Colour Palettes for Abstract Paintings

1. Introduction to the course: Color palettes for abstracts, the mystery of color schemes explained by Doris shy. Welcome to a two-part course on color schemes. I have a degree in fine arts and a master's in visual art education. I loved teaching art. I love art. I want to share my love of art with you. We will learn new skills while having fun in this course, we will learn color theory basics. We will learn a variety of classic color combinations and examples on how to use these colors. We're going to have fun with these color combinations. We will learn about the color wheel and then we will get more complicated. We will go to secondary colors and tertiary colors, warm and cool colors. We will learn about shades, tints, and tone. We will learn about complimentary colors, analogous colors. Each of these videos has a painting that goes with the color scheme. We're going to look at exciting and quite neutral color schemes. We have color schemes using tints, we have color schemes using shades. We have color schemes using high key colors. We have color schemes using tertiary colors. And more, recover each of these compositions and color schemes and you shall learn something with each one. So join me for my course, color palettes for abstracts. The mystery of color schemes explained by Doris shop. 2. Materials that you may need: Materials that you will need. For this course. You'll need acrylic paint, red, yellow, blue, black, white, and some neutral colors if you want. You'll need paint brushes are one inch flat or a two-inch flat. Depending on the size of canvas or paper that you will use. Painting surfaces of your choice. You can choose between Canvas, watercolor, paper, illustration boards. It's up to you. Water container to wash your brushes, rags to clean up, plastic cover for your table. If you want to bring anything else. For these exercises, you're welcome to do so. Get your materials now and we'll see you in the next lesson. 3. An explanation of how the course is structured: Hi again. What we're going to do first is make a plan. This is my imaginary counters. I want to do is use a frame and frame composition. Framing frame is rectangles that overlap each other. And these rectangles are different sizes, different colors. And I vary them with every different exercise that I will do. They go like this. I can either fill the canvas or leave some spaces. Some can be small, can be large. It will change. I might want some that just stick out. I might want some that are larger and skinny. I might want some really small ones. For example, this one I might want to put just like this. In fact, that would make a good composition because here I have an instant focal point. I have a small against the large element. All I need is to do a little bit of variation on the rest. So it looks interesting. I have two of these small ones. I probably want the, here's a third one. I probably want to repeat that somewhere. Maybe I'll do it this way. Because I have this I have that sticks out. I need another one. Here we go. So my instant focal point, I think might be a light color against a dark color. I've decided that with this series that I'm going to do, when I show you all these different color combinations, I'll use the same framing frame composition. I'll try to do something very similar. Not the same, but similar. This could be dark. I'm going to choose three areas. We're going to put dark, maybe one dark gray here. I will have a dark. I will have white areas. I will just leave. I will have mediums. These medium areas could be different colors, so I couldn't have one color that I represent with stripes. I have these color in different areas. I have one color here. I want a second color. I make the stripes go the other way. I want to repeat that. Maybe right here. Then I want that third color. I could do this way. I could have this 1 third color. This one. The colors might be red, yellow, blue. This is what I want to do, something very similar for this whole series or color palettes that I'm going to be showing you. I also want some dark lines. So I went to put lines that maybe go like this. Maybe the intersect. I might want white lines. So I'll want blinds too. I might want lines right here necessarily to maybe one short, 11 longer, one, accumulate ones here. One long, one short. I want to keep the numbers on 12345, so that is odd. I have several goals for this course. I want to use a foramen frame composition. I want use white. I want to use darks, which is going to be a black. I'll use several colors depending on the color palette. I will use lines like this. This is part of the goal. When you create a series or try out different exercises, make a sketch first, make a plan. You may not stick to the plan, but at least in your head you're clear about what you wanted to do and how you're going to place things on your Canvas or your paper. Make a plan now. And I'll see you in the next section. 4. Primary colours- Great start with boldness: The color wheel. Why use a color wheel? Because it really helps. It's a great assistant to any kind of painting. The color wheel will help you in your color combination choices. The color wheel makes choices easier. The color wheel avoids errors, but also the color wheel gives you ideas. A simple color wheel consists of 12 color. Hughes. Hughes is another word for colors. All colors come from some combination of primary colors. The three primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. These three colors are essentially the parents to all the other colors. Here they are primary colors. So let's watch a painting that shows how to paint with primary colors. Now, I started with yellow on this one is a bit of sunlight peeking through from my window. I love natural light that really helps me decide what the colors are really like. Now, all I'm doing this is a frame in-frame