in this example of this green apple, you can see how those areas with the darker values look a little bit more muted down. They start to get a little bit brown. You can see this green plus red mixture more clearly in the cast shadow. To paint in this cast shadow, I mixed almost equal amounts of red and green. Notice how it looks like a brown. By bringing in a color's complementary, you can not only darken the color but also mute it down simultaneously. In real life, most of the colors around us are desaturated. They are muted down to different degrees. This is why colors straight out of the pan or tube look very unnatural, very unrealistic. You can imagine that using complementary colors is incredibly helpful for artists who are looking for higher levels of realism or are simply into muted color. Moving on to the split complementary color scheme. With the split complementary color scheme, you have three colors. It's like a complementary color scheme, but you pick a color anywhere in the color wheel, and instead of dragging one straight line across the color wheel, it's actually the two colors adjacent or next to that color that would be the complementary. This is like an isosceles triangle because these three colors would form a triangle that has two equal sides and one shorter side. Moving on to the triadic color scheme or the triad. A triad color scheme is made up of three colors that form an equilateral triangle anywhere in the color wheel. For example, the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, form an equilateral triangle in the color wheel. Moving on to the tetrad and this is a rectangular positioning anywhere in the color wheel. A tetrad is also referred to as a double complementary color scheme. Finally, we have the square color scheme. Wherever you're able to form a perfect square, which in a 12-part color wheel, you'd have two colors in-between each color. Those four colors are going to create a square color scheme. Now that we've quickly gone over these seven basic color schemes, I want to mention a couple of important things. The first thing is when you're planning the color that you're going to be using for a new piece or you're choosing your color scheme that you're going to be working with, you want to choose one color to be your dominant or most important color. You're going to plan for the colors that are supporting that main color. In other words, you don't want to use equal amounts of your different colors in your color scheme because they would compete with each other way too much. You want to make sure that you're using more of your dominant or main color and less of your other color. I would recommend experimenting with ratios or percentages that you're using each color in your color scheme with. As an example, let's just say that you are going with a complementary color scheme where you're going to be using red and green. Maybe you choose red to be your dominant color. Because you've chosen red to be your dominant color, perhaps you're going to be using 60 or 70 percent red throughout your piece in different tints, tones, and shades, and 40-30 percent of your piece is going to be painted with greens in different tints, tones, and shades. If you're going with a color scheme that has three or more colors in it, choose your main color based on the idea, emotion, message, story, or mood that you're trying to transmit to the viewer and plan for how you're going to be making more use of that color throughout your piece than your other colors. Perhaps you're going to be using it in the focal point or in larger areas or you create a type of under-painting with that dominant color that you choose or you're going to be mixing in a little bit of your main color into your different colors. There are many different ways that you can play around with this. The other thing that I wanted to make sure to mention is that you can always bring in neutrals, so black, white, browns into your drawings or paintings, and these colors are not going to affect your color scheme. You can even neutralize or desaturate the colors in your color scheme, get them more towards an earthy hue or whatever it is that you need to do by adding black or white or brown. It's still going to be seen as that color scheme. For example, if I'm using a triadic color scheme with red, yellow, and blue, and I'll add in a little bit of a brown into my yellow to neutralize it and get it a little bit more towards the yellow ocher side that can still be seen as a yellow all-in-all, when seen together, the composition is still going to have that triadic color scheme. This is all to say that there are many ways to play with color, and you can bring in extra colors that are separate from the colors in your color scheme as minor colors that you use here and there and it's still going to be seen as that color scheme. As long as the main areas of your piece are colored in or painted in with those main colors in your color scheme that is what matters. Now that we have gone over all of this important information, let's go ahead and observe and analyze some examples of all of these color schemes used in famous artworks. The first example that I want to share with you is this beautiful piece created by Renoir. This is a monochromatic piece. Red-orange is the main color use here, and it was used in a large variety of tints, tones, and shades. Here's a beautiful piece created by Van Gogh. In this one we see the use of analogous colors. We see a combo of green, blue-green, and blue. Moving on to the example that I have here for a complementary color scheme. This is a beautiful piece created by Singer Sargent. In this one, we see blue and orange being used. But notice how he made use of a more neutralized orange. Here's a self-portrait by Van Gogh where complimentary colors were used. You can see the complementary colors and this one are green and red. Here's a beautiful example of a painting showing a split complementary color scheme by Matisse. In this one, he used red-orange, green, and blue. Moving on to another example of a split complementary color scheme, and this is another one by Renoir. Notice how this style for this painting is completely different from the previous one by Matisse, but the color scheme is exactly the same. In this piece, Renoir also made use of red-orange, blue, and green for his color scheme. Here's a beautiful example of a triadic color scheme by Gauguin. The major colors in this piece are the primary colors, blue, yellow, and red. You can see how a little bit of green was brought in, but those green details are quite small. Here's another beautiful piece created by Cassatt. In this one, we also see a triadic color scheme. I see yellow, I see blue, and I see red. Even though these colors are way more subdued, they are toned down, there's the addition of grays, browns, and whites, etc. This is still a triadic color scheme. Here's another beautiful piece by Cassatt showing a triadic color scheme. In this one, I see a combination of green, orange, and violet. Here's a great example of a painting by Marc Chagall showing a tetrad. In this one, I see yellow, green, red, and violet. Finally, here is an example of a square color scheme in a famous painting by Dora Maar. In this one, I see red-violet, I see blue, I see yellow-green, and I see orange as the main colors. Hopefully, these examples really helped you understand the different ways that color schemes can be used no matter what kind of art style or subject it is that you draw or paint. I want to encourage you to continue doing research on your own and try matching different famous paintings, especially those created in the past, with different color schemes that we talked about today. That is going to do it for this class. I'm looking forward to sharing the masterclass on color temperature with you next. Make sure to delve into that one next because I explain all the things that you need to know in relation to color temperature, which is going to be key in order for us to be able to move on to filling our split primary color wheel effectively. Thank you so much for checking this one out and see you in the next class. 5. Color Temperature 101: Hey everyone. Welcome to this class on color temperature. This is an important topic inside of color theory and it's quite confusing for lots of people getting started. I wanted to make sure to add in this masterclass that I created into this course. It is chock full with all of the important information that you should know about as a beginner getting started with color and color theory. I answer tons of questions that I often get on this topic, provide lots of examples along the way. The split primary color wheel that we're going to be working on in this course, really revolves around working with warm and cool primaries. Color temperature is essential to understand. With all this said, hope you get a lot from this class and that you enjoy it. One of the most confusing topics to learn about when we're getting started on our journeys with painting is color temperature. Color temperature is inside of this larger topic, which is color theory. In this video, I'm going to be including all of the essential information that at least in my opinion, it's essential that you know about and understand as a beginner, getting started with any artwork really that involves bringing in color, whether it's painting or drawing. I'm going to do my best to explain everything in the simplest way possible. I'm going to be bringing in little color swatches and little squares onscreen so that I can actually provide visual examples for you. I'm just going to explain everything in a way that I would have personally liked if someone had explained to me in the beginning of my own journey. In this video, I'm going to be covering five things that are important that you know about. The first thing is, I'm going to explain what color temperature is exactly and why it is so important for us to understand color temperature as artists. In the second part of today's video, I'm going to be explaining how to tell if a color is warm or cool. In the third part of this video, I'm going to be explaining what happens with browns and grays because these are not really in the color wheel and are referred to as neutral colors. But they can have a color temperature, so what's up with that? Then we're going to be moving to Part 4 of today's video in which I'm going to be explaining why it really is all relative when it comes to color temperature. Finally, in the last part of today's video, I'm going to be sharing five tips that I would highly recommend using as you're getting started with understanding color temperature, as you're painting in order to avoid undesired accidents. Let's get into the first part. What is color temperature exactly? Color temperature refers to how warm or how cool a color appears. Understanding about color temperature as artists is incredibly important because if we don't understand it, then we're not going to be able to mix colors effectively. In a technical sense, we have to be able to know whether a color is warm or cool in order to create the color mixtures that we need. If we don't know what we're mixing together, it's a sure-fire way to arrive at undesired colors that we don't want or mud. Let's just say, for example, that you're trying to mix a purple. You grab yourself a red and you grab yourself a blue. But what if you grab yourself a red that is a very warm red that has some yellow in it. It's more towards the red orange side. You grab yourself a blue that's more like a blue-green. A cool blue, it has a tiny bit of green in it. You're actually mixing together three or four colors instead of two. You can accidentally