Practical Color Theory: Everything you need to know for Art & Design

1. Welcome!: If you look at any field of art and design, you'll notice that color is a major factor from painting to fashion, photography, graphics design, illustration, logo design, abstract art, web design, interior design, even marketing in general. If there is one skill that you can master to make it in basically any of these, it's probably using color. Hi, I'm Duplo. I'm an experienced artist and designer from Germany. Color theory is my specialty, and over the years, I've made it my mission to compile the most complete resource on it that you can find on the Internet. And, ladies and gentlemen, here it is the color class. In this course, I'm going to give you a deep understanding of color and show you how to use it purposefully in any field that interests you. We're not going to talk in depth about wave lengths and color gamuts. We'll cover the basics of those. But the point of this course is you're an artist, you're a designer, you want to make something. How when and to what extent should you think about color? What are good heuristics and principles that you can rely on? What are the facts that you have to know? So we start with color basics and terminology, color models, the psychology of colors, which effects they have, and then I'm going to show you how to combine them color harmony, color schemes, color palettes, color transitions, and way more. We even got an advanced section with some really interesting concepts that you've probably never heard of like dynamic color theory. Color as the cornerstone of visual input has always fascinated me. It's been my friend in many fields from game design and web design to abstract art and impressionism. You can check out my projects and artworks on my website, Duplo designs.com. Everything is handmade, no AI or whatever, including this course. And what makes it special is the holistic and practical approach. That's my thing. Everyone usually explains color in one context or they get caught up in technical details like the precise color models or how to physically mix them. Working in so many different fields, however, I think it all belongs together. There are principles I discovered when making levels for video games to direct attention, and now I use them in my paintings to spice up the highlights. You will see there is real color knowledge that talented artists and designers use often subconsciously, but you can learn it, expand on it, and combine it with your intuition to produce awesome visuals yourself, no matter in which field. Plus, of course, I want to make this course practical and not just throw facts and ideas at you. We're going to talk about the actual process of using color, so you're able to immediately use the theory in your work. We got some exercises, some PDF files with the theory summarized, so you cannot possibly forget it. And yeah, I think this will open up many doors for you. This course was a big project of mine, and I'm excited to share it. Color theory makes your room better, your outfits, your thumbnails, your paintings, your marketing. So if you got anything to do with that, welcome to the color class. See you in the first lesson. 2. Color Matters: Color matters because it's all we perceive when we open our eyes. I mean, what we see with our eyes is basically just a collection of different colors. So it's the first thing that you notice about any visual presentation, be it a photo, be it a logo, an outfit or a website. Before you can read any text, and before you can analyze or recognize shapes, your brain has already processed colors and made associations with them. Therefore, color is a major factor when it comes to brand recognition, probably even the most important one. It cannot be underestimated how much effort companies put into perfecting the precise colors of their logos and brand design. Think of the bright yellow of McDonald's, the tetradic color scheme of Microsoft or the complementary colors of Fanta. They are all internationally recognized. If you want to buy a coke, do you read the text on every product and search for the white script that says Coca Cola? No, you first scan the shop and ask yourself, where are the red cans? Owning a color scheme or even a color is one of the biggest achievements a brand can get, as it gives you an insane amount of leverage for attention once people know about it. But in the products themselves, color is arguably even more important. The most valuable companies in the world have invested millions to fine tune every pixel you see on your phone. The precise hue of the notifications you get, the contrast between text and background, all these things are the result of applied color theory and countless split tests. But obviously, not only in design, color plays a role, every single artwork needs to have good colors because there too, it's the first thing that we see. It immediately makes a visual interesting or not in a split second. No matter what the subjects are, color always comes first, and the great artists know that better than anyone else. Unexciting or even uncomfortable colors are the fastest and one of the biggest turn offs for potential customers or viewers of your painting. And it's not just to grab attention. Color tells a story. It makes us feel when we look at something, whether we are conscious of it or not, it is a core part of art and design, so you got to know how to think about colors if you have anything to do with that. Not only knowing about color schemes and harmonies is essential, but also being familiar with color psychology and having a complete understanding of the effects that each color can have because they are real. So I would say it's about time that you get really good at the stuff. Let's go. 3. Why Color