painting or a grid painting as they call them. It's all rectangular shapes and then I combine them. So now I'm adding blue. As I said before, With these paintings, what I'm doing is I'm trying to just keep the same composition and try different color combinations with the same composition to see which one works best. With that type of composition. You can pick a different type of composition if you like. When you're doing your own projects. This is primary colors. And with every painting, what I'm going to do is add marks with block and marks with white. I'm, sometimes I will mix the color with white or black because there'll be part of the exercise. But for the most part, I'm using the black and white just as another accident that I will use to complete the painting. Now I've decided that I want that black mark larger and I want it to be one of my focal points, perhaps the focal point. So all the elements are going to go towards that particular rectangle. The reds and the yellow all lead towards there. And these white and black lines as well. Why I chose that black element is because it's right next to a bright yellow. Light against dark creates a focal point. Here I have an automatic focal point. What I'm trying to do is guide my eye around the painting and also towards the focal point. When I'm done, I stop. I have to be honest, I think I might tweak this one later, but I want you to try it now. And once you to try primary colors only in black and white. And I'll see you in the next section. 5. Combining secondary colors: We're going to go from primary colors, secondary colors. So when you mix a primary color, red and blue, and you get purple. Purple is a secondary color. So you also have blue and yellow, and that leads to green, red, and yellow, orange. So when you create a painting with secondary colors, you get a whole different look. So let's watch the video of the painting with the secondary colors. Now the three basic colors are orange, green, and purple. And I'm just going to start by making random marks in each composition. I'm going to try to repeat the similar composition to before, but it's almost impossible to do everything the same. But I will aim for similar. So I'm adding the second secondary color and that's green. And remember, you need one element to dominate. So you need the orange to be more powerful than the green or the purple. To be more powerful. You need one of them to be more powerful, you need to do is choose which one and make that one more, just more of the, more of that color. And it becomes the dominant color. Now I'm adding lines and I've decided to do this ahead of time, but I will continue to tweak. Little later. I will change some colors. I will add maybe other marks. I might add some white. And each time I will do something different. So I'm using a brush. I'm not using the credit card this time. I'm just blocking in some of the colors where I want them. When I'm ready, I'm going to just add some more with the credit card. Now, notice that I'm taking out some of the orange. I'm adding some more block Y by doing that. Well, I want one element to be the focal point. And it didn't work for that rectangle before to be orange. And it doesn't work for the rectangle here to be purple. So I'm switching it around. That's the beauty of acrylic. You can change things when you've decided that maybe that's just not the right place. Just as here, I'm adding more green and changing the arrangement of the colors. I want one dominant color and won't want to be more important than the rest. And I want the eye to lead to that particular rectangle. That's why I'm doing this. I'm tweaking and you can take your time to do this. You don't have to do this overnight. You can do this over a period of several nights or evenings depending on our days, depending on when you paint. Now normally what I do is I wait in-between colors to add more paint in. Some of my paint is leaking from the blacks, leaking into the colored rectangles. Normally what I would do is just let things dry in between each color and then I never had that problem. Now I'm using my credit card and I'm tweaking the look of the painting. Now, I want to turn this from an exercise into a painting. How do I do that? Well, I have to arrange the elements so they're visually pleasing and it makes a good painting. So I pick a focal spot and I lead my eye towards those elements. That's partly why I changed the colors of the rectangles earlier. And that's how I'm arranging these white lines. That's what I think about when I choose where to put these lines. So what I want you to do now is try out secondary colors, and then we'll see you in the next section. 6. Tertiary colours are three times the charm. : We're going to go from secondary colors, green, orange, and purple. And we're going to go to tertiary colors. Tertiary colors are the colors that come from mixing one of the primary colors with the one of the nearest secondary colors. So what you get is red plus orange is red, orange, yellow plus orange is yellow, orange, yellow plus green, yellow, green, blue and green, blue-green, blue, purple, blue, purple, red, and purple. You get red, purple. So these are the colors that you end up with. These are great colors to work with. Let's watch the video on how to use some of these colors in a painting. I'm starting with a yellow green. It looks very yellow in this video, but it has a tinge of green, yellow, green. And then I'm going to add a light green. I want variations on this green, so more colors you use that are closer to each other in value, the more harmonious your painting will be. So as I add yellow, green, I think of where I place these elements so that the kind of create an ax or they create a tea, or they lead to the main element. Here I have a darker green. And that's one of the colors that go with the green. So I have very light green, which looks like yellow