create a color that is more muted down, or maybe two of the colors in your mixture are complimentary colors, so you create a color mixture that is more brownish or super muted. What I'm getting at, is you're mixing together three or four colors instead of the two that you were thinking you are mixing together. It can be super frustrating when you're trying to mix a color and the color is not turning out the way that you wanted to. It's very important that you're able to take a paint color, whatever it is, that you're able to swatch it out on a scrap piece of watercolor paper, and that you're able to tell its temperature, that you're able to tell if that specific paint color has two different colors in it, because this is going to enable you to make much better color choices for your different mixtures that you may need for the painting on hand. But aside from this, understanding color temperature will enable us to create better visual compositions in the sense that we're going to be able to make better use of color to communicate the idea, emotion, or message, or mood that we're wanting to transmit through our piece. This has to do, of course, with color psychology, which is a part of color temperature, which goes inside of this larger color theory, umbrella. A lot of us are already well aware that warm colors, reds, oranges, yellows, they are used to transmit emotions that are stronger. Whether they're positive or negative emotions, it can be anger, it can be excitement, it can be playfulness, it can be anxiety, anything like that, emotions that are stronger. While cool colors, greens, blues, and purples, are used to communicate softer, more mellow emotions. But those emotions can also be positive or negative. Melancholy or relaxation, peace, sadness, that thing. Something I would recommend to start making more mindful use of color psychology is ask yourself, what are you trying to communicate through this piece that you're creating? Is it more energetic, powerful, strong emotions, or is it more calm, peaceful emotions? It's not that you can't bring in cool colors into pieces where you want to transmit stronger emotions or vice versa that you can't bring in warm colors into more peaceful pieces. It's just, you have to think of a hierarchy when you're making use of colors. Perhaps you're using more warm colors in the pieces where you want to transmit stronger emotions for energetic emotions, and in pieces that you want to transmit a more peaceful, calm vibe, then maybe use a less amount of warmer colors. Color psychology is very important and it definitely goes hand-in-hand with composition. But we also have to understand the fact that color plays a huge role in making visual compositions look harmonious and cohesive, and through making a balanced, interesting use or interesting play with warm and cool colors, we're going to be able to create something that is way more visually pleasing for the viewer. Also by understanding warm and cool colors and making a play with warm and cool colors in our visual compositions, we're able to create very interesting visual effects. We're able to create depth, we're able to create contrast, because warm and cool colors create great contrast with each other, especially when they're used in a more saturated state. But also always remember that warm colors are going to pop out towards the viewer while cool colors are going to recede. This is something that comes in when we're talking about aerial or atmospheric perspective. If you've checked out any of my tutorials where I am painting landscapes or natural scenery, you've probably heard me talk about aerial or atmospheric perspective, where the color that I use for the elements that are farther away, say mountains that are off way in the distance, I add a little bit more blue into that green, and that makes it look like they are farther away. Also, of course, elements in the distance are lighter in value usually. Just by using cooler colors in elements that are farther away and pairing that with making them lighter in value when compared to the elements that are closer to you, that in itself can create a great and believable sensation of open space and depth in a piece. You're playing with color temperature but don't think that this only applies to more realistic pieces where you're actually seeing a scene or a landscape or whatever the case may be, because you can still use these same principles with a completely abstract piece where you're just seeing shapes and lines. The shapes that are warm are going to pop out and the shapes that are cool are going to recede. One final idea that I wanted to make sure to include in this section of the video in terms of different ways that artists make use or play with warm and cool colors in their pieces for greater success and better visual compositions is, bring them in for light and shadow areas. A lot of artists do this super successfully when they're painting outdoor scenes or even objects. What they do is, when the light source in the environment is warm, they paint lighter areas where that light source is hitting or reaching that object or subject with warmer colors. Then the shadows, they make cooler. They add in cooler colors into the shadows. When the light source in the environment is cool, they paint those lighter areas where the light source is hitting directly cooler in temperature, and then they make the shadows warmer in temperature by adding in warmer colors into those shadows. That difference in temperatures can be quite subtle. Don't think that you have to make an area super red or super orange or super yellow to make it warmer, or super blue, super green, super purple to make it cooler. Remember that it is all in context here and it is all relative. I'll be talking more about this later but the way that we judge a color has to do with the context it's in, with the colors around it. Sometimes the change in temperature is going to be very subtle. We just have to make sure that this color that we're using over here is a little bit warmer or cooler than this color that we're using over here. Let's get into the next part of this video, in which I'm going to be explaining, how to tell if a color is warm or cool. A lot of us who were lucky and had that regular art class and elementary and secondary or high school, we learned about the color wheel in a very basic way. Probably you at least learned about the six part color wheel, which includes primary and secondary colors. In those very basic art classes, a lot of us were also taught that the color wheel can be divided right in half and one half includes the warm colors, which are red, orange, and yellow, and the other half includes the cool colors, which are blue, green, and purple. However, when we advance in our journeys a little bit more, and gain a little bit more understanding about color, we discover that color is a little bit more nuanced than that. It's not that that initial color wheel and dividing the color into warm and cool halves is wrong or anything like that, it's just a very basic way of seeing things and we need to delve a little bit deeper, understand things a little bit more. Not to mention different artists use different kinds of color wheels. It's a great place to start for sure, but it's just a jumping point. When we start painting, we start discovering that every single color can be warm or cool biased. We can have a warmer blue and a cooler blue, a warmer red and a cooler red, a warmer yellow and a cooler yellow. Things can start getting a little bit more confusing and overwhelming when you start learning more about painting. It's like the more we learn, the more we understand how much there is left to continue learning about or how little we actually know. Don't allow this to overwhelm you. For me, the simplest way to see it is, if a color looks like it has red, yellow, or orange in it, it's warm biased. If a color looks like it has purple, blue, or green in it, it's cool biased. End the story. Don't allow yourself to get stuck there or overthink it because once again, as I said before, it's always going to come down to using that color alongside many other colors in a full painting, a full visual composition. That color is not going to be standing alone. It's going to be used within a greater context with more colors. A color is only going to be warmer or cooler than the colors around it. Yes, absolutely 100 percent. Understand color temperature so that you're able to swatch out a color and be able to tell if it's warm or cool biased, but don't get stuck there. Once you understand that, move on to actually using that color in combination with others. Playing with warm and cool colors, seeing what you like and what you don't like. Seeing those visual effects that you're able to make happen by combining them in the same piece. This is what's going to help you ultimately move forward because we're trying to understand color in order to use them in full compositions. When you see a yellow, that leans more towards the orange side, that is a warm yellow, because it has a teeny tiny bit of red in it. When you see a yellow that leans more towards the green side, that is a cool yellow, because it has a teeny tiny bit of green in it, which is a cool color. When you see a red that is leaning more towards the orange side, that has a tiny bit of yellow in it so it's a warm red. When you see a red that is leaning more towards the purple side, like a winish red, that is a cool red because it has a teeny tiny bit of blue in it. When you see a blue that leans more towards the purple side, like an ultramarine blue, that is a warmer blue because it has a teeny tiny bit of red in it. When you see a blue, that has a little bit of green in it, that is a cool blue because those are two cool colors mixed together, green and blue. I will say that blues have always been a little bit more tricky for me personally to tell, and there seems to be more controversy and conflicting thoughts amongst artists in terms of, what's a cool blue and what's a warm blue? But for now, I would recommend keeping things simple and going by what I just shared. There is one thing that I want to share with you in this video. This is that there are certain colors that some artists consider to be pure primary colors. What I mean by this is these primary colors are neutral or right smack in between warm and cool, meaning they are neither warm nor cool. Even though there are lots of artists out there who think that every single color that you may come across is either warm or cool biased, there are lots of other artists out there who do think that there are certain primary colors especially, that are pure colors, so neither warm nor cool. Many of these artists who do believe in pure primaries think that cobalt blue, for example, is a pure primary blue. That is neither warm nor cool. Final little important note to add into this section of the video is, when you're working on color wheel exercises, which are exercises that are really intended to focus specifically on color and understanding color relationships so that we can then make better use of color in actual artwork and just do our color mixing more successfully. But when you're working on a color wheel exercise, usually unless they are specific color wheel exercises or you're working on like a split primary color wheel, you want to make sure that you're bringing in three warm primaries for your different color mixtures, or three cool primaries for your different color mixtures. Because if you bring in a couple of primaries that are cool, and then a third primary that is warm or vice versa, again, you could be mixing more than two colors together in your different sections of your color