Exploring Color: Color Theory and Application

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Michelle and thank you so much for your interest in my class exploring color, color theory and its application. In this beginners course, we're going to be going over color theory, the color wheel and we're also going to have a couple of demonstrations on how to use a pallet and also the thought process behind using colors intuitively. So you might be asking yourself at this point, why does color matter. Well historically, the concept of color has always been a very high-value in our culture. For instance, in the 1600s during the spice trade, the gemstone Lapis Lazuli was actually at times more valuable than the spices themselves and that's because this gemstone was crushed and used to make blue dye. Similarly, there were other dyes out there at the time that were oftentimes poisonous or dangerous or questionable. For example, there was a white makeup that was very popular during this same time period called lead white and as you can imagine, this was a white powder that contained high amounts of lead and often led to lead poisoning. On top of that, a lot of yellow dyes were sometimes made using cow urine which is not really a very appealing ingredient and I think most of us would agree. Despite the high danger and sometimes questionable methods of producing these dyes, people risk themselves and paid lots of money just so that they could have more color in their lives and while I certainly can't condone you putting yourself at risk or financial strain for the sake of color, I bring this up more to illustrate the importance and the need of color in our society. Color is something that helps lift our spirits, helps us convey messages to one another and can ultimately affect our mood, well-being and how we feel and think. So that's why in this lesson we're going to talk about the importance of color and how we can use it in a way that is meaningful, impactful and also pleasant to look at and harmonious within the rules of color theory. Thanks so much for joining me on this color journey and please remember if you have any questions whatsoever, you can leave them in the discussion section, I'll be sure to answer as soon as possible. So let's continue on to the next video. 2. Basic Terms: As we progress throughout the lesson, we will be learning additional terms, and there will be a glossary of all the terms used available for you to read in the supplemental lesson guide. But to start off with, here are some basic terms. Let's begin with the first and arguably one of the most important terms that we're going to learn today, and that term is color theory. Color theory is the method and practice of combining colors to create pleasing color schemes. As you can see, I created two color palettes. Of the two, left and right, which one do you think looks best? Hopefully, you said the color palette on the right-hand side. The reason why it looks best isn't a mystery. It's because the colors chosen on the right-hand side adhere more to the guidelines of color theory, whereas the color palette on the left-hand side feels very mishedmashed, and a lot of these colors don't seem to go together very well. That's what makes this color palette unpleasing, since it doesn't really follow the rules of color theory. The color wheel is a diagram that's usually circular and displays our world's main colors and demonstrates the relationships that they have with one another. While the names may vary depending on the color wheel that you see, the principles and rules and the different relationships that the color wheel demonstrates will be pretty much the same. The next term that you're probably going to hear a lot in this lesson is the term contrast. A contrast is a stark visual difference, and this often times appear when colors on opposite ends of the color spectrum, or on opposite ends of the color wheel are juxtaposed beside one another. As you can see on the left-hand side, we have two examples of some non contrasting colors. The reason why these two examples are non contrasting it's because if we were to place these colors on a color wheel, they actually wouldn't be that far from each other, and that's why they have sort of a pleasant, soothing and jarring feel when you look at these two sets of colors next to each other. On the right-hand side though, we see two examples of contrasting colors. You can see right away there is big difference between these two examples with the first two examples that we looked at. The black and white next to each other stand out quite a lot, and so does the bright blue against the bright orange. This is because these two examples are complete opposites from one another. They would be on opposite sides of the color wheel. Opacity is the level or lack of transparency within a color. On this screen we have four circles of varying opacity. What I've done is added a red line behind each of these four circles to indicate how opaque or solid each circle is. As you can see, the 90 percent opacity circle is the most solid, and the red line behind it is barely visible. But as we keep decreasing the opacity or increasing the transparity of each circle, the red line becomes more and more visible. In short, the more opaque a color is, the more solid it is, while