here, and the medium green, and then a darker green and a darker one yet. And I want a lot of variety. So I want to create some colors that really go well together and then add a contrasting one, which is purple in this case. So I add purple and I vary the size of the rectangles, and I vary the shape of the rectangles. Then I add some of my black lines. I will add some more later. My brush isn't doing a very good job with these lines, so I will need to tune them up with a credit card. Sorry about my hand. It keeps getting in the way. I speed it up this video. So you actually, you see how I did this, but much more quickly. So now I'm adding my dark rectangles. And remember that I want to space them just like the colors so that the lead my eye towards the focal point. So I carefully choose each element. I've speeded up the video and here we have my elements with my credit card. So I've added some. Here we are. The elements lead towards the dark rectangle that's in contrast to the very light yellow, creating an instant focal point. So try this now and we'll see you in the next section. 7. Complementary colours- muted and popular: Now we're going to talk about complimentary colors. Those are the colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel. Examples of complimentary combinations are red and green. Christmas colors, blue and orange. Yellow green and red, purple, red, orange and blue-green. Here's a hint. You don't use all those colors equally. One color should dominate in the other to support our contrast. Sometimes you might just use two colors like blue and orange, or a variation of different oranges and some blue variation of some blues and some orange and so on. Let's watch the video for an example of how to use complementary colors. For this example, I've chosen to use yellow and purple. Again, it's just a matter of blocking in. These are two colors that work really well together. They just make everything work really well. For example, I find that the yellow really pops when it's next to purple. It just complimentary colors just are great combo to use a lot of the time. But then you'll find your own preferences. Maybe you'll find you only like certain complementary colors are. You'll find that you don't like complimentary colors at all. You'd like primary, try out all these color combinations and you'll find which one works for you and your tastes and your style that you're working with. This style that I'm showing you now may not be your style and you have to consider that. That's okay. You will develop your own style here. This is going to be a dark against light focal points. So the yellow is against the dark. And the purple kind of leads my eye towards the yellow and the dark. And all these lines that I'm making also lead to the focal point. Every time I say the same thing, you're there to guide your eye towards a central, more interesting spot. This is your turn. Now, see what you can do with complimentary colors. 8. Monochrome -One colour does it all: We're going to leave high key and go to monochrome, which is almost the opposite. This is where you can take a color and then you can dilute it until it gets thinner and thinner and thinner. Or it's alittle a bit like a tint. You can add white or any other color to it, but you stay within the color family that you have there. Monochrome color combination is different variations of a single hue. That's a single color. You can add white, black, or any other color to vary the hue. For example, dark blue, slightly lighter blue, light blue, like the example we will see in this coming video. So let's watch the video. So in this case, I started off with the lighter color. I took a brown color and I diluted it. This is as diluted as I could get it. And it's almost like an off-white. I'm starting with that, and then I start with my second color is the second value. I had it all organized. I had it all on a large pallet. I had the dark value, I had lighter, several lighter values. And then I was all set up. So this painting is going to be very quick that way. Light mediums and darks. So every painting should have a light medium and dark. And here I have a little more of a reddish color. This is the original color. I added different elements just to create those other colors. So here I have a larger one. So this red is a beautiful burnt sienna ear. I'm just adding the lines. I have also added several variations on the color. So again, this is all part of monochrome. You just take one color and change it as much as you can. Now, I'm moving to the step away from mixing color and monochrome. And I'm moving to the step of painting. So I'm painting, I'm creating the painting now. I'm working on the composition. It comes to a point. You need to choose the composition over the color. So it's more important to create message or to create a good focal point. I'm area of interests than it is anything else. Now for the credit card, I've added block, I'm adding some white and I'm creating a painting. I added the black with the brush tool. This is the white is the only part that I'm adding with the credit card. It I loved the way it adds the paint. It's a nice, strong line and it's a little bit uneven sometimes. And I liked the unevenness. Sometimes I have trouble with the brush creating two fat align, but in this case, it's working. So it does work in every case, it depends how delicate you want to get. So I want some of these lines to lead towards this dark spot that's against very light version of the color and the original color. So that's the focal point. It's your turn now, go create a monochrome painting. Mix all your colors I had of time. It really helps when you start painting. Change it up enough times that it's interesting. Do this now and we'll see you in the next section. 