wheel. That can lead to undesired colors, which can certainly be an issue with that exercise where color really matters throughout that wheel. Moving into the next part of this video, and this is what is up with your browns and your grays which are not included in the color wheel? How can you tell whether browns and grays are warm or cool? In the general sense, grays and browns are referred to as neutral colors. However, they have an undertone to them, and that's how you judge whether that gray or that brown is warm or cool. Unless you have a specific paint color that says neutral tint, neutral black or something along those lines, usually it's going to have an undertone and you're going to be able to tell when you swatch that color out. Sometimes the undertone is going to be super obvious. For example, with the burnt sienna, which is a reddish brown, you can tell right away that it's a very warm brown. Payne's gray is a gray that is well known for having blue in it. It's a cool gray. Other times it's going to be a little bit trickier to tell. I would recommend swatching that color, noticing perhaps if it has undertones that are a little bit more reddish, a little bit more yellow or orange. Sometimes it right away it looks warmer to you, and other times it's going to look less warm. It's going to look bluer. If you swatch out that color and you can't tell whether it's warm or cool, maybe it's almost neutral. Or another tip that I can provide is swatch another color next to it. Because again, once you have another color next to it, you're going to be able to have a point of comparison and you're going to be able to tell whether it looks warmer than the other one or cooler than the other one. Getting into part 4 of this video, and in this one I just want to make sure that you understand that color temperature is relative. Why? Because it's all about how we're going be using that color in combination with other colors in this greater context of a painting. We may think a color looks warm by itself or in one context, and then we use that same color in another context and it looks cool. The way that we see a color is greatly affected or impacted by the colors used around the color. This is all to say that yes, a single color in and of itself alone, yes, it is warmer, cooler, neutral. But ultimately you're going to be using that color in a full painting. In that end product, that color is going to be warmer than or cooler than. It's not going to be 100 percent warm or 100 percent cool because it's always going to be affected by the colors around it by that full context. Just to finish up this video, I'm going to be providing five practical tips that are going to help you stay away from undesired accidents as you continue developing your knowledge of color temperature. Tip number 1 is going to be to always make time to swatch the different colors that you're going to be using for a new piece before getting started with the painting process. I would recommend not only swatching out the individual colors, but also the colors that you're thinking of using in combination. Swatch out those color mixtures to see what they look like. Tip number 2 is, make sure that as you're choosing those different colors that you're going be using for a new piece, and you are thinking of the colors that you're going to be using in combination, so mixing them together, make sure that you're not mixing complimentary colors together, unless of course, you're looking for muted down tones. Remember that complimentary colors are opposites in the color wheel and they mute each other down. Tip number 3 is, understand that you can alter or change a color's temperature. A color has a specific temperature right out of the pan or tube, but you can always alter that and I would recommend doing so by adding in one of the three primaries. This is very helpful because you don't have to bring in colors that you don't really need to bring in. Let's just say that you're painting a natural scene or landscape, and you already chose a cool green to use in your faraway mountains. Well, you can bring in a yellow to add into that green to create a warmer green for plants and elements that are going to be closer to the viewer. You don't have to bring an extra green in. Always ask yourself how you can reuse colors that you've already chosen and don't bring in a ton of different colors into your piece. Oftentimes, the less amount of colors you bring in and reusing those colors in different ways is going to lead to much more integrated and more harmonious end results. Key tip number 4, and this one is to always give thought to the different optical illusions and sensation of contrast that you're going to be creating via your use of warm and cool colors. You don't want to accidentally call the viewer's attention to an area that isn't the focal point. You don't want to have two or three competing areas in a visual composition. Always think of what your focal point is, where you want to call the viewers' attention towards immediately. Think of the mood, idea or message that you're trying to portray and use either more warm colors are cool colors depending on that, and consider what you want to push forward and bring back. Finally, tip number 5 is whenever you are in doubt, you have swatched out a color and you still cannot tell, go to the brand or company's website and do some research. Research the color temperature for that specific paint color or pigment and for that specific brand. Usually, this information is going to be somewhere in the paint tube or pan packaging or the box that they came in. But if you lost that or you cannot really tell, most often than not, this information is going to be available for you in the company's website. It's important to do this anyway, every now and then because recipes that different brands use for their colors change over time. I've known of colors that were once cool and are now warm or vice versa. Also a specific brands, Alizarin crimson could be different to another Alizarin crimson from another brand. Get used to doing that research as well and looking up information on different pigments and paints whenever you need to. Congratulations for completing this class. I really hope that you got a lot of value from it. I'm excited to dive into the next one where we're going to be choosing our warm and cool primaries that we're going to be using for our split primary color wheel exercise. Whenever you're ready, see you there. 6. Choosing Warm and Cool Primaries for Color Wheel: Hey there and welcome to this class where we're going to be choosing the warm and cool primary colors that we're going to be using to fill in our split primary color wheel. I'm going to be sharing my color swatching process with you on a separate sheet of watercolor paper and providing key tips and information that are going to help you pick out your colors successfully for your color wheel exercise. I would not recommend jumping into this class if you have not checked out the previous one where I explain all the must know information for beginners on color temperature. Makes sure that you check that class out because it's really going to help facilitate the process of choosing your colors. Without much further ado, let's go ahead and jump straight in. I'm going to be working with at least one or two colors from my van Gogh half pan set. Other colors that I'm going to be using for this color wheel are going to be for my St. Petersburg White Nights full pan paint set, which is a paint set that I've been currently using a lot for my tutorials. This is another question that I often get asked. Can I combine different brands? Is it okay? Yes. In my opinion, it's perfectly fine. I do it all the time as long as the quality of the paint is similar. I would never combine a very cheap, low quality paint with a higher quality paint. I really want to encourage you guys to work with what you have. Unless you do these things, these suggests that exercises that I'm going to be sharing with you right now and you absolutely don't have a warm of the three primaries or a cool of the three primaries, then it's going to be very difficult for you to do the color wheel that we're going to be working on next. I have my container with clean water and I'm going to make sure to constantly change my water, not only throughout this process of picking out my colors but would also during the actual color wheel painting. I'm going to be using the ultramarine blue for my warm blue, and either a fellow blue, a Prussian blue, or a cerulean blue for my cool blue. I think I'm going to go with the Prussian and I'm going to swatch these out for you because I want you to notice the difference between the two. What we have to take into account first and foremost, when we're picking out our warm blue and our cool blue, is that warm blue is going to have a purple bias and cool blue is going to have a green bias. Let's test these out and see if we can find that in each. This is regular ultramarine blue, beautiful purpley blue right there. I'm going to rinse out all of that ultramarine blue from my paintbrush bristles and I'm going to do some swatching with the Prussian blue. Very, very deep cool-biased blue. As you can see, these blues are super different. This is the ultramarine blue, and you can see how it's biased more towards the purple side. This means that it's warmer. Then this blue over here, this is the Prussian blue and it's biased towards the green side. This means that it's a cool blue. Another thing that I want to point out here, which is super important for you to understand, is that there are colors are going to be inherently lighter than others and that is something else. When it comes to painting with watercolor, we have to add a greater amount of water to make that color more diluted, to make it lighter, to make it more transparent. We can use that same color in a more saturated state, in a thicker state so to speak, to get a darker value to make it more saturated and to make that same color darker. We can create a wide variety of different values with one same color. The reason why I'm saying this is because just notice these two. I'm actually going to lay down more of this ultramarine blue right here so you can see it in its most saturated state right here at the top. The reason why I'm saying this is because when we're painting with watercolor, we have to take into account that there are certain colors are going to be inherently lighter than others and are not going to allow us to create a full value scale. The value scale is not going to be as wide you could achieve with darker colors. If I were to use, for example, this yellow, yellow is an inherently light color. Yes, even though I can create a lot of different values and translucency levels with yellow, I'm not going to be able to create as many different values as a very dark color like the Prussian blue or even something like this, like the ultramarine. Take that into account because when we're going for higher levels of realism or mid to higher levels of realism, developing a wide variety of different values, so translucencies when it comes to working with watercolor, but also learning how to create our different color mixtures and adding in a little bit of this color to make it darker or another bit of this color to make it lighter, we have to be able to create a wide variety of different values and translucencies if we're looking for something to look on the more believable side of the spectrum and we're almost never going to be using only one single color. This is why knowing how to mix colors is so important. That is something that I really wanted you to just understand. This is not going to allow me to