the less opaque means that it is more transparent. The next term is pastel colors. Pastel colors are a range of colors that contain a small amount of a base color, but mainly have a lot of white combined, which results in these colors being very light. As you can see here, we have red, yellow, and blue and their corresponding pastel colors, which again just feature a tiny bit of the base color. I would say each of these pastels circles here at the bottom contain about 80 percent white and 20 percent of the corresponding base color. Saturation is the vividness or purity of a base color. As you can see on the left-hand side, we have a bright red circle that's very pure in its color concentration. This means it's very saturated. Next to the very saturated color, we have a color that's somewhat red, but also pretty gray. We would say that this is somewhat saturated, and so then a color that is just gray and completely devoid of the original bright red color that we had, is a color that is unsaturated. This is because it's lacking the purity of the bright red that we saw in the first color. Our last term that we are going to be covering in this video is value. Value is the amount or range of black or white added to a base color. As demonstrated on this slide, we have four circles that represent different values of the color black, from 90 percent black, which is the darkest value, all the way to 10 percent black, which is the lightest value. I think we're ready to move on to the next video, and don't forget if you're still having trouble with some of these terms, there is a full list of the terms available in the supplemental PDF file that you can download. Whenever you're ready, let's move on to the next video. 3. The Color Wheel: In this video, we'll be filling in a color wheel while I explain how it works. Let's start with the primary colors, they're red, blue, and yellow. Each color that you see, and it doesn't matter whether or not it's indigo, orange, or chartreuse. Every single color that makes up our natural world is made up of these three ace colors, which is why we call them the primary colors. Another thing to keep in mind is that colors that are mostly red or yellow or both fallen to the warm color category. Warm colors tend to be energetic and invigorating. Maybe it's because what people often look at red they think of anger or passion and when we look at yellow, we often think of sunshine. As you can probably guess, we also have cool colors. Cool colors are primarily made up of blue tones. Greens, blues, and purples would all fall under the cool color category. They're a little bit more relaxing, they're more subdued, they're not as high energy as the warm colors. Secondary colors are made by combining any two primary colors together. The secondary colors are orange, green, and purple. Red and yellow combine to make orange. To make green all you have to do is add blue and yellow. Mixing blue and red will make purple. After secondary colors come the tertiary colors and to get a tertiary color all you need to do is mix a secondary color with a primary color. Combining red and orange makes coral. To get goldenrod or amber or yellow, orange. All you have to do is mix orange and yellow. On that note, keep in mind that the tertiary colors don't have standardized names. So feel free to call golden rod whichever name you choose. Yellow and green makes chartreuse or as some people call it lime green. Green and blue together make Teal or turquoise. Purple and blue combined to make my personal favorite color, which is indigo. Lastly, you can mix purple and red to make magenta. Now that we just filled in our color wheel, we're going to move on to the next lesson where I'm going to show you how you can use the color wheel to combine colors and make smart color choices. Let's move on. 4. Color Harmonies: Hi, welcome back in this section we're going talk about the different ways that colors relate to each other, and the different kinds of harmonies or schemes that you can have to make sure that your colors look great together. We're going to start with the three primary colors here, red, blue, and yellow. Incidentally, when these colors are together, they form what is known as a triadic color scheme. This means that if you were looking at red, blue, and yellow on a color wheel, they would form a triangle. I'm going to also include a file that will help diagram this. Next, we're going to go over tints. Tints are when you have a base color and add white. So in this case it would be a pastel yellow, a pastel blue, and a pastel pink. When doing a shade, however, it's the opposite, which will form a dark gold, a dark blue, and a burgundy red. Also keep in mind that there are tones, and tones are when you add, you guessed it, some gray to a base color. Now we're going to go over complementary colors. Complementary colors are colors that are direct opposites from one another on the color wheel, and so in this case, yellow and purple are opposites, blue and orange are opposites, and red and green are opposites. A split complementary color scheme is a more sophisticated version of your regular complementary color scheme. The relationship actually has to do with one color and the two colors that are analogous to its opposite. For example, in the case of red, the two analogous