9. Analogous -similar colours that get along really well: Now we're going to move from complimentary colors, analogous colors. Analogous colors are colors that are side by side on the color wheel. Here are some examples, violet, blue and teal, red Fuchsia and purple. Red, orange and yellow, blue, green, and purple. One color should dominate in the other two support or contrast. Keep that in mind. Let's watch the video related to analogous colors for things Gremio, I've chosen purple. You've probably guessed I like purple because I use it a lot. And I'm just blocking in. And I will add a second color, green. So I'm going to be working with green, purple, and a bluish color. It's more like a teal, but it's a more neutral blue. And these are colors I love working with. I often work with these colors when I work in my own work. Again, what you're trying to do is create a balance so you see which one, which color is going to take over. Right now, kinda looks like they're all pretty even and I have to decide which one I'm going to that dominate. So I'm going to add my lines that are related to my composition. Then I will decide how I'm going to emphasize each one. Now this is something you can do on your own. You can block in the colors and then the side, which way you're going to go for emphasizing the color, the beauty of acrylic is you let it dry and then you can paint over it and it's no big deal. It covers really easily. That's one of the things I love about acrylic paint. If you're working with watercolor, it's a different thing. If you have to plan ahead, it's really hard to change the color once you've started. Now I'm adding the white line. And remember your planning that white line so that it emphasizes and leads the eye towards the focal point. Have you figured out where the focal point is gonna be on this one? I've switched back to the black line and I'm adding more. This composition is getting really complex, but I kinda like it. Not all compositions really work well as simple compositions. Some are better with their complex, some are better if they're simple. So with this one, I'm thinking complex wins. Everything is different every time. So now I'm trying to balance the darks, these darks that I'm going to just tweak so that my eye stays within the canvas. What I'm going to do is just tweak these darks so that my eye is led towards the focal point, which is a dark against the light, which seems to be the theme of this composition as I'm working through it. Okay, Now it's your turn. See what you can do with this combination of colors or any of the other analogous colors that you might prefer. 10. Shades- darken things up with class: We go from warm, cool colors, different hues and often elicit different feelings. For example, red is known for excitement, danger, energy, courage, strength, anger. Orange is known for creativity, enthusiasm, health, wealth and happiness, and encouragement and balance. Yellow is known for sunshine, hope, optimism, light positivity and freshness. Green for health, nature, renewal, generosity, freshness and environment. Blue for freedom, trust, expansiveness, dependability, faith and inspiration. Purple for royalty, luxury, power, pride, creativity and mystery. Warm colors are usually associated with energy and excitement and passion, while cool colors are meant to calm and relaxed. Maybe that's why I like blue so much. In this next section, what we're going to do is examine shades and tints. I have not included tones. Shades are when you add black. Tints are when you add white. I did not add tolls because I thought I would repeat myself too much. Tones is just an in-between for shades and tints. Shades are when you add black. So you take a basic color and you add a little bit of black, little more, a little more, and then a lot of black and you end up with a shade. Let's watch a painting that's done with shades. I've started already and here I have my lines, I'm starting. So I took block, I added it to my blue. And now I'm adding lines to help me guide from the next color, I add two. Now I have to own up. At the end, you'll see that I added one tone in there. I just couldn't resist. I felt the painting needed it. So in the end, this is not just an exercise, It's also should be a painting in the end. Now I'm adding a variation on the blue. This is the original blue I started with. Then I add a bit of white. And this is where I add white lines as well. And I have those lines so that the guide me towards the focal point. All I've done in this one is take a spatula and paint the spatula and it makes my lines. It didn't have my credit card for this one. Here we go. And you can add as many or as few lines as you like. And you have them lean towards the focal point. This doesn't do quite as good a job as the credit card does, but I still like it. I like an irregular line. I don't want it all completely perfect. I like it to be handmade. I want the painting to look like a painting and not like something a machine made. So that's why I like these edges. Now, this light blue that I have, I opened up, I put some white in there. Actually was a gray, so I have a gray blue. I have a pure blue, I have a dark blue. I have black and white. This is shades with one little wee bit of tone in there. So now it's your turn. Create a painting using shades. 