create a huge variety of different values and translucencies. If I were going to be using this to maybe paint something like the sunflower or something like that I would definitely have to think of what other color or colors I would have to bring in to develop deeper values and cast shadow effects and stuff like that in-between petals because this in and of itself is not going to allow me to create a sense of form and depth. It's too light. It's not that it's not necessary. Of course, these lighter colors are unnecessary. For example, whenever I want to paint grass or something like that, I know that I need a yellow on hand to be able to create lighter greens. Then I deepen and darken my greens by adding in blue oftentimes. We're done with this. I'm going to be using my ultramarine blue. Let me actually write it down right here. Ultramarine blue and this is Prussian blue. This is going to be my cool, and this is going to be my warm. Take time to swatch out your different blues and come to a conclusion as to which warm blue you're going to be using for your color wheel, which cool blue you're going to be using for your color wheel. You can definitely see right here how this blue, you can see how it has a little bit of green in there. Then this one, you can definitely see how it's leaning more towards the purple side. Let's move on to our yellows. Before doing that, I'm going to change my water so that I don't make things green because blue plus yellow equals green. I'm going to just do that before moving forward. I have my clean water with me. My paintbrush is all rinsed out and I'm going to go ahead and pick out my yellows now. Go to the yellows that you have. In this case, I have these two and I actually think that these are the same. Both of them are lemon yellow, it's just that this one has a little bit of green in it because I was using it the other day to paint a landscape. Notice these two yellows. Can you tell how this one is leaning more towards the orange side and how this one, it looks more like a lemon yellow like it's almost a little bit more biased towards the green side? That means that this is a warm yellow and this is a cool yellow. I'm just going to go ahead and pick these out. Let's actually see them swatched out on paper because oftentimes it's not until we actually swatch these out that we have a better understanding of what they actually look like. [NOISE] This one is cadmium yellow medium. My St. Petersburg set. Rinsing out my paintbrush bristles completely. This is cadmium lemon. Yes. Very different yellows as you can see. They will do just perfectly for my split primary color wheel. As you can see, it looks very orangey, it's going more towards the orange side and this one is going more towards the green side. This means that this one is warmer and this one is cooler. Here we have our warm, and here we have our cool yellow and this one is cadmium lemon, cadmium yellow medium. I have my two yellows for my split primary color wheel selected and prepared for myself. They're nice and clean. It's super important that we keep those pens or colors well separated and not polluted in your color mixing palette if you're using something like that. Whether a color is warm or cool has nothing to do with whether a color is light or dark. In terms of my blues, you can see how my cool blue is darker, deeper, than the warm blue. Over here, you can see how my cool yellow is way lighter in value, even at its most saturated state, than the warm yellow. A color can be warm and be very light or very dark and a color can be cool and can be very dark or very light. I'm going to pick out two reds from this set. This one has a bunch of different reds but I want to make sure that I'm using a couple of different reds that are relatively more common. I have pre-selected a couple of different reds right here and you can tell right off the bat that this red looks way cooler than this red. Can you tell how this red is a lot more orange than this red, which looks a lot more whitish red? Take time to swatch them and see them on paper and see the difference between the two. I'm going to change my water once again to make sure that I don't pollute my reds. Clean water, clean paintbrush, and let's do this. This is cadmium red light right here. You can see how it's more on the reddish orange side. I'm rinsing out my paintbrush and I'm going to go ahead and test out my madder lake red light. You can immediately tell how this red is way more orange and how this one is almost on the wine side, which means it's more on the purple side, more on the blue side of the color wheel. I am going to write down the names of these colors just so that I can have them on my colors that I'm going to be using for my color wheel written down for me and I don't accidentally grab another one. This one is cadmium red light, madder lake red lights. I have my warm and cool red, warm and cool yellow, and I also have my warm and cool blue. Now just as a final little note here that I want to add in, for me at least, the most difficult to tell whether they are warm or cool are the blues. There also so many different types of blues and so many different brands refer to a specific blue as being a warm and then another brand says that the same blue is actually cool. You can even come across two artists that say that for one of them it's cool and for the other it's warm. Just get into the habit of swatching colors out and noticing these biases for yourself. We're all done here. Take your time swatching and really just coming to a conclusion on the specific colors that you're going to be using for our split primary color wheel. Take as long as you need. Once you're ready, we're going to go ahead and get started with our color wheel. 7. Preparing Color Wheel Template: Hello again and welcome to this class in which I'm going to be taking you through the process for creating our 12th part color wheel from scratch. I'm going to be explaining essential information to know in regards to how we're going to be filling in this color wheel and we're going to be doing our labeling as well. This will help us avoid accidents as we're filling in our color wheel in the next class. Let's go ahead and get started with drawing in our color wheel template. I'm going to be first creating a circle and dividing it into 12 pie pieces. Now, if you don't want to do this by hand and you don't want to stress out about using a ruler, I am going to be attaching a template that you can transfer onto your sheet of watercolor paper if you prefer to do that. But I am still going to go through the steps on how I just do this by hand. I'm just going to be using an old kitchen plate that fits into my watercolor sheet that's nice and big. Here I'm just going to trace, use my plate to trace a perfect circle. Now I am going to be using a ruler to help me divide this circle into 12 pieces. Now, don't worry so much if your pie pieces are not super precise and they're not super exact. What matters most ultimately in this exercise are the colors and the order of the colors that we're going to be painting in. Don't stress out too much about getting your pie pieces exactly the same. You can place a little dot somewhere in the middle of the circle and then that is going to help you know where to place your ruler for that initial vertical and the initial horizontal. Then once you have these four parts, we're going to be dividing each into three parts because we need 12 parts, 4 times 3 equals 12. This means that we have to divide each of these spaces into three parts. If you find it helpful, you can place a couple of tick marks. Use your observational skills to visually measure out approximately how wide each pie piece would be so that at least you have an approximate angle to place that ruler in when you're drawing that line. But sometimes they're a little bit off. I find that having tick marks there is just helpful so that you can do something like this. Make sure that you just cross over that central dot right there. We have one. These tick marks are definitely off and I'm just using them as best as I can, make sure that I'm crossing in that central dot and I'm missing one last line. Now as I was mentioning before, we're going to be creating two more circles inside of this color wheel because we're going to be practicing developing different values or using each color at different translucencies inside of each triangle. Find a couple of different circular things to trace that are smaller than your initial circle. These are just two things that I've found around the house, which I think will work. As I said, the little spaces don't have to be super perfect what matters more is our practice with the colors that we're using. We'll see and then let's see if this is good. I'm going to use a smaller circle. Nice. I think my camera lens protector could afford that middle one. We have to have two empty spaces in-between each primary. These two are going to be the blues then we have two empty spaces then we have these two which are going to be the yellows. Then we have two empty spaces and then we have these two which are going to be the reds and we have two empty spaces between the reds and the blues. Now, what's slightly more complex about this split primary color wheel is that we have to make sure that we have the warm and the cool primary in a specific way. For example, right here and let me actually write this down with my pen. I highly recommend writing it down with your pen as well so that we have less of a chance of messing up. We're actually filling in our colors. Let's just say that the blues are going to be here. From here to here, we have our blues. Now as I said, we need a two empty spaces between the blue and the yellow, so I'm just going to rotate. Then from here to here we have our yellow. Now I am going to rotate this once again, leave two empty spaces right there. These two are going to be the red, tick mark, tick mark. Nice little curve as best as you can and there we go. We have marked out where we're going to be painting in our primaries. Now, as I mentioned in past classes, the primaries are referred to, especially by those of us who learned the color wheel in a traditional sense, they are referred to as the most important colors of all. Because you cannot create the primaries by mixing together other colors and yet, if you have the three primaries you can basically create any color in the color wheel and even browns and neutrals and grays. We're going to get started by painting in the primaries because there are the most important of all and then we're going to move on to filling in the spaces in-between. We're going to be using the color in a relatively saturated state in the outer wheel or outer circle. That in a slightly less saturated state in the middle circle and then in a very translucent state just as best as we can by watering down our color in the middle circle right in the center. That's the idea. What slightly more complicated about this color wheel is that we have to make sure that we have the warms and cools for each of our primaries in a specific way so that the yellow and the red are coming together in a specific way. The blue and the yellow are coming together in a specific way, and the blue and the red are coming together in a specific way. What I mean by this is, we have to make sure that the warm blue is here and that the cool blue is in here and then let's move on to the yellow. We have the cool yellow and then we have the warm yellow. This is going to be my warm red and this is going to be my cool red. The reason why I made sure to write this down is because I want to make sure that I'm mixing together a cool blue with a cool yellow, a warm yellow with