colors of its opposite are teal and chartreuse. So red, teal and chartreuse would make a split complementary color scheme. For blue, the split complimentary color scheme would be goldenrod and coral and for yellow, its split complementary partners are magenta and indigo. Now we have analogous colors. These are the colors that are directly next to each other in the color wheel. For yellow it would be chartreuse and goldenrod, for blue it would be indigo and teal, and for red it would be magenta and coral, and you might be asking yourself what happens when you mix red, blue, and yellow together, well, that actually just makes brown. Although keep in mind the various amounts of yellow, blue and red will affect which kind of brown you come up with. For instance, if you want a very cool tone brown, you would add more blue. Thanks so much for going over the color relationships with me. I'm going to include a file which will give you the definitions of these terms and will also include a couple of other ones that we didn't go over in this video. If you're ready, let's move on to the next video. 5. Color Theory in our World: Welcome back to the next video. In this section, we're going to be talking about color theory in our world. In our day-to-day lives, regardless of whether we go outside or stay inside our homes, we experience color relationships and color theory every day. One of the things that will help you do a better job of conveying color in your art is becoming more observant about the color in your environment. Being more observant and mindful about the way color works, whether it's in nature, in our homes, on our clothes. Taking the time to notice the color that we see every day and how it affects us, how the colors play with each other. All of that will help you become much better at conveying color in your art. Ultimately it's up to you to decide whether or not you want to become more observant about the color in your environment and around you. But I want to give you a few simple places that you can start looking. That way you can practice being more observant about the colors all around you. Let's start off by talking about color theory in nature. Going outside, or even just looking out your window, you might be able to see all kinds of various color relationships at play with each other. The number one most common color found in nature is green. Of course, this is attributed to all the plant life, leaves, trees and grass that we see around us. If we take a look at this image of the lady bird dangling on a piece of grass, we can see how that bright red color beautifully contrasts against the green in its environment. Another very common color found in nature is blue. We can see blue in our daytime skies and in our water, and of course also in some of our plant life and flowers. I love this particular image on the left because it beautifully plays with the light blue sky tone and also has a wonderful complimentary color relationship with the blue, purple tone flowers. The blue and purple tones here have a calming effect since they're both cool toned colors and since blue and purple have an analogous relationship these two colors look very harmonious together. One of my personal favorite sources of inspiration is looking towards the sky, especially during a sunset. Sunsets can be a great source of inspiration for pallets, since not only can you find pastel colors, you can also find bright bold colors as well depending on where the sun is situated on the skyline. This particular photo is great because not only do we see a lot of cool tone blues and purples, we also see some bright oranges and pinks which infuse a little bit of energy into the sky. This sunset photo has a wonderful balance of both cool and warm tones, which I think would make a really cool and modern color palette. If we take a look at the first photo on the top left hand corner, I really love these beach shelters. Even though the colors around the beach are a little more neutral, a drab, beige color in the sand and a brownish green color for the foliage around it, we can see that the blue, green, yellow, and red doors that are featured on these beach shelter structures injects more of a fun, vibrant feeling to this otherwise drab landscape. Below it, we can see a monochromatic scheme here. We see the beautiful deep crystal blue ocean reflecting the sky above and because this particular image is saturated with so much blue, it makes everything around it blue as well, including the hill featured in the background and even the boat in the foreground. Because of this monochromatic scheme, this has a very harmonious feeling, and all of the cool tone blues make this a very peaceful environment to look at. All the way on the right-hand side I really loved this image of this alleyway. While many of us might try to avoid small little alleyways like this one, this particular alleyway actually looks rather friendly and inviting, maybe because it's very brightly lit and all of the buildings are painted in very welcoming warm tones like orange and yellow and brick red. You could definitely see how this particular alleyway might feel much more dangerous maybe at night, or if the buildings were painted a darker or more somber color. Color theory is also present within our various customs and cultures all