11. Tints - Create great soft colour combinations: Now we're going to talk about tense, where you add white. You take a basic color and you keep adding white till you have the palest version ever. I have a video with tints, so let's watch it. I'm going to use three-tenths in this one. I'm going to use this light blue. Then I'm going to add another color, yellow and with white in it, a lot paler than the original color. So I have a light blue, a light yellow, and now a light pink. I'm going to just add marks and see if I can create a balance. That's the only goal in an abstract painting other than creating a big emotion. I want to create a balance. I thought I had put too much color there and not left enough space. So I'm adding white back. Now I'm adding my marks and I have my spatula again. I apologize for the camera. The cameras really close and I kept hitting the camera with my elbow or a hand when I lifted this spatula. So that's my fault. But I like the way the marks are going right now. I'm going to keep this one a little simpler. I'm going to add some white, some white marks. I want to add enough marks to lead the eye to a central point. You'll be tired of hearing me after this, after the whole course, but I hope it echoes in your head. Now I'm adding more pink. What you want is to create a balance. And that's exactly it. I want to keep it up painting. I don't want it to be just an exercise. So I am creating a painting at the moment. I'm forgetting all about the tints and I am just working on the composition. So I add blues in certain spots. I add pinks, I go back in, I might add white. I can do whatever it needs to be done that this point, to create a good composition here I'm adding more yellow. It goes on. The important part is to just create a balance, create a good composition, and that's all that counts. I'm still knocking my camera. I apologize for that. I'm going to add a few dark marks. Just so it's also balanced. Just like in the other paintings. Even though I tried to create something similar for each one, it's a really hard process and it's really hard to do that. So I think I'm done. So now it's your turn. Create a painting using tints. 12. Warm and cool colors look great together: We go from tertiary colors, which are these. Now what we're going to do is examine some basic terms that you should know. Warm versus cool. Warm colors are those that resemble or symbolize heat. While cool colors are attributed to ice or cooler temperatures. For example, red, yellow, orange, and red purple are warm colors, while blue, purple, green, and blue-green or cool colors, the color wheel is split into half or warm. Half are cool. When you create a painting with warm tones, you add one or two small amounts of cool colors to create a contrast. When you create a cool painting with ice and snow, you might add small elements of yellow or orange in there just to create the contrast and make those cool colors pump. That's the goal of using them as a contrast. Let's watch a video on how to paint with warm and cool colors. Now, I've already started with the purple and the dark orange. So I have an even amount here pretty well and I'm adding my black lines already. Now. I didn't really like all just dark purple, so I'm adding a lighter purple. Remember these are cool colors now, so cool is starting to dominate as I start painting. And as I keep adding what will happen? The painting will change. Now I'm adding white elements. I discovered that if I add these elements, not just at the end, but in-between, what happens is I get a better painting. I have a better idea of how these elements should be put together. So I've added orange, which is a warm color, this light green, which is technically a warmer color and now a blue. Now this darker blue, I've decided to add because I've decided to have the painting so that it is cool, dominant. I want this painting to be cooled dominance. So I want the majority of the colors to be cool. I keep adding my elements with my brush. And I choose spots and I choose where the focal point should be. I've created a contrast, so I have one element that's a little darker against some lighter colors, and this creates my focal point. Now I am adding this darker green just to help balance all the colors. And then I start adding my lines. I want these lines to lead towards the focal point. Now this is the credit card. Could be an old library card if you want. And you just add the elements so that everything becomes more balanced. So now I've created my focal point. It is blue dominant with bits of warm colors peeking through all these cool elements. Here's a painting that is cooled dominant with bits of warm color in it. So try this now and we'll see you in the next section. 13. Conclusion: Conclusion. There are even more variations than what I present. You'll have fun. What I'm showing you is just the basics. Try out all these color combinations and see which one you like. It's not only fun, but it will eventually lead you to find your own color preferences. We all have colors we prefer, I prefer blues and more neutral colors. I have a hard time with the high key colors, but you might have a great time of a Heikki colors. So just try them all out and see which ones you like best. Keeping in mind that you will choose certain colors for a fact or just because you like them. Sometimes you do choose colors just for the effect. Here are some examples. A monochrome painting by Picasso. It is one of the most well-known paintings in the world. Yet it's just the monochrome painting. The word just is not the right word. Monochrome can be just as effective as color. Georgia of chief uses complimentary colors really well, and analogous colors really well. Piet Mondrian uses triadic color. He uses the primary colors that I find so difficult, but he does a great job. Andy Warhol uses the mall. He tries all kinds of color combinations. The effect is the more important part for him. Trying to create drama, trying to create an effect. Here's some last bits of advice. The possibilities are endless. Always start with a sketch. Find the color combination that best expresses your intent or find color combinations that you prefer, but also express your intact practice, practice, practice. Your own color palette will develop and you will have fun doing that. All the examples of paintings of the masters were taken from the Internet. Join me in one of my other classes. I talk a lot about composition in this course, but I really go in depth in the elder one. Thank you for taking my course and we'll see you in the next course.