How to Create a Color Chart and Cohesive Palette

1. 0 Intro to Class: Hi. I'm Kim Lebow, a watercolor and lettering artist out of Nashville, Tennessee. This is a class on how to chart your watercolors. We will be making a color chart like this and from that color chart will learn how to pull a cohesive palate to make beautiful paintings. This class is geared toward beginning and intermediate levels. Please visit me on Instagram. The address is on the screen. If you post something from this class, make sure to tag me for chance to be feature. If you send me a d m to say hello, I'll be sure to check out your account. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in class. 2. 1 Supply List: okay. Here. The supplies will be using today, using watercolor paper in an eight by 10 inch size, £140 weight watercolors. I'm using a zig liner pin, a paintbrush I'm using. Winston Snap round Number six, some clean water, a mixing palette, washi tape, a ruler, a pencil, an eraser and the following. Things are optional. I have a piece of cardboard. You could use a clipboard or just take to your desk, a spray bottle and a heating tool. 3. 2 Session 2 Making Grid: Okay, So the first thing we're gonna do is we're going Teoh Mark off our grid for our color charts. We're gonna do that. This is the top of our case. We're gonna do that by marking down two inches from the top of our paper and making a small tick line on the right hand side of the paper and a small one on the left side of the paper . I am using 1/4 inch Washington. If you're using bigger washi tape, you're gonna have to adjust your measurements. But for 1/4 inch Washington, we're gonna measure down two inches from the top and 3/4 of an inch from the left side. No. And then just above the tick lines at the top, we're gonna put our washi tape on just above it, but it right up against it, but not covering. We're gonna do the same thing on the left side to the left of the tick marks. But you're washing tape up to your tick marks, so it should look like this. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna turn my paper and I'm going to measure down one inch. This will give me six rose and six columns for my colors. I'm gonna measure down one inch from the right side of my washi tape. One inch. This will give me a one inch. This time you're washing. Tape is gonna go Be low, the tick marks. Okay, we're gonna repeat this all the way down. - Okay ? So now you're just gonna look at your lines and make sure they're all take down and that they look pretty straight. The next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna do the same thing going this way to make columns. So from the inside of this washi tape on a measure one inch tick mark at the top, one at the bottom. Same thing. Put our washing tape to the right of the tick marks. - Okay , so when you're done, it should look like this. You should have six columns and six rows. We have one column and one rope each color dunes. Okay, go ahead and take down your paper Teoh aboard a piece of cardboard or clipboard so it should look like this. Go ahead and take a picture and upload this to the project section. 4. 3 Session Charting Base Colors: I have written lightly in pencil across the top of my chart And also down the left side of my chart I've written red read orange, orange, yellow, yellow, green, green, blue, blue, brown and brown So red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown red, orange, yellow, green, blue brown The first color I'm gonna paint is my red So you're red is gonna go or your first color will go here in the first square I'm gonna wet my paper Inside the tape marks I have sprayed with a spray bottle I have sprayed my paint so that it's nice and wet and I like for my color charts to be darker on the left and lighter on the right hand side. So over here with clean water, I'm painting toe light touch, uh, and then pulling Lou just a little bit. Just a small amount of that color into the water area. When it's dry, it'll make a nice radiant. Okay, So orange is going to go. You're gonna follow toe where the two squares neat corn. Just gonna go here. This is a nice soft orange, and it's a bit muted, so it will give us a nice earthy feel to our color charts. My brush with clear water. I'm gonna start over here until my brush meats the color. Now we're gonna do yellow. This is a really pigmented yellow and you don't need much of it really nice dancing my brush. - So these colors are muted and by muted, um, that just means that the mawr pure color of whatever you're like. For instance, this is blue. The pure color of beat blue has been muted a bit by black. So this one's gonna be brown. It's a little bit of a softer brown. Okay, this is how it should look once you have your base colors charted in the next session. Also, you had a mixed these colors to create 36 different colors. Go ahead and take a picture of your progress so far and upload it to the project section of the glass. 5. 