over the world. The first image on the top left hand corner is a photo taken from an Indian holy festival, which is an Indian festival in which participants throw colored powder in the air. This festival is celebratory in nature and has a lot of cultural significance to the area. Here's an image of a young man basking in the joy of the celebration covered in colored powder. I think this is probably the best example of how we can see color directly relating to culture. Below that image if you've ever been to London, you'd know that some of the most iconic imagery in London can be found in the red double-decker buses and I've got to be honest, I feel like they would be much less memorable if they weren't this bright candy apple red. There's something very iconic about this bright red and how it stands out against the various gray and beiged homes of the city. Lastly of course, many of our holidays whether it's Easter with its pastel tones, Halloween with its blacks, oranges, and reds, or in this case Christmas with it's green, red, and gold, so many of our holidays are also very color specific and certain color combinations can immediately make us think of a time where we were celebrating a specific holiday. Oftentimes these holidays carry really important personal and cultural significance to us, which is another reason why these color combinations can be so important. The final slide that I have to show you today is perhaps the most personal one, and that is the color theory and color relationships that can be found on our own bodies. On clothing for instance, if you're somebody that wears a lot of neutral tones, you might want to be taken more seriously, whereas somebody who wears more colors instead might want to convey to the world that they have more bright or bubbly personality. Our clothes are the most accessible way of adding color to our bodies. Some of us take it a step further by maybe painting our faces different colors with makeup, or dying our hair variety of different colors. In this slide I've got a woman who's dyed her hair pink, and what most people who dye their hair may not opt for such bright colors. A lot of times, the colors that we choose to paint our hair with might have other significance. Some people believe that various hair colors might convey a more fun or serious attitude. As we age, our hair tends to become gray or white and while some people will embrace this change of hair color, others may choose to cover it with hair dye. Perhaps the most serious color commitment that a person can make is by getting a tattoo. We may choose design that have special meaning to us and that also means choosing colors that correspond with those meanings and messages as well. This is why I feel like the study of color is so important. It's something that's personal to each and every one of us. Whether or not we're aware of it, we're making color decisions and being influenced by color every day. Before we go I'd like you to think about how maybe color has influenced you in your own life. Is there may be a special piece of artwork that's painting in your home that has a color that speaks to you? Or maybe do you have a favorite article of clothing that has a color that means something to you? Let me know in the comments. I'm curious to hear how color has influenced you in your own life and within your own world. Thanks so much for taking this lesson and whenever you're ready, let's continue on to the next one. 6. Psychology of Color: In this section, we're going to go over the psychology of color. Color psychology is the science and study of how color can influence and change human behavior, which is something that's really important if you are an artist or creative person and you want color to have an impact on the people who view your art, because most artists, I think, want to be mindful about how their art influences their audience. This section is just a brief overview on how color can affect your mental state, emotional well-being, and even physical state. When it comes to the general model of color psychology, there are six principles to keep in mind. Number 1, color can carry a specific meaning. Number 2, color meaning is either based in learning meaning or biologically innate meaning. Number 3, the perception of a color causes evaluation automatically by the person perceiving. Number 4, evaluation process forces color-motivated behavior. Number 5, color usually exerts its influence automatically. Number 6, color meaning and effect has to do with context as well. These six principles shed light on how color can affect us. Color meaning can be based either on what we learn from our environment or our society, or really just from our biology, down to the fact that color will have specific meaning and interpretations based on your own experiences and the effect that color has on us as humans is instantaneous and happens automatically. I think these six principles are very important when considering different color choices, since some color meaning will vary depending on your society or your learning meaning. Color meaning may also change within the context. So red can mean love or it could mean anger. It really just depends on the context. Color can affect your mood, emotional, and mental state. I have a couple of examples listed here, but there