Transcripts
1. Introduction: Do you feel a
little color-stuck? Do you feel like you're
using too many of the same colors over and
over in your artwork? I'm going to show
you today how to pull inspiration
from a book of mine, but of course, you can use
a book of yours in order to create color palettes that you can use in your next project. [MUSIC] One of the ways
that I like to break out of my own color ruts is to take inspiration from
outside sources. Today, we're going to
do exactly that in a fun-relaxing
exercise using one of my favorite books
in my collection, and we're going to create seven different vintage-inspired
color palettes using this book that I'm sure you can't help but
fall in love with too. Hi, my name is
Marie-Noelle Wurm, I'm an artist, illustrator, and top teacher
here on Skillshare, where I love to empower
students to getting in touch with the creativity
that lies within. Today, we're going to do that using an outside source and colored pencils but you could use other
mediums if you'd like. I'm going to be giving
you little tips and tricks on layering, how to create the colors
that you're looking for, even if you're using a very
basic set of colored pencils. We're also going to dip our toes into the wide waters of
color theory and give you a few tips for making
your color palettes a little bit more unique
and true to you. I can't wait to get started. I love everything vintage.
Let's get to it. [MUSIC]
2. Materials: Let's talk about
the art materials that you'll need for the class. Colored pencils, I
have this very old, cheap set of very basic
colored pencils with very basic colors and
this is all you need. I'm going to show
you how you can create complex colors even
using a very basic set. Don't panic if that's
all that you have. But if you do have a bigger set of colored pencils like I do because I'm an
art supply hoarder, and I love my colored pencils, then you can of course
use that as well. You might also want a pencil sharpener in case your pencils
need some sharpening. You'll also need a sketchbook. This is actually a
Moleskine sketchbook, but it just so happens to have a really cool piece of
artwork on the front cover. That's it. Let's get started.
3. Palette 1: Layering + Tinted Blacks: I selected a few pages
for you that I thought would be interesting to
pull color pallets from. We're going to start
with this one. I don't want you
to overthink it. I just want you to look
at these little images, these little stickers, and go for the one that
appeals the most to you. I really think this cube
is very intriguing, probably because of
the subject matter, but I also really like
the array of colors here, so I'm going to
start with this one. I also want to
point out that you don't need a massive
set of colored pencils in order to be able to
make these color palettes. I'm going to actually start
out with a very basic set of colored pencils that I've
had for a very long time, probably since I was a teenager. I just want to show you that
it's absolutely possible to create these more
muted vintage colors even if you have just
a few colored pencils and they're not even the
best quality or anything. I'm going to start with this and it just so happens that I do have a purple
actually in my set, so I'm going to
start out with that. I'm going to actually make my color swatches as rectangles. I'm going to make
them pretty big just so you can see them well, but they don't
necessarily need to be this big and your sketchbook. I'm just going to start
laying down my color. I want you to know that
you do not need to make little rectangles or
squares like I am, you can also do this
as little circles or even just blobs of color. I just like to do
it as rectangles because I can make
them contiguous. What I mean by that is that I can make multiple rectangles with the different colors
in my color palette all connected to each other. That's a good color
to start off with, and I'm very lucky that
I just so happen to have a color that matches the
color that I'm looking for. But what happens when you don't have the color that
you're looking for? My next color that I'm going
to go for is this black. But when I look at this black, it doesn't actually
look like a pure black. It has a slight, I would say brownish, maybe reddish tinge to it. It just so happens also
that I don't have any black in this very limited set of
colored pencils that I have. Obviously you know in
your desk or studio, black is a very common color. You could alternatively
use even a marker or something else, or black colored pencil
if you have one. But I just want to show
you what if you don't. How can you make a black when you don't have
a black with you? I'm going to go for the
darkest color in my set which is a brown because I really want to
get that very dark value. I'm going to start
off with that. But obviously it's not
black, it's brown. How can I make it a little bit closer to the color
that I'm looking for? You might know the rule that if you take two
complimentary colors, that means two colors that are on opposite
sides of the color wheel and you mix them then you most often will get
the blacks graze brown's. That's one way that you
can try to experiment with finding more black tint or
black hue for your color. I'm actually going to
take another one of the dark value colors in my set and I'm going to
go with this blue. Why? Because not only is
it a dark value, but also my brown is
like this reddish color, so if I think of the
complimentary of red, that is blue, and so that's why I'm going to layer these two colors together. We're just going to
see what that does. That's pretty interesting, I am getting a darker
hue that is definitely edging closer to a tinted black. It's not perfect, but
I'm getting closer. I couldn't decide, well what if I really decide
to go with the complimentary and add a little