a warm red, and a cool red with a warm blue right here. Because we're going to be mixing these two together and these two together, and these two together to create the babies in between. As you can see right here, I have my cool red mixing together with a blue and this is the only section in which I'm mixing a cool with a warm. All of the others are cool with cool, warm with warm. The reason why this is important is because this is the way that we're going to arrive at the brightest colors. It's important to just have an account that if you're mixing together a warm with a cool sometimes with certain colors, you're going to arrive at a muddier color, maybe a color that you weren't anticipating. Important to know that sometimes when you mix together warm with cool, you could arrive at color that you didn't want. Which is, again, just avoid all of this by just swatching whatever colors you're planning on using on your painting out before getting started with the painting process. Swatch them out individually but also swatch out the colors that you're intending to mix. That'll help you avoid creating colors that you don't want as well as muddiness as you're painting. All right my friend, so we have now selected our warm and cool primaries and we have created our color wheel template. We're now ready to get started with filling in our color wheel. Super excited to jump into this exercise with you. Whenever you're ready, go ahead and join me in the next one. 8. Filling in Split Primary Color Wheel: Hey there and welcome to this class where we're going to be finally filling in our split primary color wheel. Now that we have our warm and cool primary selected and we have our color wheel template ready we are all set to get started. Let's go ahead and jump straight in. I have, as always, my absorbent towel to stay on top of water control. I have my clean water with me, let's do our yellows first because it's the lightest color. I'm going to fill in my cool yellow first, and I'm just going to try to leave a little tiny sliver of paper in between my two colors so that I can go ahead and just jump on over to working on the warm when I'm done with the cool, when we're painting with watercolor, if we don't leave a little sliver of paper in-between or we don't allow that previous section to dry completely before moving on to the next, which you can do whatever you prefer, that color is going to start merging into the new section of wetness that we create. I'm just going to make sure to leave a little teeny tiny sliver of paper in-between each color so that I can just continue working and I know that the colors are not going to merge together. I created a nice juicy puddle of cadmium lemon, my cool yellow right here, and my well, on my color mixing palette. I'm going to load up my paintbrush bristles, and I'm going to go ahead and get started with filling in this cool yellow shape, just wet on dry. I'm trying to fill in the outer sections in the colors more saturated state. I'm just taking more color as I go and I'm not grabbing any extra water because I don't want to dilute that paint, so there we go. Now, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to just dip my paintbrush in my container of water and that in and of itself should help me paint in a more translucent state. If you start painting in a little bit and you don't see much of a difference between the two, simply dip your paintbrush in your container of water once again, remove the excess water and continue painting in and if you want a little bit more of a difference, just go ahead and do it again and there we go. Maybe a little tiny sliver in-between the two yellows. Give it a chance to dry there. You can hopefully see that this is slightly more translucent than this because I dipped my paintbrush bristles in my water so I'm just going to do a couple of more dips into my water and I'm going to paint this most translucent section in. Freely, I just loaded up my paintbrush bristles one time prior to getting started with this outermost section and then once I move on to painting, the middle section and this innermost section in which I wanted my color to be more translucent, I just dip my paintbrush bristles in my container of water and that in and of itself is going to dilute that color because a little bit of that color falls off into that container of water and then at the same time, your bristles absorb more water and dilute that color that is inside of the bristles. Just continue doing that as you go moving towards the center and if you start painting in a section and the color is looking way too similar, go ahead and dip your paintbrush in your container of water again a couple of times, remove the excess water and continue painting it in. You should eventually see a difference if you continue being careful and just dipping your paintbrush again into your water. That exercise in and of itself is going to help you with your water control. I'm going to move on to painting in my warm yellow and I'm going to change my water until after I finish with the yellow. Make sure again that you create a nice saturated color mixture on your color mixing palette so that you can try to paint in the outer section in as saturated color that the color allows. You can leave a teeny tiny sliver of paper in-between your two yellows. If this yellow was still wet and I was painting all the way to the edge there, my cool yellow would start merging into the warm so leave a teeny tiny sliver of paper in-between your two colors, and you should be fine. There's the warm cadmium yellow medium right there so I'm not going to take anymore of my paint, I'm just going to dip my paintbrush in my container of water a couple of times, remove the excess water and paint in my second little section, which already looks way more translucent than the first because of those tipping things that I did into my water. I'm going to do a couple of more dippings, 1,2, remove the excess water and let's see if it's translucent enough. Nice and translucent. Beautiful. Now I'm going to go ahead and change my water before moving on to painting in the red sections, I highly recommend you do the same. Moving on to the reds, have my cadmium red lights and my madder lake red light right here. My paintbrush is nice and clean, I removed all of the yellow from those bristles and I'm going to go ahead and get started with the warm red first. You prepare a nice saturated color mixture, I'm going to load up those paintbrush bristles and I'm going to go ahead and get started with painting in the red and you can rotate your color wheel as you go if you find it more comfortable. What's important with this exercise, aside from making sure that you're cleaning out your paintbrush bristles in-between your colors, is that you are focusing, paying attention to make sure that you're painting your new color in the little space that you actually want that color to be painted in. I've messed up with color wheels before and then I have to redo them once again since the beginning. I painted in my warm red in its most saturated state, I'm going to go ahead and dip twice or three times, remove that excess water and color and paint in the second section. I'm going to try to leave a little teeny tiny sliver of paper in-between and if you start painting that section in and it looks more translucent than the first, but that's what you want. I'm going to dip my paintbrush and my water 2-3 times again, remove the excess water, especially for those innermost very small sections, you don't want to go in with a ton of water because you can lose control very easily. We're doubling up or even tripling up with this exercise because not only are we studying color relationships and practicing color mixing in a bit after we've placed our primaries but we're also really practicing developing different values, watering down color, we're getting in that water control practice. I removed all of this red from my paintbrush bristles and I'm going to create a nice, juicy, saturated madder lake red light color mixture in one of these walls on my color mixing palette. I'm going to go ahead and start painting this in. My cool red leaving a little sliver of paper in-between. I started touching right there, I hope that you can see how the warm red is bleeding into the cool red so that was an accident right there. You can leave it like that if you want, it's not going to completely ruin your color wheel, but if you'd like to fix it, just going to go in with my absorbent towel, lift up all of that warm red that I can and I can go back in with my cool red make sure that I'm leaving a little section there so that the warm red does not start bleeding into it again. There we go. I'm going to do a couple of dips into my container of water, remove the excess water and paint in the middle shape. Had some nice bleeding happening right there. I'm just going to leave that because it's the same color, so it's not that big of an issue. I'm going to dip my paintbrush in my container of water two to three times, four times even, remove the excess water if you have any beating of water in that furell of the brush, you can also help yourself with your absorbent towel to remove it and paint this color in a very translucent state, right here in the middle of the color wheel. We'll pick up some of that excess paint and water that I left in there by using my paintbrush bristles as a little absorbent sponge. Okay, so now we're going to be moving on to painting in the blues. So I'm going to change this once again because I don't want my paint to start turning purple because red plus blue equals purple. My paintbrush is clean. It's time to move on to painting in our last two primaries, which are warm and the cool blue. So I have my ultramarine blue and my Prussian blue right here and I'm going to do the exact same thing and prepare two juicy saturated color mixtures that are going to allow me to use the color in its full level of saturation, full darkness, so to speak, that it allows or as close as possible to that full level of saturation while still having a bit of water in that color mixture. Loading up my paintbrush bristles, I'm going to go ahead and get started with painting in my warm blue right here next to the cool red, which is the ultramarine blue. Grabbing more paint so that I can continue using this color at its full saturation. When we're painting on dry paper, it's very important that we paint pretty fast because that paint starts drying immediately when you place it on paper, and when your paper is dry, it soaks up that paint immediately versus when you do some pre-wetting with clean water and then you drop in your color, you have a little bit more working time. Because these are small shapes, it's not that big of an issue. But when you're trying to fill in a large shape on dry paper, it can be very aggravating because you can be left with texture and patches that you didn't really want. I'll do two, three dipings of my paintbrush in my container of water, remove that excess. Let's see if this is light enough. I think it is. I want to make sure that you have a difference between these spaces as you're moving in. Two, three extra dips of my paintbrush, remove that excess water and paint. I think I want a little bit more of a difference. I want it lighter, so I dip my paintbrush in my container of water again, remove the excess, and I think this time it should be light enough, making sure that I don't have too much water on my bristles because that's such a small shape. Awesome. Now we're only missing our cool blue. Remove that excess water. This is my Prussian blue from my Van Gogh set, and I'm going to go ahead and just start creating this blue