are dozens more. I really do encourage you to seek more out if you're interested in this topic. The first example that I have here is for the color pink. Numerous prisons across the globe has started to adopt the practice of painting cells pink or even having prison uniforms as pink. Since research has shown that the color has a calming and pacifying effect on inmates and that crime rates are actually reduced when there is a lot of pink in the environment. Research also suggests that green and blue are viewed as ideal classroom colors that promote learning. This is because blue is known to increase productivity levels, while green is best for improving focus and concentration. If you're someone that struggles with memory, you might find the most benefit from warm colors since they are the most commanding and stimulating. Research suggests that being surrounded by warm tone colors like red, orange, and yellow may help improve your memory. Science has also shown us that color can encourage physical changes within the body. Think about some of the fast food restaurant logos that you might be familiar with. Many of them contain the colors yellow and red and that's because warm colors are known to stimulate appetite. This can be largely due to the fact that a lot of the fruits and vegetables in our natural world are warm colored, which creates a biological impression on our minds and signals that these colors are related to food. On the other hand, there's not a lot of foods that are blue in our world. Even blueberries tend to be more of a purple color. So when we see the color blue, this creates a suppressing effect on the appetite and signals to our brain to make us not want to eat as much, which is why a lot of fast food chains tend not to have the color blue. Some colors have universal interpretations and a lot of times this has to do with the biological associations that we as human beings make to certain colors. For example, there's many people across the globe that associate the color red with anger. Scientists believe that the big reason why this is the case is because our skin tends to get flushed with blood and redden whenever there is conflict or whenever there is a lot of anger. Now over to brown. A lot of people across the globe consider this to be a down to earth color, which makes sense since brown is the color of soil. Similarly, many people around the world associate green with nature. Since green is the most common color seen in nature. On the other hand though, different colors will have different meanings depending on the context or culture. If you're in the West, you might be familiar with the fact that black is considered a funeral or mourning color in Western society. But in other societies like India, for example, white is the mourning color, while Brazil and other Catholic nations might incorporate purple into their mourning, and while several African nations will actually use red to symbolize mourning. Some of these colors might have completely different meanings, again, based on the society that you're in. Again, if you are from a Western civilization, white is considered the traditional bridal color, while in India, many brides wear red, and in several African nations including Eritrea and Mali, purple is considered the traditional bridal color, since purple is a symbol of royalty there. Thanks so much for going over the psychology of color section with me. I really do urge you to continue doing your own research on how color can affect the human mind and also take into consideration how certain colors may affect you personally as well. Whenever you're ready, let's move on to the next video. 7. Making a Simple Color Palette: Welcome back. In this video, what we're going to do is create a simple color palette which will be made by incorporating a base color, which in this case is red, and by mixing in different colors that end up creating completely new colors that still work in harmony with the original base color. While I'm doing this on illustrator for demonstration purposes, keep in mind that you can also do this with traditional media. In fact, I think when you're starting out, it's better to do it with traditional tools so whatever preference you have, whether it's crayons, markers, colored pencils, try doing something like this and see what results you yield. It will help you learn how to mix colors much faster. For those of you who do have illustrator and would like to experiment digitally, I'll also include the file for this demonstration so you can play around if you'd like. Let's go ahead and begin by going over to our yellow opacity circle, which is our first, and we're just going to lay it right on top of the corresponding circle. Right away you can see we have a really rich, sunny dark yellow, light orange color which is still bright, not as bright as the original pure red that we're working with, but that will happen when you start mixing colors, they will slowly become less and less saturated. We can see also that even though this is a totally different color, it still works very well in harmony with the original red tone that we're working with since some of that red is still present within this new color that we've created. Let's go ahead and move on to their next color, which is going to involve adding 50 percent blue. Now