Theory?: Alright, interesting lesson, actually. Why is color theory important? We've established that color is important, obviously, but color theory, is it really necessary? Well, there are some misconceptions that I want to clear up. For example, that you should pick colors based on intuition and nothing else. Color theory is a nerdy niche topic that you don't need if you just make good art or design. And that couldn't be further from the truth. I mean, first of all, in design, you know that all the big companies invest a lot into research on this topic. They want the best colors for their branding and their products because they know how much it can change the game. When YouTube slightly adjusts the red in their logo, that's the result of many debates, many tests, a new analysis of their target audience, and a close look at the colors of the competition and how they could stand out from them. And that's color theory. Not all of these decisions are good, of course, but these companies have their reasoning for why they wanted to make that change, and color theory is deeply involved here. This is the same in every industry, interior design, web design, product design. If a company gets big and successful enough, they have at least one designer who knows about color theory, make decisions for them. Again, this doesn't mean that it's instantly good, partly because, in my opinion, there is quite a bit of wrong color theory out there. And in this course, I want to clear up many things that I feel like people are misunderstanding. But designers at least know that intuition alone doesn't get them very far. They are all trying to approach truth by optimizing colors, more or less efficiently. So in design, the importance of a theoretical understanding of color is absolutely proven. In art, however, it's a bit more controversial because, no, not every artist in history has followed the principles that I'm teaching in this course, partly because some of them are completely new. So one might argue that color theory is a cope that you rely on if you're bad at painting. The great artists just know which colors they have to add to the canvas, and it's all an expression of their deep inner feelings. Don't think too much. Rely on your intuition and your art will be perfect. Well, if you've ever made art yourself, you know that this approach doesn't get you very far when it comes to colors. Sometimes they just don't want to work together, even though we feel like they should, and we don't know why. Here's the point of color theory. It's the explanation for that intuition, an attempt to put into words why we feel a certain way about a visual. Great artists with famous quotes may claim that their works are entirely based on feelings, and that may be true, but I guarantee you that they have internalized rules about colors. They are applying some version of color theory, whether they're conscious of it or not. If you already know how to paint like Monet, cool, but if not, why not have a look at color theory? Knowing these mental models gives you the freedom to finally put on the canvas what you always wanted and improve your success rate. This is the true point of it. Color theory makes art and design more accessible to normal people, and this is what I want. You have to rely less on luck to find great color combinations, even if you just know the basics. So that should be very clear now. But then there is this misconception that really makes me cringe. If you start using color theory, your work will become sterile. It's too predictable and you should rather just paint based on your feelings. Oh, my God. That is nonsense. First of all, the whole point of color theory is to make your work not look sterile. It's not like there are five fixed ways to make colors look good. There are so many options for exciting color combinations. Color theory is not there to tell you exactly which ones you should always use, but it lets you discover them and refine them purposefully. You will realize as you follow this course that there is space for your intuition within color theory. Intuition and theory are not mutually exclusive, but they are supposed to work together and build on top of each other. Even if you have a great intuition and your parents have always told you that you're an amazing artist, color theory will simply get you further because it lets you understand your intuition, why you always liked purple and Bayesian combination, and then you can expand on it. Of course, you can still work based on intuition. And only if you get stuck, you fall back to color theory. That's another way to do it. And when your personal intuition works together with a deep understanding of color, that's something very beautiful, and it opens up many doors for self expression. It's fine to have your preferences and do things in your own way, but you first have to know the rules in order to properly break them. This is what I've built this course around, and what I've done many hours of research on. The ultimate goal of color theory is, of course, not just to sell more things, but to make the world we live in look better, to help people make more art and design, still in their own way, but with a little bit of professionalism, fancier outfits, nicer rooms, cooler websites, more awesome paintings. So enough with the talk. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my framework for thinking about colors in art and design. Sit back and enjoy. 