puddle, the cool blue puddle right here in this wall of my color mixing palette. Nice, dip cool blue. Here we go. I like this blue so much. I really like cool blues, though I use the ultramarine all the time to create dark color mixtures and my grays. When it comes to using blue by itself on its own, I really enjoy cool blues much more than the ultramarine, that's just my taste. I think it's so important to start discovering the colors that you like. I've painted in my most saturated section of cool blue with my Prussian blue. I'm going to dip twice, three times, remove that excess water on paint and paint the middle section in. So there's the middle section. Now I'm going to dip my paintbrush into my container few more times. See if I can create a very, do it once more. Remove that excess water here and create a very translucent version of this Prussian blue. If you're having trouble, if you find that you're placing way too much paint or water in this very small section, remove the excess water and paint from your paintbrush bristles and use your paintbrush as a little absorbent sponge. All of the primaries are painted. It is time to get started with the babies that are in-between the primaries. So right here, in-between these two, we're going to be using these two colors, so your cool yellow and your cool blue to create your green color mixtures, greenish color mixtures. Then over here you're going to be using your warm yellow and your warm red to create the babies in-between, which are going to be the reddish orange color mixtures. Then right here in-between the cool red and the warm blue, you're going to be using this color combo right here to create the babies in-between, which are going to be the reddish purples and the purples. I'm going to get started over here. I need to take my Prussian blue, which is this blue right here. Remember, the colors that you're creating are created by the colors on either side, so just take these two colors and you're going to be creating your color mixtures right here by using these colors in different ratios. I need my Prussian blue and I need my cadmium lemon. Those are the two colors that I'm going to be using to paint in these babies in-between. It's just that when I paint this section in, this one is going to have more Prussian blue in it than cadmium lemon and this one over here is going to have more cadmium lemon in it than Prussian blue. But the colors right here are always created by the colors on either side of it. So these are always the babies of these two, these are always the babies of these two, and these are the babies of these two. I have a little puddle of cadmium lemon right here. If I want to, I could just go ahead and add some Prussian blue into that so that I can use my space and my color mixing palette right here and I don't have to clean it out and waste paint. As you can see, I've created a green right here by mixing together my Prussian blue and my cadmium lemon. This color mixture has a lot more Prussian blue in it than cadmium lemon. I'm going to go ahead and use it to paint in this upper section. There's this green and it's at its most saturated. Now I'm going to do the exact same thing and make it more translucent as I am moving in. So dip, dip, dip, remove the excess water and paint, and paint in the next section. Dip, dip, dip, remove the excess water, and painting in the most translucent section right here in my color wheel closest to the center. See that there is too much water beating up in that very small section. Just use the bristles of your paintbrush to absorb that excess water and paint, and there you go. We have a nice looking green right there. This is a cooler green for sure. It has a lot of blue in it. Over here we're going to be creating a green that is warmer or at least warmer than this green. Even though we're using to cool primaries right here, the green that I am going to be painting into this area by just the fact that it has more yellow in it then blue in it it's going to be warmer than this green. I am now going to be creating a green that has more cadmium lemon in it than Prussian blue, and I'm just going to be adding to this puddle right here so that I can just stay away from wasting paint. You can see the huge difference between this green and the green that I just painted in. Beautiful. I'm going to do the same thing. Dip, remove, dip, remove, maybe dip again. Hopefully you can tell how when you see them side by side this green is warmer than this green. This looks like a blue-green and this looks like more of a medium yellowish green color even though we used a cool blue and a cool yellow. Just because we use more yellow in this green than in this green, this is going to be warmer than this. This blue-green has lots of blue in it and this green has more yellow in it than this one. Let's move on to our red, oranges over here and I am going to make sure to change my water once again before working on that. My water is clean, my paintbrush is also clean. I am going to go ahead and grab my cadmium yellow medium and my cadmium red light. These two colors. Whichever tool you chose for your warm yellow and your warm red are the two that you need for the babies in-between. This is the spot where I was preparing my cadmium red, so I can go ahead and use this same well to work on these next two color mixtures. Make sure that you stay on top of which color is already in your color mixing palette if you're doing what I am doing and are using the paint that is already there to create these new color mixtures because if you start adding in, for example, your yellow into this red, which is a cool red, that is going to mess up your entire color wheel. If you're doing what I'm doing and are using that color that is already there for you that you were using before, just make sure that you're adding in your new color and creating your mixture in the actual red or yellow that it is that you need for this space. I'm going to try to make this orangey color right here. This one has to have way more of the cadmium yellow in it than of the cadmium red light. I think this is a nice orange. This is huge and tricky when you're working on a color wheel too, is that you want to make sure that there is enough of a difference between your colors. As you're moving along creating your different color mixtures, there has to be enough of a difference between the two. Make sure that you're using more, maybe 60, 70 percent of your yellow in this one over here versus over here, the 60, 70 percent has to be the red. You're just shifting the ratios so that this one over here has more yellow than red and this one over here has more red than yellow. I think I'm pretty good with this orange color that I created right here. I'm going to try it out, beautiful orange. Now I'm going to do the exact same thing and remove a little bit of color and water to paint in the middle sections. Once again, one, two, three, scrape, and beautiful. Pick a little bit more up and get a little bit more translucent before it dries. There it is. There's a nice secondary orange. Now I'm going to go ahead and just add more of that cadmium red into this color mixtures so that I can paint in this section over here. We're going to get a red orange in that section. Let's see if this looks like a good, yeah, it looks like a red orange to me. Dip, dip, dip remove that excess water and paint, fill in that section in the middle. Dip, [LAUGHTER] remove that excess water and paint and paint in that last little high piece. I have to work on the purple and the red purple right here. I am going to change my water once again and I'll be right back. Final two little sections. Paint brush is nice and clean. I'm going to remove a warm red and warm yellow from my mixing palette and I'm going to take my cool red and my warm blue. My cool red is madder and lake red light, and my warm blue is my ultramarine blue. I can use either of these wells because these are madder and lake red light and this is the ultramarine so it doesn't really matter. I can create my mixtures in either of these. Let's do the one closest to the cool red. I'm just going to add a good amount of this cool red into my mixing palette and some blue. If I add more blue into it, it, of course, turns into a purple because red plus blue equals purple. It's a beautiful purple there but I think that one would be best for this section. I'm going to add more of the madder lake red light, which should lead to a red purple. You can always test how your color mixtures on a scrap piece of watercolor paper before painting in the area, if you're more comfortable doing that. We have a nice red purple. Now that my saturated spot has been painted in I'm going to swivel or dip, remove the excess water and paint and paint in. A little bit too much of that paint was removed from my bristles. Just took a little bit more of that color from my paint mixing palette, just a teeny tiny bit. I don't want to go in with way too much color in this section that I want to make look more translucent. There it is. Dip only once. I'm going to paint in this last section. There's the red purple. I'm going to swivel this clean out my paint brush bristles. What a beautiful red purple? So bright, so vibrant. Now all I have to do, really, is add more of my ultramarine blue into this color mixture in order to get it more towards the secondary purple. Just modifying the ratios of the colors in your color mixture there and we have a beautiful purple here. You can see how vibrant these color mixtures in-between the cool red and the warm blue look. Let's paint in the medium little area. Dip, dip, and paint in the last most translucent section. All right, my friend, if you made it through this exercise, congratulations, that is not easy to do. We're all done with our split primary color wheel exercise and we're now going to be moving on to the next and last exercise in this course where we're going to be exploring all of our different color combinations that we can use to create secondary colors. But before jumping into that exercise there's a short class coming up next in which we're going to be making some observations about our color wheel and connecting what we found here with some of the key points that I was sharing about in class number 3. Whenever you're ready, see you in the next one. 9. Observations: Hello and welcome to this class where we're going to be talking about some observations that we can make now that we've finished up our color wheel. There are many different color wheels that you might decide to work on. In this case, for this course, we were working on a split primary color wheel. The difference between how we created this color wheel versus others that you might decide to work on in the future, is that with the split primary color wheel, we're bringing in a total of six primaries because we're choosing a pair for each primary, a warm and a cool whereas with other color wheel exercises, you're really just bringing in one blue, one red, and one yellow. But I really love the split primary color wheel exercise because it takes things at an extra step forward. We bring in color temperature, and it helps us understand color temperature more deeply as we continue practicing our color mixing. There are always going to be similarities in color wheels. It doesn't really matter how you are creating your color wheel. For example, the primaries are always going to be a triangle in the color wheel, we have red, we have yellow, and we have blue. Or you could have yellow, red, and blue. It doesn't really matter, but they're always going to be an equilateral triangle in the color wheel. Then we're always going to have secondaries and tertiaries in-between the