4 Session Mixing Your Colors: Okay. I have moved my chart from my cardboard to my table because I used my heat tool to dry the paints. You can use a heat tool to dry your paints faster. They don't need to be dry to do this next step. But if you do that, just know that your paper could curl enough that your tape lifts. That's what happened to me. And I was really having trouble with the paper. Boeing. So I've moved it to my desk. Okay, so the next step, get your colors out and line them up in order of your your charted colors that you have already and you're going to take the first color. Mine is red. I've also sprayed my color. So they're already wet and and activated. And you're gonna make six little gallops of your first color. I'm sorry. Five, You have six colors. Six lines. The 1st 1 is filled. You need We're gonna fill these next five. So we're gonna make five little dollops of red on this row. All of these colors are going to be predominantly red. I'm going to mix in this first Dalip. I'm going to mix orange, but I want it to be more red than orange on my red row. So all of these colors on this top row are gonna be mostly rid, just like we did with the basic colors. We're gonna make it darker on the left side than it is on the right side. Okay, so the next color I'm gonna rip, I'm going to mix in the second. Little Dallas is yellow. I'm gonna leave it more red than yellow. Just mix it until you get a color that you like and that gives you some variety and variants on your chart Case of my next color is I'm gonna mix will be green. If you find that you get too heavy on the color that you're mixing in, just add more of the original color. So this is the blue and red mixed together. So the next I'm going to put with red. Is this brown? Okay, so we've completed our first row and most of those colors all of the colors are red based. So what we have to dio this is paint a little bit painful, but it only hurts for a second. Go ahead and wipe off this pain If you have to use your spray bottle to get a clean palette and re wife, that's fine. So we're mixing orange. I'm going. Teoh put five dollops of orange out on my palette, so I want just a little bit of this red. You can always add more if you need it. That gives you some variation in your chart. Next one is yellow in the next color is blue and orange. All right, The last one is brown brown with orange. So now we have two rows done, and that looks great. Look, look off those colors that we have just from two colors. Now I'm gonna clean my palette. Yellow is the color on Nixon's. I'm gonna pull that aside here and put my little spots out. 1st 1 I'm gonna mix right here. If you look on your chart. Red and yellow, go here. We're on the yellows, Rose. So we're gonna be mostly yellow all the way across. Next color to next will be orange. Okay, so I'm gonna clean my palette and we'll get our greens placed out on our palate. Okay, let's go ahead and place five dollops of green. 1st 1 is red. I wanted to stay more green than red orange. This yellow with this green might brighten it up and make sort of a lying cover. And blue and with and brown. Okay, go ahead and clean your palate. Okay, So next on our palate, we're gonna makes our blues pull your blew out of your colors. Go ahead and make your spots of blue. Okay, So mixing red in just a little bit, - okay ? Clean your palate. Go ahead and set out your browns. - Okay , So now we're done with our colors, and you could see all the different shades you can get just from six colors and how to mix them together. We're gonna let this dry. You can use your heat tool, or you can let it air dry. And then in the next session, I'll show you how to remove your tape without tearing your pain. 6. 5 Session Removing Tape: All right. So I have dried my palette using my heating tool. The way I like to remove tape is to use a heat tool. Teoh warm your tape, it releases the adhesive, and then it it peels off easier and lessens the likelihood of tearing your paper. When you tear off your paper, you want to tear away from your picture away from your paint. So let me show you how to do this. Now, let's do this one, and I'm going to start at the bottom and pull to the top. - Okay ? So as you remove your tape and the adhesive heats, it begins to release. You don't have to pull it off. It just sort of lifts off. So just don't force it, and you shouldn't have any problems with tearing. Okay, so the next step is to erase our pencil marks where we wrote the colors in. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that, and then we will write in the names of our colors using an ink. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and write the actual names of the pain that I used. Rather than writing Red, orange, yellow, I'm gonna write the actual names. The 1st 1 is her bed. Read. Okay, I have that all done. And I think that I want Teoh call this chart. Maybe I want to call it Earth Tones. It looks a lot like Earth towns to me. And when I am wanting to paint something using earth tones, I can just go to this chart and pull out, pick the colors that appeal to me and use them, mix them up and use them. So I'm just gonna write Earth tones up here. Okay, go ahead and take a picture of your chart and upload it to the project section of the class . In the next session, we'll go over how to create a cohesive color palette. 7. 6 Session Cohesive Color Palette: Okay, so now that we have a chart, we can look and see what our color options are. And from this chart, we can choose colors that will create a palette that is very cohesive, very eye appealing. You can decide if you want to go golden, bright and vibrant, depending on what colors you used or soft and muted. I I obviously went for the soft and muted color towns. So the way I like to do this is I like Teoh. I like to kind of stay in an area. If you picture this chart divided into four squares like this, this could be a palette. This could be a palette. This could be a palette. They could each be their own individual palette. That doesn't mean that you can't use different colors because all of this blends and looks very good together. Another way that you can do it is you can divide it into Rose. This could be a palette. This could be a palette. This could be a pallet. Unlikely is this way, this way or this way. So you just have to find something that appeals to you. And it also is going to depend on your subject. Whatever you decide to paint. Okay, go ahead and take a picture of your chart and upload it to the project section of the class .