bit of red to it. Finally, I'm just going to layer a little bit
more of this brown. As you can see, I'm not able to get the exact type of
black that we have here, but considering that I don't
have any black in my set and that I have a very
limited set of colors, I'm actually pretty happy
with how this turned out. However, I didn't
notice one limitation, and this is something
that will happen if you have a slightly cheaper
set of colored pencils, it's depending on what
they're composed of, how they were made. But they'll have limitations in terms of the number of
layers that you can achieve before you're no longer
able to add more pigments. When you have slightly more
expensive colored pencils, then you're able to
layer them more easily and have more layers in order to achieve the hue that
you're looking for. But I'm pretty happy with that and I'm going to move
on to my next color which is going to
be this yellow. I have a yellow in my set, but the yellow that I have here looks more like a
slightly lemony yellow rather than this deep
warm yellow here. What am I going to do? I'm going to layer, and I'm going to layer
it with this orange. The thing is, I'm not
looking for an orange. What I'm going to do is create a very soft layer of this
color before adding my orange. You can influence the color that you're going to create by varying the pressure of
your different layers. Obviously, if I'm pressing more than I get
more of that color, but I also get a
slightly darker value. I really liked that and I
think that's a nice warm yellow which is definitely closer to the one
that I'm looking for. Finally, I'm going to add a red. But when I look at my red, it looks to me like
I would actually want a little bit more
orange in my red. I'm again going to create an
underlayer of orange over which I'm going to layer my red. I want you to notice
one other thing is that the order in which you
layer your colors, that is also going
to have an influence on the final color that you get. If I layer my orange first
and then my red second, it's going to create a
slightly different color than if I put my red first
and my orange second. I'm pretty happy with that and you may have noticed
that I've made each one of these colors approximately
the same size. That's going to be important, and I'll explain to you why
all the way to the end. But just keep in mind that even if you're doing
circles or other shapes, just try to keep the size
of them relatively similar.
4. Mini-Palettes + How to Expand Them: Why don't we do a
second color palette and we're going to go for
something a little bit simpler, so maybe just two colors. Go ahead and pick another little
image that you find here. I'm going to go with
this little strawberry because I think
it's really cute, and I'm going to
start with my red. But one thing that I notice
here already is that in comparison to the orangey
red that I have here, I would say this red has
a slight blue bias to it, so it edges a little
bit more towards blue. What I'm going to
do is instead of having an underlayer of orange, I'm going to take a color
that goes towards blue, purple, and have an
underlayer of that one before I apply my red. I think what you're going to notice right away is
the difference with my initial red that has
the orange underlayer. Even though I'm using the exact same colored
pencil as my second layer, we end up having two very
different colors in the end. This really shows
you how much of a difference your underlayer can have on your final color, whether you're using colored
pencil or paint, or markers. The order in which
you put things and the underlayer that you create is going to dictate
how bright or dark, how warm or cool your final
color is going to be. My second color is
this lime green, and I actually do have a
pretty bright green here. But I think this one looks
slightly more yellow. I'm going to go ahead and try
it with a layer of yellow, and I want you to
also keep in mind that in the beginning,
it might be tough and so you might have to do a few different tryouts
before achieving the color that you're looking for and then recreating
the color palette. You can do to your tryouts on the side and then end up making your finalized
color palette after all your attempts or you can
simply correct afterwards. This is pretty nice. I'm pretty happy with this. It's not the exact
color that I see here, but again, we're not
looking for exactitude. We're really using
these as springboards for constructing color palettes and also practicing some color
mixing with color pencils. This is a very, very simple
color palette, two colors. But you don't need to be limited by the two colors
that you see here. What I mean by that
is that when you're pulling color palettes
from external sources, whether that's books or
photography or film, or your environment. You're the one in
the driver's seat. You can also pull things
from other arenas in order to complexify
that color palette or add a color in that didn't
appear there originally, and you could do it more
in a intuitive way, just picking
whatever color it is that you think could be
fun to go with that one or you can also
find another color that is not related
specifically to that object. In particular, this object
which has two colors is on a sheet of paper that
itself has a color and it's a pale purple. I think it's a
really cool color. I'm going to add a third
color to my color palette, which is going to be
that background color. I do have a purple, but I don't want it to be as
bright purple as this one. It's much paler here. I think I'm actually going
to start with a very, very light underlayer of purple and then add in some
white over the top. I think I may have gone even a little bit too dark
there, but we'll see. That's not too bad, and I think that still makes a really fun vintage
color palette. Why don't we try one more? Except I'm going to change