primaries. Blue plus yellow is always going to create green, yellow plus red is always going to create orange, and red plus blue is always going to lead to purple in-between. Right here we can definitely see the tertiaries. We see a blue-green, we see a red-orange, we see a red-purple right here. We're always going to have primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries. However, in this case, because we have two spaces occupied by each primary, six spaces in total, six pie pieces are occupied, are taken up by just the primaries as opposed to the other one in which they're only using three. In the other one, we have six tertiaries. In this case, we are really only creating one tertiary because we already have a lot of difference between each of the primaries. Now aside from this, just as a quick little review, remember that complimentary colors are opposite colors in the color wheel. Wherever you're able to draw a straight line across, those are complimentary colors. Blue is complimentary to orange, red is complimentary to green, and purple is complimentary to yellow, etc. Remember that it's important to know that complimentary colors mute each other out. That is very useful because if you're looking to desaturate a color too, in many cases, make it look a little bit more believable just by adding in a little bit of the opposite color to that one in the color wheel adding in a little bit of, for example, read into your green is going to mute it, it's going to make it look a little bit more natural. That's why knowing about complimentary colors is so important. If you don't want that to happen and want to make use of only vibrant colors all throughout your piece, then you really have to make sure that you're not accidentally mixing complimentary colors or colors that are very different in your color mixing palette as you're painting because you're going to be creating a muddy color or a desaturated color when you weren't really planning for that. That said, muddy colors or desaturated colors certainly have a place. As we said before, if you're looking for a more realistic style, then most likely than not, you're going to look for ways to desaturate your colors and make them look more natural versus just using colors straight out of the pen or tube. It's not to say that desaturated colors are wrong or that you should never use them, it's just that you should know what's going to happen when you use them and you should anticipate what's going to happen when you mix colors together and do it in a mindful, intentional way if you're going to be using desaturated colors, and also if you're going to be using pure colors, or fully saturated colors. Now, analogous colors are colors that are next to each other in the color wheel. Three colors that are next to each other in the color wheel, those are analogous colors. These, if you combine analogous colors together, that's always going to lead to a very vibrant look because these are colors that are similar, they're kind of in the same family, so to speak. Whenever you mix these colors together, know desaturation is going to happen. They're still going to look very vibrant. When you mix any set of two or three analogous colors, that color combination is still going to lead to a very vibrant look because those colors are next to each other in the color wheel. Black and brown would be somewhere in the middle of the color wheel. They can be created in so many different ways that you really don't even need to have blacks and browns on your palette, whatever palette it is that you're preparing for yourself or even the ones that you buy. I definitely always like to have browns and neutrals and my palettes because I use them a lot. But what I'm trying to get at here is that you can create them by having these colors so you don't really need them. Browns, I would consider convenience colors that I add into a palette that I'm preparing for myself so that they can facilitate the process of color mixing. I don't use too much of specific colors and I don't run out of them too fast. There are always convenience colors that you can add in after having selected your primaries. Whether you're going for just three primaries, or whether you're going for a split primary palette that you're creating for yourself. You can have, for example, your six primaries when it comes to the split primary palette, and then you can select convenience colors for yourself, whether it's a green that you really like, or a purple that you really like, or something like a quinacridone gold or something like that. You can also bring in neutrals like browns, burnt sienna, burnt umber, raw sienna, yellow ocher, all of those are neutrals. There's so many different ways that you can create blacks and browns. For example, I really like creating my grays. Instead of reaching out for a ready-made black, like an ivory black or a Mars Black or anything like that, which tend to be very flat and dull. I really loved the combo of blue plus dark brown. For example. I really loved the combo of ultramarine blue plus burnt umber or even burnt sienna, that creates a very beautiful deep dark, almost black-looking color when you haven't added more saturated on your color mixing palette and if you water it down, it looks like a gray. At the same time, dark blue plus dark brown is very versatile because you can modify the ratios of your colors in your color mixture. If you have more brown than blue in it, it's going to look like a dark brown by just adding a little bit of blue into it, you're going to deepen and darken that brown. If it has more blue than brown in it and you use a little bit of brown in your blue, it's going to deepen and darken that blue. Then if you have a 50-50 amount of brown and blue, you're going to create that very deep, rich dark color that looks black at its most saturated that you can then water down and it's going to look great. You can also create a black-looking color by mixing together a green and a red. For example, Permanent Alizarin Crimson and thellow green can really lead to a very deep dark color. But there are other recipes as well. There are a lot of different recipes. When it comes to brown, you could just combine the three primaries and that is going to lead to a brown. But of course, most of us don't want to manage and have to deal with mixing three colors to create a brown in the middle of the painting process. Another way to make brown would be to mix together blue and orange. That also creates a very nice-looking brown. There are many different recipes to create brown. Keep your colors in your palette limited as much as possible, especially in the beginning. A lot of beginners getting started with painting mediums, they feel that the more colors that they have on their mixing pallets or their sets, the better off they're going to be, but in reality, it's the opposite. You could just get away with using six different colors in your palette. That in itself, by limiting the amount of colors that you're preparing for yourself, you're going to get to know colors a lot more and you're going to get so much more comfortable with color mixing so much faster than if you have a whole of the colors, possible, 64 colors on your mixing palette or something like that. That is too much and it's overwhelming. Not only that but also if you keep your colors limited, you're going to make it a lot more likely that at the end your pieces are going to look a lot more harmonious because you are repeating certain colors in your mixtures and in your painting and that in itself leads to a more harmonious looking result. Now that we've completed our split primary color wheel, it is going to be time to explore the different color combos that we can use to create our secondaries. How we can combine these primaries that we have selected these warm and cool primaries to create different oranges, different purples, and different greens. Why is this important? Because in the color wheel, we really have only tried a few different ways and there are still other ways to create our secondaries. For example, right here in the split primary color wheel, we really have only created our greens by mixing together the cool blue with a cool yellow. But what happens when I want to create a green with my warm blue, which is the ultramarine blue with the warm yellow, or with the warm blue plus a cool yellow, or the cool blue plus a warm yellow, what happens? How will the greens look different if I were to use those color combos versus the cool blue and the cool yellow? The same thing happens with the oranges and with the purples. Right here with the oranges, I really have only tested out creating my orange and my red-orange with the warm yellow plus the warm red. That's how I got these. But what would happen if I wanted to combine my cool yellow with my warm red or my warm yellow with my cool red, or the cool yellow with the cool red, I would still get an orange but the orange would be slightly different from these two that I have right here, which I created by combining the warm and the warm, and same thing with the purples over here. This purple and this red-purple was created by combining my cool red and my warm blue. But what would happen if I combined my cool blue with my warm red or my cool blue with my cool red, or my warm blue with my warm red? I would still create purples, but they would look different from these. By creating or by testing [NOISE] out all of the possible color combos that we could use with these split primaries that we've selected for ourselves, we're going to have a much better understanding of the different secondaries and the different color mixtures that we have available to us with the palette that we have prepared for ourselves, the different colors and combos that we can use for future pieces. This is what we're going to be doing in our next class and our last exercise in this course. We're going to be exploring all possible secondary color combinations. Congratulations for making it through another class, and I look forward to continuing with our color exploration in the next. See you there. 