4. Color Basics: Alright, before we dive into any of the real interesting stuff, we first got to clear up some definitions. I know it doesn't sound too exciting, but it's absolutely necessary because there are a few specific terms that people use when they talk about colors and describe different versions of them, and you definitely want to know them as an artist or designer, in order to not appear completely incompetent. That would be a shame. So let's start. First and foremost, what even is our color? Well, we humans are gifted with being able to see stuff by perceiving light with our eyes, which is very nice. We can differentiate between different areas with our eyes because they have different colors that we can then process with our brains. And this is how we identify almost all objects in life. They are just colors that have different shapes and sizes. Generally, there are three aspects that in combination, make such a visual appearance that we call a color hue, value, and saturation. Hue is the type of color being determined by the wavelength of the light that hits your eye. I don't know how else to describe it to you than just, you know, green, blue, red, yellow, and so on. You get it. When we talk about different colors, we actually mean hues most of the time. A hue in its purest form without any darkness or brightness or gray is known as chroma. This is a color at its maximum intensity. But because we can add darkness or brightness or gray, we have more options to describe a color, and that brings us to the next aspect. Value. Value describes the darkness or brightness of a color. Starting from a chroma, there are two ways to influence its value adding black to make it darker or adding white to make it brighter. The more you add, the more dark or bright it becomes. Simple as that. And there are actually terms for this. When you add black to a color, this new color is called shade. And when you add white, it's called tint. You can put the two together, and you have the whole value range of a color. We have different shades, then the chroma, and then tints. Very nice. Value is very important in art and design. It actually is the main factor that makes something visible or not. A lack of values is one of the easiest ways to make a visual boring. We could also say a small value range. That means that there is not much of a difference between the darkest and lightest part of an image, which often makes it very uninteresting. So using different values to add contrast is essential in both art and design. We're going to talk about this more in depth later on, but it's just logic. When everything is bright, you look at that one part that is dark and vice versa. Value is probably the most reliable tool in visual arts to direct attention and purposefully achieve effects. So far so good. But there is also the possibility to just mix your color with gray, not darker, not brighter, just less of the color. By adding gray, you are lowering the saturation of a color and creating tones of it. Saturation is also known as intensity because, well, the more saturation a color has, the more intense it appears, and the stronger its psychological effects are that we'll talk about later. Saturation also makes a color more visible. When all parts of an image are gray and desaturated, you naturally look at that one part that has more color, which is a useful thing to know in art and design. Alright. This is how color works and how you can describe it with different terms. So before you forget them, here is an example of me using these terms to describe an image, so you can internalize them, and we have a little bit of context. This is a digital painting sketch that I made about six years ago at this point. Wow. Anyways, what can we say about the colors based on what we know by now? Well, first of all, we have a variety of different values, which results in lots of contrasts. We have white in the background, and then we have this black hair, black glasses, and black beard. Plus we have some different values on the skin with shades of brown in the shadows and tints of brown in the highlights that are mixed with lots of white, so far so good. Then we have a few different hues, red, green, and a few yellow and orange hues. These yellow and orange hues are very desaturated, so they have been transformed into tones that we call brown and beige. Generally, the whole picture has a relatively low intensity, and the colors are not very saturated, except, of course, the red here, which appears in its chroma and therefore clearly stands out. Alright, I think we got it all covered. You can have a nice overview of all these aspects if you open a drawing software like Krita or Photoshop and make the color selector triangular, which I recommend. Here is the pure color or chroma at its maximum intensity. You can change the hue by sliding around on this color wheel. You see, there are all the different hues like green, blue, orange, and so on. In any case, here is always black and here is always white. So you can slide on this side to only get tints of a color, slide on that side to get shades and go straight through the middle to only change the saturation of a color and get different tones of it. Everything in between is a mixture of these aspects. That's how it works. I highly recommend you practice using these terms by describing a picture of your choice with them. What are the hues? Is there a small or big value range? Which shades and tins are the most saturated? Are there any chromas? Get used to thinking about color this way and effectively describing it. That'll come in handy very soon. Once you're familiar with basic color terminology, you will understand something that's pretty cool because now you don't have to remember all the specific colors in order to appear competent. Who cares if it's lime green or forest green or emerald green when you can just say it how it is a shade of green with a little bit of a yellow hue in it, or a tint of green that's very saturated. Talking about colors this way is way more efficient than remembering all these terms for red like burgundy, faxia, magenta, crims