the page that we're on and go with this page
which I thought had a really fun array of
different color palettes. Again, just go ahead, look through them and pick the one that is
most appealing to you. I'm going to actually
go with this one, which I think is
a really fun one. It has a red, but the red looks almost
more brown to me, a little bit darker red
with a little bit of brown. I'm going to start out
with a brown underlayer. But I also feel if I added
maybe a layer of blue, a little underlayer of blue that could also darken
it a little bit and achieve the color
that I'm looking for. I'm just going to make these
two very light layers. Then finally add my red. That brown undertone really shines through a
little bit more here. Then I have some white, and there's a few different ways that I can deal with this. What I can do is
decide that the white will just be the
white of my paper, and so use one of the
colors of my color palette just to create a
little blank box. That's one option in order
to include the white or if I have a white, and especially if your paper
is a little bit tinted, then you might see it
a little bit better. Then I have a orangey
yellow, similar to that one. I'm going to go
back and do that. I could decide to leave
my palette at that because those were the three main colors
of this little drawing. But I can also pull
colors from the details, and so I really
like this gray-blue that I see in the shadows here. I'm going to try to go for that. I'm going to start
with a actual ink because I do have a gray. But I'm going to make it
a little bit more blue by adding this
underlayer of blue. I struggle with making
my boxes always the same size but that's fine. It's not a big deal. This is actually a
really beautiful color. Pretty happy with this one. Definitely has
that vintage vibe. What you can see here is really that I'm able to achieve
some vintage color palettes even if I start out with a
super basic set of colors. I actually have a bigger
set of colored pencils that I'm going to use for the rest of my color palettes. But I just thought it was really important for you to know that it's not about
your art materials. Even if you have just
a few basic colors, you can achieve the
complexity of vintage colors. Maybe not with as much exactness as you would if you have a bigger number of
colored pencils, but you can still achieve those and create some
beautiful artwork with some wonderful colors, even with a more limited
set of colored pencils. If you're interested in strengthening your knowledge of color mixing, color theory, I actually have a class
called color collector, which really delves deep into those topics hands-on by
having you mix colors. It's a class and gouache, but you can of course use it
with other mediums as well. Acrylic, for example, is a cheaper alternative, and even your colored pencils could be fun to
play around with. The other colored pencils
that I'm going to be using are luminance
colored pencils. But there's a bunch of
different brands like Derwent, Polychromos, and
one of the things that they're going to allow
for is better color mixing. It means that I'm going to
be able to layer more colors in order to achieve the
colors that I'm looking for.
5. Presence + Being in the Driver's Seat: Why don't we go ahead and switch to another page
just for the fun of it. I really liked this page
because I thought it had some really fun and
different types of color palettes than the ones that we had been
looking at prior. Pick your image that
you're going to work on. I think I'm going
to go with this one because I think
that's a really fun, simple color palette
that I really enjoy. Again, as I said, I'm
going to work with my other colored pencils and I actually have a
very cold light yellow. This is the one that
I'm going to use. You can almost barely
actually see it on this paper because my paper has a
slight yellow tint to it, but I think you'll see it
a little better as soon as I place the other
colors next to it. One thing that I
invite you to do. as you're using your colored
pencils is also to notice how they feel on the page and how they sound on the page. It's something that
I really love to do in general with a lot
of my art materials. I really find that
it helps you connect with the colors and
enjoy the moment. Really just make it a
really special moment where you feel very present as you're exploring
these colors. For this third color, it looks like it's a black, but I actually have
a very dark blue that I think would be a fun replacement
for that black. Again, we are in
the driver's seat. You are allowed to
change a color up, modify it a little bit if you think that that
would make it more fun. Yeah, I think that's what
I'm going to go for. I think it will work well
with these two other colors and still will capture
that vintage vibe. Why don't we do two more. I'm going to try to make a
very simple two-color palette. I'm actually going to start
with this mustard yellow, which I think I may have. For my second color, instead of going for the black, I'm actually going to
come back to this color, the background color on which
this letter I is placed. To me it looks
like a very muted, very pale blue like
a blue purple, but it's slightly more on the bluish end, like blue gray. I might have a color like
that, but I might not. This is a Payne's
gray, 30 percent. Payne's gray has a
bit of blue in it. I think that could be
a good starting point. But I'm going to
add a little bit of this other light blue
that I have as well. I'm going to start with a base. You see here I'm
completely ignoring that black color of the eye and I'm just choosing to
use one of the colors of that image as
my starting point and then veering off
and creating my own based on something
else in the image. I quite like this. I think that the Payne's gray
gave it another added layer.