10. Exploring Secondary Color Mixes: Hey there, and welcome to this last class where we're going to be exploring all possible color combinations that we can use to create our different secondaries. Let's go ahead and jump straight in. I've measured things out with a ruler and a graphite pencil before adding in my labeling with my sharpie. I am going to make this available for you as a downloadable in case you'd like to transfer it and don't want to measure stuff out on your own, but if you don't, you can even just swatch it out and not even measure things out, if you're more of a type of B personality and not [LAUGHTER] so much a type A, and you don't want to pull out that ruler or whatever. Really it's just a matter of organizing your space in such a way that you have 12 spaces available for your oranges, 12 spaces available for your purples, and 12 spaces available for your greens, so that you have a warm yellow plus cool red equals this, warm yellow plus warm red equals this, cool yellow plus cool red equals this, cool yellow, warm red equals this. You have essentially three spaces, three spaces, three spaces, three spaces, a total of 12 for the orange, a total of 12 for the purple, and a total of 12 for the green. As you can see, I've labeled all of the possible color combinations that you can do with your split primaries for each of the secondary. Whether you want to do little circles, or fill in little squares, or just do little swatches, create somewhat of an organized little division of your watercolor sheets so that you can have this as a future reference. Hey, so I made sure to change my water, and I actually took time to clean out my mixing palette. I'm just going to go ahead and get started with the orange side. I'm going to fill in all of the warm yellow spaces. I feel it'll save me time and trouble cleaning out my paintbrush bristles. Of course I make sure to take the warm yellow that I've selected for myself. After filling in the warm yellow spaces, I remove all of that warm yellow from my paintbrush bristles, and I go ahead and fill in the cool yellow spaces. Cleaning up my paintbrush bristles. Moving on to the cool red. Cleaning up my paintbrush bristles here, and I am going to move on to fill in the warm red spaces now. All those pure colors have been filled in, and it is time to now work on my color combinations for my orange. I'm working on this first one at the top. For that one I'm going to be mixing together my warm yellow and my cool red. It's very important to keep your mind in the game when you're working on these color combinations, so that you don't accidentally use a color that you weren't intending to use. As you can see, it was helpful for me to completely clean out my color mixing palette so that I don't [LAUGHTER] confuse myself with any of the colors I already had in there. I can make sure that I am mixing the appropriate colors for each of these spaces that I'm going to be filling in. I'm just going to be making my way down. First with the warm yellow plus cool red, then once I'm done with that I'm going to completely rinse out my paintbrush bristles and I'm going to be moving on to mixing together my warm yellow plus my warm red. I'm going to clean out my paintbrush bristles and I'm going to just go down from there. As I am mixing my colors I'm making sure to create nice, juicy, saturated color mixtures that have a good amount of water in them as well, but I want to make sure that I'm painting in these third squares in a relatively saturated state, so that I can truly just get the full information out of that swatch that I am painting in. As you move on painting in your little orange squares, or circles, or whatever it is that you are using for your own color mixing exploration, try starting to tell the differences between your oranges. Start noticing if a particular orange looks more vibrant, looks darker, looks lighter, maybe looks even more translucent than another. The level of a translucency of the mixture that you are using is really going to depend on the colors in that mixture. As you're probably already well aware, when it comes to watercolor. Paint colors have different characteristics to them. Some of them are opaque, some of them are semi-opaque, and some of them are transparent. In my case I am using a couple of different cadmiums. Cadmiums usually have some opaque qualities to them. I'm pretty sure that some of these orange color mixtures and the others are going to have certain opaque qualities at the end, because those initial colors are a little bit opaque. If you're using colors that are fully transparent, then the end result is going to be transparent as well, and usually pretty vibrant. Higher quality paint always comes with a greater amount of information, usually in relation to the different colors in your sets. Make sure to check that out if you're already buying higher quality paint. Usually it's somewhere in the wrapper or in the box of your paint set, or maybe you can even find it in the brand's website. But anyway, right here I've just finished painting in my oranges, you can see how different they look already, but I am going to allow them to dry completely. Watercolor usually looks darker when it's wet, and when it's dry it looks a little bit lighter. But I definitely want to judge these colors after they have dried. I am going to go ahead and change my water once again, because my water is looking pretty murky, pretty orange, and it would definitely mess with my purples and my greens. I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'll be right back. Let's go ahead and get started with the purples. Cleaning out my paintbrush bristles very well, and I'm going to need my warm and cool blue, and my warm and cool red, to create my different purples. Let's go ahead and get started. I'm going to start by placing my warm blues, which is my ultramarine blue, in all of the warm blue spaces. Let's do the cool blue now. Let's move on to the reds. Removing all of the blue from my paintbrush bristles. Let's start with a warm red. Moving on to my cool red rinsing out all of that previous red from my paintbrush bristles and going into the cool red. Let's work on our color mixing now. So warm red and cool blue. Re-trying to rinse my paintbrush bristles in-between my colors so that I don't pollute my paint pans. But if I do, that's okay. I just have to clean them out. Mix, mix, mix until you see a purple. Interesting purple here. Wow, this looks very gray. Now I know that this is definitely not a combo that I would use to create a purple if I were to create a purple from these split complementaries. I would definitely not be using my warm red plus my cool blue. It looks too dark, too gray. There's the closest thing that I could get to purple with that color combo. So now I know that this warm red and this cool blue are definitely not the combo that I would choose to create a purple unless I'm looking for a very grayed-out purple, that's probably not the combo that I would choose to use. So let's see what would give me a combo for purple that I would like. So let's try the warm red and warm blue. Let's see what happens. I'm going to clean out this bit of cool blue that I have left on my paint pan here from my warm red. Here we go, nice and clean. I'm going to start preparing my warm red plus warm blue color combo to see what purple I get. That's a lot easier to create. This is a nice-looking purple. So let's move on to the cool red and the cool blue. So cool red and cool blue. Rinsing out my paintbrush bristles. Cool red and cool blue. This is another very nice vibrant purple, I can tell right away. So some of these may be difficult to see through the screen, especially the purples because they're so dark. But I'm going to make sure to take a photo of this finished exploration with my secondary colors and I'm going to make it available as a download in case you'd like to have it as a reference. So now cool red and warm blue. Let's see what happens when we combine these two. Another nice bright purple and this is the actual combo that we created in our color wheel. So we already know that this combo is going to lead to a nice bright, clean purple. So these right here, I can even see that they're starting to separate a little bit. It's looking very gray and it's barely looking purple anymore. I actually really like this one is super, super vibrant. Let's move on to the final secondaries, the greens. I'm going to make sure to change this because it has a lot of red in it. Red plus green is going to start turning brown so make sure that you change your water and clean out your paintbrush bristles. Ready to go with the final secondaries. I have my clean water, have a clean paintbrush, clean out a couple of spaces, at least my color mixing palette. So warm blue, let's paint in the warm blues first. For me, this would be my ultramarine blue. Let's move on to the cool blue, Prussian blue for me. Warm blues and cool blues have been painted in. Now I need my cool yellow, I need to remove some of that red that's in there. So let me go ahead and remove that cool yellow painted in here and my warm yellow. Let's get mixing now. So warm blue plus cool yellow would be my ultramarine and my cadmium lemon. For me, it's going to have an opaque quality to it because it's a cadmium. How opaque cadmium are depends on the brand, but usually, they do have a certain level of opaqueness to them. So here's my green that is created with my ultramarine blue and my cadmium lemon. Moving on to the warm blue and the warm yellow. Here's another space over here. Interesting green. Rinsing out my paintbrush bristles. Cool blue plus cool yellow. Very, very bright and vibrant. As cool plus cools usually create very vibrant colors. Not a very natural-looking green, but it's a very, very vibrant one. Finally, we have a cool blue plus a warm yellow. Let me clean up another little space here. We're all done with this exploration of secondary color combinations using our split primaries. So you can see how we've arrived at very different results for each, for the orange, the purple, and the green, depending on whether we're combining a warm or the cool or warm with a warm or a cool with the cool. This is what happened for me, for my particular colors that I chose for my palette. Depending on your own color combination it's you're going to arrive at different results, different oranges, different purples, and different greens. What's cool is starting to notice the difference between what's going on here. What I am seeing with this one is that it's now starting to look more like purple after it has dried. It's important to just realize that watercolors always going to look slightly lighter when it dries versus when it's wet. But it's just super, super interesting to see the different results for each. Another thing that I would highly recommend noticing after you finished with this exercise is notice which colors look most saturated, most unnatural, most vibrant, and which lead to a more muted out more natural-looking result. For example, in terms of the oranges, I feel that this is the most saturated, brightest orange that I arrived at. It's created by a warm yellow plus a warm red. But if I were going to be using a more muted out orange, I would be going for something like these. These would be lovely for a fall palette. Then in terms of the purples, I think that the cool red plus the warm blue leads to the most vibrant-looking purple, which is the purple that we created in our color wheel. Then these over here are more muted out. When it comes to the greens, I think that this one for me, the cool blue plus cool yellow, led to more vibrant, bright result. See how your own colors look and try to take notice of these things. My friends and with that, we're all done with this last class in this Heller theory/split primary color wheel course. I really, really hope that you got a lot from these classes and that you're able to give all of these exercises a goal for yourself, and that you had lots of fun with them. Remember to share your studies and color explorations in the projects and resources tab. I really look forward to seeing your work and reading about how it went for you. Congratulations for making it through this course and putting in the practice work to make progress as an artist. See you in the final closing video. 11. Thank you: If you've made it to this point, congratulations. I really hope that you got a lot from this course and that you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure to follow me here on Skillshare because I have a ton of new courses coming down the pipeline very, very soon. Don't forget to share your color wheel and your other exercises here on Skillshare over at the Projects and Resources tab. It's super easy to share your work, your thoughts, ask questions, and I am so excited to see what you guys created. If you're on social media, don't forget to follow me on Instagram. I share posts over there every week that are helpful and inspiring for other artists. Make sure to check out my YouTube channel. I share helpful videos over there every single week. That is going to do it for this course. Thank you so much for joining me on this one. I wish you tons of progress and enjoyment moving forward in your journey. Seen you soon. Bye.