we have this really nice warm violet color and I think that this is a great way to add a bit of coolness to your otherwise warm pallet without making it too cool, if that's what you're going for. I also want to show you what happens when we increase the saturation of this circle just a little bit so you can see what a difference it makes, so I'm going to select this circle. We're going to go over to the opacity slider, and I apologize, it looks like it was actually 51, but I think that's not too bad, and we're going to increase it to 80. Let's see what happens once we increase the opacity. Just by helping the saturation a little bit we can see that the color has completely transformed again. Now we have a much more blue toned purple. I would say this almost borders on indigo, but it really is still quite purple. The other thing is that even though I think this color still works quite well with the red and yellow that we've got, you can see that the relationship is more contrasting. It's not as much of an analogousrelationship to the red that we're working with, like the original 50 percent blue opacity circle that we had, and I think once we change it back, you'll really see what I mean. Let's go ahead and decrease the saturation back to 50, and there we go. You can see right away that our original violet color works much more in harmony with the yellow and red, and while that bluer color that we had was still good, we're going with a warm pallet. This is much truer to what we're looking for here. Let's now continue onto the bottom three colors. These will be less saturated, but you'll find that they will still work pretty well with the top three colors. Let's start off with our white, right here, we've selected it we're going to go ahead and drag it down. Perfect. While normally combining white with red would make pink, in this case we have more of a peachy color, a light orangey color that reminds me of a flesh tone. I think this would be good for drawing people or doing portraits. Let's now move on to our 50 percent gray opacity circle, and you'll see how even though the 50 percent gray circle and the 50 percent black circle look similar when they're next to each other, you'll see that they create completely different colors. Let's take our gray, just lay that on top and now we can see that while the 50 percent gray opacity circle is quite similar in terms of saturation to the white opacity circle. We can see right away that not only is the 50 percent gray opacity circle significantly darker than the 50 percent white circle. Another thing you might be able to pick up on is that the 50 percent gray opacity circle almost seems to have a moody or foggy or feel. I find that generally that tends to happen when you add gray to any base color. This can be really helpful if you are trying to add a sense of mystery or darkness or somberness to your piece. Adding greater colors is a really good way to do that. The other thing that I like about this color is that I could also see it as a skin tone or perhaps even a hair tone color. Let's go ahead and move on to our final circle our 50 percent black opacity circle and see how that changes the red. Excellent. Right away, you can see that again, I think this makes a good earth tone, so if you're doing a nature scene or working again with people with faces or hair color that would be a fantastic choice, and it's a very rich, warm, brown color. That's really quite different from the 50 percent gray opacity circle. Now we have a completed color palette. What I love about this palette is that you get a tint which is adding white, a tone adding gray, and a shade adding blue. By doing that, this tends to neutralize your base color a little bit and makes it more applicable for a variety of different uses or scenes. At the same time though, if you really love your bright colors, you have three to choose from, and all six of these colors were pretty well in harmony together. In the next video, we're going to take this palette that we just created and we're actually going to try coloring in some line art that I've created especially for this class, so you can see how many different ways these colors can work together and how you can use them to convey different moods and feels. Let's go on to the next video and see how that's done. 8. Using a Color Palette: Welcome to the next video, where we're going to take the palette that we created from the previous video and actually color in some liner that I've created just for this class. That way, you can see how easy it is to apply a color palette that you've made to any work. Even though this demonstration falls more into the category of digital illustration, Keep in mind that it doesn't matter what medium you're working in, whether it's paints, colored pencils, whatever. The rules that we've gone over with, color theory and with how to make pallets are going to apply either way. One thing that I've noticed recently is the trend of rose gold as a jewelry color. I'm using the 50 percent gray Opacity color and implementing it in the jewelry. While I initially loved that 50 percent blue Opacity, violet color for the hair. I wanted a hair color that would contrast more against the dark skin tone. I went back to the 50 percent white Opacity, which I think achieves that look that I'm going