and maroon, half of them describing the same thing or leaving huge gaps on the color spectrum. Also the funny thing is that these definitions just straight up change depending on what resource you're looking at. They are totally based on wipes. But if you know how to describe colors the way we did it in this lesson, you don't have to worry about that. Sure, it can be a nice bonus to be familiar with a specific name like, Oh, look at this burnt sienna when you talk to a graphics design client or something. But when it comes to actually working with colors, you cannot say, What if we made this dusty rose look more like honeysuckle in the conference room? Nobody knows what that means. What if we pump up the saturation of this purple to intensify it, but slightly shift the hue towards blue to keep it relaxed? This is how you talk about colors professionally. You're not a color expert just because you know the difference between violet and lavender. You as a designer or artist have to look at colors on their ground level by understanding how to manipulate hue, value, and saturation to get shades, tins, and tones. Attaching a fancy name to those and selling them is the problem of the marketing team. So enjoy your colour terms. This is how it works, and that's actually it for color basics. It's not that complicated if you think about it, but the potential for using colors is huge, and that's what this course is about. So now that you're well equipped, let's start exploring color on a deeper level. 5. Color Models: In order to understand color and use it for color schemes and color palettes, you must first know how it is arranged and how colors relate to each other. For values and tones, it's quite obvious. They just fade to black, white or gray. But the hues are a bit different because obviously there are no extremes. They can all be mixed, so it's a continuity. And you've certainly seen this before. You can model the connection of hues using the color wheel. But wait, the color wheel is not entirely correct because there are actually different color wheels and models that have different purposes, and there is a lot of confusion going on with these that I want to put into. Let's start with this one to explain the basics. This is the RYB color wheel, the most classic one of them all. RYB stands for red, yellow, and blue because red, yellow and blue are at the core of it. They are the so called primary colors that are mixed to create all the others. So if you mix two primary colors, you get a secondary color. Mix blue with red, and you get purple, mix red with yellow, and you get orange, and mix blue with yellow, and you get green. These are the three secondary colors. And we can then mix those with their neighboring primary colors, and we get so called tertiary colors that fill in the gaps in our color wheel with 12 segments. Nice. Theoretically, we can repeat this process infinitely to get the whole smooth transition around the color wheel with all these beautiful hues. So far so good. But this is not exactly how it works all the time, because the RYB color wheel is a subtractive model, which means that as you mix colors, they get darker and darker. This is what usually happens with real paints, too. So if you mix a lot of them together, you'll end up with black or very dark gray. If you look at color from the perspective of overlapping light beams, however, it's a bit different. Then it makes sense to utilize an additive color model like the RGB color wheel. Here, red, green, and blue are the primary colors from which all the others are mixed. This works because in this case, the colors are not blurred together like in the RYB model, but stacked on top of each other to create higher values. So you can mix green and red light to get an even brighter mixture of them, which is yellow. And all the colors of RGB added together will result in white, which is logically the combination of all colored light. This RGB model is what's typically used for screens and the color selectors of digital art and design softwares. So this course is brought to you by thousands of red, green, and blue LEDs in your screen that light up in a certain order to produce all these awesome colors. Shout out to those. There is even a kind of mixture of the two models, the CM Y or CMYK color wheel. This one has the same color space as RGB, but it's subtractive. So it starts from the three brightest hues cyan, magenta, and yellow, hence CMY and mixes the other slightly darker hues from them. This unique combination of properties makes this color wheel the basis for most printers. They mix cyan, magenta, and yellow to mix everything that you can print out. We could go more into detail here, and we could explore even crazier color models, and maybe I'll do that at the end of the course. But let's stop for a moment. What does the existence of different color wheels mean for you as an artist or designer? Well, technically, although you will hear it a lot, there are no definitive primary colors that you can mix to create all the others. If you have three colors to mix, you will always have limitations, no matter if it's red, yellow, and blue, red, green, and blue, or cyan magenta and yellow. Don't let anyone tell you that RYB is outdated, and you should only use the CMY color wheel. It always depends on the situation. If you are a traditional painter, don't be stubborn and try to always mix everything from red, yellow, and blue. It will work most of the time, yes, but there are always some colors you cannot make if you limit yourself to three primaries. For example, if you add this bright magenta, which is a primary from the CMY color wheel, you can just make more colors objectively, and it works the other way around too. Now, you don't have to buy every color in the