6. Let's Make a 7-Color Palette: For our final one, I'd actually like
you to pick one of the more complex palettes, so that means an image that
has more colors in it. Or to mix and match and create your own
vintage color palette using colors from
multiple images. On my end, I'm actually going to start with something simple. I'm not going to do
the mix and match, though I do definitely
invite you to do that. I'm going to use this as the
base of my color palette, and I'm going to start
out with this blue that we have here that
feels slightly greenish. I'm going to start with this one because I really
love that color. If you don't know
where to start, I think that's always
a good place to start, is which color appeals
to you the most. This is pretty good. But I'm going to be honest, I think it's a
little bit too dark, so I want to lighten it and maybe make it a
little bit more blue. So what I'm going
to do is maybe add, I don't know if this
is going to work. We'll see. It's not exactly the
color that I would have. It's little bit lighter, but it lacks a little
bit of vibrancy. It's actually pretty close. But since I'm layering
different colors, of course, it's going to
de-saturate it a little bit. I'm just going to lighten
it up with some white here. That's not too bad. Then we have a very,
very dark blue, and so I'm going to go ahead
and maybe use this one. I might layer a few other colors if I think it's not dark enough. That's what I predicted. I thought it might
not be dark enough. I'm just going to add
some colors on the top, and adjust in that sense. This is much closer to the
color that I'm looking for. I could even darken
it a little bit more because it's definitely
darker in the image, but I actually like that color. So I'm going to
keep it that way. Now I'm going to move on to a few other colors
that I see here. There's a pink
like a muted pink, really nice color palette. But actually, now
that I think of it, and now that I've
made my first mark, and then it gets a little
bit darker than what I like, so I'm going to go
with a different pink and create that
as an underlayer. Then add the other one on top. Now I'm going to go for this
mid green that I see here. I'm going to maybe
darken it a touch, so I'm actually
going to start with my bright color first
as an underlayer. Then go over the top with the
slightly more muted green. That's reasonably close enough. Just for the fun of it, I'm going to just try
another green on top. I actually really
liked that color, so that one's fine. We also have a mustard
yellow in there. But maybe with just
a touch of this one. I'm going to be honest, there's a lot of other colors
that I could pull from. There's a purple in there and there's also
this very dark red, kind of maroon red. I'm going to actually grab
a dark brown and a red and pull out the color
from that detail as part of this color palette. This is a nice brick red
color that I'm creating, but the color that I see has something slightly more
purplish about it. I'm going to just continue
trying to experiment. Maybe this purple tint tinge
will make it slightly more. I have a tendency to press a lot when I use my colored pencils just because I really
like rich color. But then I often end up not being able to layer
as much as I'd like, so that's what happened here. It's okay. It's not perfect, but you do
get a sense of that color. I could even go ahead
and add the purple. Why not? I'm just going to make it
a little bit more muted with an underlayer. Obviously, you can
also make this easier on yourself
by writing down the specific color pencils that you use to create each
color underneath each swatch. I have to be honest, I don't usually do that just because I like the
process of experimenting and figuring it out
and also sometimes how it shifts when
I'm trying to redo it with a different array
of colored pencils.