for. Since I've decided that I really love this 50 percent blue Opacity color, I want it to be featured front-and-center by making it the backdrop of this piece. Now, that I've decided, that I want the 50 percent blue Opacity circle to be the backdrop. Choosing the color for the large flowers that frame the woman's face becomes very simple, because I know thanks to color theory that yellow pops really well against purple since they're complimentary colors. Now, I'm going in and dropping the red, which I've decided to use just sparingly in this piece. I've also taken the 50 percent gray Opacity circle and incorporated into the iris color. On second thought, I've decided to change the earrings from rose gold to regular gold. I do this because the hair is the 50 percent Opacity white and the skin is the 50 percent, black Opacity circle, so I worry that making it the ear jewelry at 50 percent gray Opacity will blend in too much, gold helps it stand out a little bit more. Do however, keep the medallion on her choker as rose gold. I want to add some color to this woman's skin, what I'm doing now is blocking on some purple. I realized that it looks very scary right now, but trust me, we're going to blend it in a little bit more and blur it so that it looks much better than this. I took off just a little bit too much, but as you can see now that I've erased and blurred out some of the harsh lines, this looks a lot more natural. I feel as though this purple color on her skin blends it a little bit too much with the background, so to remedy this, I'm going to actually darken the purple on her face so that it creates a little bit more of a contrast with the background. I did increase the saturation as well, but I think that this purple color that we created on her skin is actually a nice combination of the red clover flowers and the purple backdrop. I think it blends in pretty well, even though it is different from the original color that we've created. Keep in mind that the whites of our eyes, or as they're known, the sclera are not pure white. To give this character sclera a less jarring look that a pure bright white would give, I'm going to go ahead and take the 50 percent white Opacity circle, lay it on top of that pure white and actually reduce the opacity so that this is a much lighter color than what we originally had. Though it's still not quite white, which is much more natural looking. Now, as you can see, the new sclera color is much lighter than any other color on this illustration, but it's still not quite a perfect bright white, which makes it again much more natural to look at. I'm also going to include a file that shows the same line art and the same color palette, but being applied differently. You can see what this color palette looks like with various other hair tones, skin tones, the flowers as different colors, all using the same six color palette. It's remarkable how just applying colors and certain areas can give you a different feel and mood, and I wanted to show you, how you can take that palette and use it in a variety of different ways. Thanks for watching, and let's head on over to the next video. 9. Choosing Colors Intuitively: Hi, welcome back. What we're going to do now is we're going to take the same line arc that we used before when working with the six color palette that we made. We're going to go in a different direction here. All we're going to do is I'm going to walk you through my personal process when it comes through choosing colors intuitively or from my imagination. Before we even begin, I've decided to settle on a particular theme. In this case, this theme is going to be cool toned colors. I want you to feel relaxed and at peace when you look at this picture. With that in mind, I've already gone ahead and started by picking out the skin tone. I'd like to start there just because it gives me more sense of how all the colors will work around the face. You can see that I originally started with more of a yellow toned, peachy color, but I added some redness just to cool it down a little bit. Even though red is a warm color, yellow tends to be even warmer. So that's why I added the red. I've also gone ahead and chosen a dark brown that I like, and I've opened up the hue saturation tool here to adjust it just slightly so that I can get it closer to what I'm looking for, which is an even darker brown. So using the hue saturation tool is a great way to adjust colors slightly. This is especially helpful if you have selected a color that you like, but it's not quite what you want. Using the hue saturation tool will definitely help you out in that area. Now I've added this really bright Kelly Green to the irises, which I will incorporate again later into the piece. Rather than the gold or rose gold jewelry that I used in the previous video, I have gone ahead and given her silver tone jewelry since once again, silver tends to have more cool blue instead of the warm toned gold and rose gold that we used previously. Now what I'm trying to do is figure out an appropriate lip color. This can be tricky since typically lip colors tend to be rather warm. Even when we wear lipstick, they tend to be warm colors, reds, oranges, peaches, and even now, at the time of this recording, 2017, one popular trend is violet, which is a little cooler but still