store in order to paint. Don't worry. Just three primary colors from either model is usually enough, and if you add one or two more from the other, you basically have everything you level need. Just notice that real life color mixing is subtractive, so it's better to start with RYB or CMY rather than RGB. The exact amount of color that you have to mix in oil painting, for example, is something that you'll have to find out yourself, though. Due to the chemical makeup of paints, this always differs a bit. So you'll have to experiment to find the best way to get certain colors. Usually, this is a straightforward process, though, and it can be really fun. So don't obsess with trying to find the one true color wheel. They all have their uses, and it's just a slightly different arrangement of hues. So color theory itself works pretty much the same with all these models. Now the main difference from a practical point of view is this. The RTB CMY model has a bigger range of hue within the greens, so those are more detailed. This has some scientific reasoning that has to do with wave length because green is kind of in the middle here, but that's immaterial for us. The RYB model, however, puts a bigger emphasis on the yellow to red range, as you can see. So these hues are less compressed and more detailed here. Also, the colors in the RYB model are on average, not as shiny and intense as in the RGB model because that one is light based. So we don't directly have this cyan pink or light green in RYB, at least not with those values, but the hues are still all there, just a bit differently distributed and displayed. Now, RGB is technically more objective when it comes to displaying wavelengths of light. But here's the thing. Look at this RGB based color selector in Krita. By the way, it's the same in every other software. This is just general RGB. Here's the color that I'm selecting. Now see the difference between these two green chromas. They are quite far away from each other on the color wheel, and there are many other hues between them. But if I now go the same distance in this red to yellow range, there is a lot more difference between those colors. Look at this. These yellow to orange hues are all closer together than these light greens in terms of angle. I mean, I guess there is a difference between all these light greens, but it's nothing compared to this range of the color wheel or even that one. Those appear way more detailed to us, although in terms of wavelength, they are as close together as these light greens. We humans through evolution, have given this red orange range a higher significance than the light green range. We can distinguish wavelengths of light way better within this range than in that one. This is perhaps because this is the range for skin tones and faces, and we've been built to detect tiny differences within those. This is why many artists, including me, believe that the RYB model better approaches human perception of color, although it may not be as objectively accurate as the RGBC and Y wheel when it comes to displaying wavelengths, but it highlights the hues that also seem more important to us. And this is why the RYB color wheel still works. It just makes sense if we look at it, and it's awesome to create color harmonies and color schemes. I'm going to use it in this course moving forward. But remember, pretty much everything also applies to the RGB color selector in your favorite software with just tiny differences. How to work around those is something that we'll talk about when we come to color schemes. So this is my take on color models. There is not one true color wheel. There are no real primary colors. It's just a hue range that slightly varies depending on how you mix them, additive for lights or subtractive for paints. This is how color is arranged, little bit complicated, but yeah, this overview will do. Now let's talk about what color actually does. 6. Color Psychology: Color does a lot. Who would have thought you are here because you know that and you want to learn about it. But still, color does probably even more than you think right now, and you need to understand this. I've told you how we associate colors with memories and how that makes color an incredibly important factor for brand recognition or how we first react to a visual scene. But we're just getting started. The real deal is not that, but how different colors affect our psyche because every color has individual meanings that evoke certain emotions, and those can be quite strong. For example, the color of food can affect how it tastes. The color of a room can affect your mood, and your favorite color can reveal something about your personality. And color psychology is not like magic crystals that have effects or something. No, this stuff has been proven scientifically over and over again, and all the big companies use it and spend money on optimizing the colors. And this is color psychology. Alright, let's start with the most basic example that I can think of color temperature. If you look at the color wheel, you can split it in two and divide it into warm colors and cool colors, which means when you have a picture with many colors from this side of the color wheel, it'll have a warmer feel, and the temperature seems higher than if you were to use colors from the other side, no matter the subjects. Just observe how the mood of this image changes as I slide the overall hue back and forth. Sometimes I find it quite impressive how this makes the scene look like it's in a totally different environment. That's why I always love playing around with colors after I finish the digital painting, just to see how it changes the feeling. But why is that? Well, it actually depends on the color, but it's either through evolution and instinct or