7. Inspiration & Color Proportion: Hopefully now you
have a bunch of new vintage color
palettes to pull from for your next art project. I just want to talk through a few principles that
we've explored here. Obviously, your
color palettes can have varying numbers
of colors within them. It can be actually one color. We didn't even do that, but it can be as little as 1 to 2 to 3 to
4, 5, even 6, 7. There is no specific
number of colors that you need in order to
create your color palette. The only difference is
going to be the shift in mood that each of your
color palettes create. If you look at these
just on their own, they really have a very
specific type of flavor to them because they're limited; there's a limited
number of them and because those colors
evoke different emotions, different moods,
different associations. You can also take inspiration from external sources simply by color picking
different colors that you find here and
there either in images, photography, film,
your environment, and using those as starting
points for your own work, or you can mix and match and experiment with
different limited palettes in order to get out
of your comfort zone in terms of color. Finally, I want to call
your attention to the fact that for each one of
our color palettes, we've tried to make these cubes or rectangles basically
the same size for each one of those colors. For example, in this last one, I took some of these colors from the details of the drawing. You can start to see the
difference that can exist in terms of color proportion. What do I mean by that? Color proportion is the size or amount of color
that is in your image. In this little drawing, that pink is actually
quite dominant. There's a big surface
area of that pink. But in my color palette, it's the exact same size
as all the other colors. You can see how
different the mood is between this color palette
where all the colors have the exact same surface area and what it's like when you
take those exact same colors, but place them in
different proportions. Even if you have a
color palette that you want to use for
your next project, know that you can play around with the proportion
of your colors, and that that's going
to have a huge impact on the feel of your final piece. I could decide that one
of these detailed colors, this red maroon, brown, even though it was a
detail in the original, maybe in my final piece, I want this color to be the dominant color or
a secondary color. It's going to have a
bit more importance in my final piece than it did in the original thing
that you took it from. This is where a
lot of creativity and your own identity
can shine through. It's up to you to experiment
and to play around with the different opportunities that your color palettes offer. For your next step, if
you want to actually apply one of these
color palettes to your next drawing
but you don't know what it is the
you want to draw, I have a few different classes that you could
take where you use one of these color palettes
as your starting point. One of the classes that
I'm going to recommend is the Colorful Creatures class, which is a class that I did
in gouache and mixed media. But you could completely
ignore the gouache and you could just go
ahead with colored pencils and use one of these
color palettes as the basis for your
little creature. I think that can be really fun to see these
vintage-inspired creatures.
8. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much
for joining me on this little journey into
my love of vintage colors. I hope that you have
a fun little array of color palettes to choose from for your next art project, and I would absolutely
love to see what it is that you made
in the project section. Even if your page
is full of attempts and tryouts for color, that's also part of the process, so it would be really fun
to include that as well if your page is a little
bit more chaotic than mine. I'm going to actually show you, because I had to film in
the class a bunch of times because I had a lot
of technical problems while I was filming it, and then as I was doing
it, I realized, A, I was starting them too small, and then here are a few other
little attempts that I made. I screwed up a bunch of times, and so I just want to
show you that even though my final page in the class is really
organized and pretty, it looks very intuitive as though it was maybe
the first time ever. Some of them I did do for the
first time ever with you, but there are others that
I've been practicing already, and so that might be why
I got them more easily. The reality of it is that color mixing takes
a lot of practice. If you know my class
color lecture, you'll know what I
mean about that. It's by showing up in
front of our sketchbook that we're going to
be able to enrich our hands-on experience and knowledge of how
to get those colors that we're looking for. If you end up using any of these color palettes in
your next art project, whether that's in the class that I suggested or
a different class, or even just a personal project, I'd love to also see that
in your project section if you feel like sharing, but of course, first step, sharing your color palettes. I'm sure that there's
going to be a variety of different color palettes
that everyone has picked. It'll also train our eye
to start recognizing what these vintage colors are, which is also super fun. If you'd like to use a
hashtag on Instagram so we can find the different
palettes that we've made, I'd invite you to use the
#vintagelovewithmarienoelle. It'll be written on the screen so that you can know
how you spell my name because I know it's
a complicated name. I hope you had fun with that. I know that spending
time swatching colors is one of the most relaxing and resourcing things
that you can do especially when you
want to get creative, but you don't have
the bandwidth to do anything more complex. I hope you put that in the back pocket of your
little art toolkit, and I'll see you soon
in my next class, which you can know is
happening by following on my profile here. You can also find me on Patreon where I host live
drawing sessions where I'm able to dive
a little bit deeper on a monthly basis into topics, and also give you exclusive
sketchbook tours, to talk you through my
process and give you ideas for furthering
your own practice. Of course, you can also find
me on Instagram and YouTube, which I'm going to
start picking up again. Thank you so much
for joining in. If you like the class, tell a friend, do
it with a friend, and I hope to see you
again really soon. Bye.
Marie-Noëlle Wurm, Artist, illustrator, HSP