rather warm. What I've done is, I've managed to find a bright pink that is somewhat violet in tone. Even though this pink that I've chosen is pretty warm, it still has a little bit of coolness to it, which I think will play off very well with the other cool tones in this piece while adding just a little bit of brightness, but not too much so that it creates a contrast. Next, I want the flowers to be a really deep blue. So I'm going ahead and adding this really lovely, rich purplish sort of blue, which once again, I think will play very nicely with the blue pink that we've just added to the woman's lips. My next thought is, this blue would look so great with a yellow backdrop. As you can see, this yellow and purple blue planked off together really pops. There's a lot of contrasts which I think looks great. But something still doesn't feel right. You can see here that I'm trying to adjust the lightness, the saturation and I eventually reached the conclusion that while the yellow is great, it's not really appropriate for the theme that we're going with, which is cool, relaxing, harmonious. Instead, I adjust the color to a light powder blue. I also go ahead and add a little bit more purple to the big flowers just to let the flowers have more of an analogous color harmony rather than a monochromatic one or the blue. I still really like that yellow that we first worked with. So I have gone ahead and incorporated it in a smaller way to the clover flowers. You can see here that I am adjusting the hue bar in the hue saturation window just to see what other options are out there. This is again, a good way to sort of, if you're unsure of what color to use, sliding this bar around and playing with the hue saturation and lightness is a good way to figure that out. But as you can see, I'm still pretty sold on that original yellow that we used. So that is the color I eventually decide to make the clover flowers. Next, I am working that fabulous Kelly Green back into the piece by adding it to the circles, which is a good way to reincorporate it into the piece without making it feel too overwhelming since this is a pretty highly saturated color. Finally, what I'm doing now is adding just a slight flush to her cheeks, and I know it seems scary when you first layer that on, but once we blurred it becomes much more natural looking. Once again, it's a good way to incorporate the colors together to make everything harmonious and feel natural; and we're done. I think this came out pretty good and I think that it does achieve that initial goal that I had to be more cool toned, and more harmonious and peaceful to look at rather than the energetic, warm colors that we've been working with before. If you have any questions in the discussion, feel free to leave them for me and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. If you're ready, let's go ahead and move on to the next video. 10. Assignment: Welcome back to the next video. In this video we're going to be talking about your assignment. This assignment is fairly simple. What I want you to do is pick three different words. For example, if you see my simple project, you'll see that I chose the word fine, funkie, and somber. Once you've picked your three words, I'd like you to take some time to consider what colors would match each word. So for instance, in my example project, when I think of fun, I think of bright energetic colors like yellow, and red, and pink. So those were the colors that I used for my fun composition. On the other hand, for somber, I used a lot of grays and cool toned colors to reflect more of a sad, stoic, serious feeling. The purpose of this assignment is to illustrate how a single composition can look entirely different depending on how it's colored and how, even though the line art or the subject of the painting may be the same throughout, the piece can take on a new meaning depending on what colors you use. Please feel free to take a look at my simple project to see what I'm talking about. Also if you have any questions, feel free to post them in the discussion. I'll be sure to answer them right away. I can't wait to see your projects. 11. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me on this journey through Color Theory and its application. It is my hope that throughout this lesson, you've not only been able to learn some of the techniques of using Color Theory to improve your art but also learn the importance of taking time to reflect on what color say to us and how they convey messages to the world around us. I want you to make more meaningful color decisions. Part of that comes by being more observant about the colors around you and to pay special attention to the colors that attract you the most. Colors that are meaningful to you personally are going to have more of an impact in your work, which will make your work better. So feel free to keep either a list of colors that really speak to you or better yet try to replicate colors with paints, crayons, or other traditional tools so that you can form visual connections to these colors. Feel free to leave any questions, or comments, or concerns that you might have in the discussion below. I'd be happy to answer anything for you. Good luck with your assignment and I absolutely cannot wait to see what you guys come up with. Thanks again. Bye.