through conditioning and experience in the real world. Both is possible. Red, for instance, is usually more evolutionary. It evokes high alertness because we instinctively connect this color with blood and fire. Purple, on the other hand, is a color that we often connect with royalty and luxury, but that's more because of society and our personal experience with how purple is used in the world. We could go more into depth here, but to us, the why of our color's meaning is less important than the what? Because we as designers and artists are practical people, and we just want our colors to look nice and fitting. So I will not bother you with too much theory here. Don't worry. What you should remember is that color can have a strong psychological effect. And we're not just talking about arm and cold here. As an experiment, in multiple prisons across a few countries, including the US, Germany, and Switzerland, prison cells were painted in so called Baker Miller pink to calm down aggressive prisoners. Yep, you have that right. The feminine appearance of pink evokes humility, and that makes it hard to be enraged in its presence. And when prisoners were put into the pink cells, this actually worked. Well, prisons are pretty extreme places, and after about 15 to 30 minutes, other psychological factors outweigh the effects of the pink paint. The calming effect of Baker milla pink is rather short term in that situation, which is why not every prison in the world has pink cells. But still, it's an impressive example for how color can affect our psyche and how that can be used in the most unexpected ways. So by internalizing what different colors do, you can develop an intuition for using them purposefully, which is a powerful skill in art, design, and marketing. So let's dive deep and explore the psychological effects as well as the best uses of the 12 main colors. 7. Understanding Blue: Let's start with everyone's favorite. Blue is the most popular color amongst humans, at least according to surveys. And for good reason, I mean, blue just looks nice. It's the natural color of the sky and the ocean. And I believe that this is also where we can derive a lot of the meaning that blue has. It's this natural, relaxing background color. You know, when you're in a natural environment and you're able to see lots of blue, that pretty much always means that you have a clear field of view. There is nothing immediately in front of you that you have to pay attention to, and you are most likely looking at something far away where the sky or the ocean take up a big part of your field of view. This is probably how we can explain the symbolic and energetic effects that blue has because it aligns very well with what people usually associate with as color. It always goes in the direction of trust, reliability, calmness, loyalty, and coolness. This is what blue stands for, and it definitely makes sense with the context that I gave you. Pictures and visuals with lots of blue usually look a bit more slow and less energetic. This makes them feel relaxing and pleasing, but not necessarily boring because blue is still a pretty complex color, and you can use it in many different ways, for example, with different values, which also make a slight difference in its effect. Dark blue stands more for trust, dignity, intelligence, and authority. It's very stable and present, but not dominant or intimidating. Brighter blue or normal blue, we could say, stands more for strength and cleanliness, especially when it's very saturated. And very light blue like the sky stands for peace, spirituality, and infinity because it's not as intense anymore and even more calm. This genuinely relaxed vibe that blue exudes can also be ameliorated by making it less saturated. You see this desaturated, almost grayish blue is pretty much the most melancholic color there is. So if you want a subject in your art or design to feel that way, you can use tones of blue to support that. It's going to seem sad and deep, but the color is still nice and relaxing to look at, so it always works. When used with high saturation like this, blue is definitely more energetic and intense, but it still maintains the main effect of relaxation. So it's quite interesting in this state and very versatile. You can play with the context in which you use it and see what happens. No matter in which variation you use it, though, lots of blue will always make a visual feel colder. This hue is clearly on the cool side of the color wheel in terms of temperature. So this is also something to be aware of. As you can see, blue can have a variety of effects depending on how it's used, but the dominant feelings of loyalty, trust, and reliability make blue a super popular color for company designs. Yes, they love it because blue says, You can trust us. We are reliable, clean, stable. All these calm but positive terms, especially in banks and insurance companies, where trust is the entire business, you can often observe that they have a logo or a website with lots of blue or only blue. This is also the case for many, many technology companies and also healthcare companies because you want to seem reliable in these industries, which is quite understandable. And this is where blue comes into play. It's a classic choice to seem competent without getting in anyone's way with too much action. I mean, you can't really go wrong with this color. It's universally popular and globally accepted as something that looks good. I think it's safe to say that you will almost never seem weird if you are dressed in blue, as the global adoption of blue jeans and blue suits indicates, for instance, it just works. If you ask people what their favorite color is, the majority says blue, especially men. For women, it's a little bit less, but it's still number one in most situations. But what's even more interesting, if you ask people what their least favorite color is, blue is nowhere to be found. There are more controversial colors like orange or purple that people either love or hate, but blue is pretty much exclusively on the positive side of people's perception. I think for about 90% of people, blue is in the top three or at least top five favorite colors. So it's completely uncontroversial to use blue. This leads us to a few interesting implications for using this color. In design, blue is very, very popular in many industries, and therefore it may not be enough to stand out with it. If you make a logo that's only blue, you better have an exciting subject to make up for it, or at least interesting shapes. Simularly, a website with blue and white as a basis will most likely seem a bit generic and potentially boring. But that's not necessarily bad. If you just want to evoke reliability, like this is classic and good, or if you just want to seem competent, then blue is still a good choice. Don't get me wrong. However, to grab a viewer's attention or to make people notice your design amongst others, you will most likely have to add something else. Blue alone may not be interesting enough, and it may require adding another more energetic color for contrast. That way, it can unfold its potential and be very powerful. In art, be aware of Blue's versatility and push it in either direction to play with its effects like darker or brighter. You will frequently need it often as the basis when you make a background, like the sky in a landscape painting. So decide in which form it suits your needs best. More melancholic, more authoritarian, more clean or light or strong. It also heavily depends on the other colors with which you combine it, but blue is always a good basis. So this is my take on the color blue. I hope this lesson gave you a little bit of context and a deeper understanding of its varying effects. Let's move on to the next color, which is much more energetic. 8. Understanding Red: Let's continue with red. Red is in many ways the opposite of blue. Not necessarily in terms of popularity, though. Red is also high up on the list, as you can see, but it differs more in terms of energy and emotion. Red is the natural color of fire and blood, so it evokes high alertness on an evolutionary level. This makes it a very powerful color. Only for yellow and orange, you could argue that they are even more attention grabbing than red, but it always depends on the context and the contrast. So it's not clear to say. Point is just that red is very high up on the list of colors that make you look. This is undebtable. The reason for that does probably have something to do with blood or maybe also fire. It just calls for action and makes you present and alert. In nature itself, there aren't too many things that are red, like bright, saturated red, except for some forms of clay or special rocks, some flowers, rare, exotic animals, sometimes sunsets, but it's nothing compared to green, blue, brown, orange, black or white. On an evolutionary level, red means there is something going on, probably fire or blood. If you look at how languages develop, so which words emerge in which societies, at what point, red is something interesting going for it. In all languages, if people start to describe colors, they first distinguish between light and dark, so black and white. This shouldn't be surprising. But the first saturated color to get a name after that is always red. People have this primal urge to describe it before all the other colors. There may be some societies, even today, that don't have a word for purple or yellow or can. So also don't distinguish between blue and green, but red is always a thing. This is a clear indicator for how powerful this color is. So I think it's relevant to be aware of this fact as an artist and designer. In terms of symbolism, red is pretty much the color of extremes, violence, love, danger, passion, anger, seduction, energy, and speed. Looking at these terms, you can already tell that when you have a visual that contains lots of red, it's going to feel very intense, either positively or negatively. Depending on your subject and intention, this intensity can apply to very different things ranging from love to violence. But it's always very much there, very like in your face. So be careful. When using red, context is very important, not only in terms of the subjects that you apply to, but also when choosing the colors around it, because red can have very different effects depending on those. When it's surrounded by black, it looks very powerful and almost seems to glow because of the high contrast, as opposed to white, where it appears more dull and even looks a bit smaller than when it's on black. And if you place it on a very saturated orange like that, it looks kind of lifeless and almost cold, which is quite interesting. Officially, red has a very high colour temperature, and when used a lot, it makes visuals feel warmer, but not quite as much as orange. And by combining these colors, you can get this unique effect where red is actually cooler. So as I said, context plays a huge role for people's perception of red. But in general, it definitely has very high energy. You can use that to make scenes or subjects pop or appear extreme. Designers know this very well, and they love to use red. For example, to guide our viewers attention and show them where to look. And, no, I don't only mean clickbait thumbnails. It happens in many different places. Red is internationally used as the color for stop signs, and almost 80% of the world's Nation's flags contain red, as well as many, many company logos. Red is the call to action color, as you can tell by spending any amount of time on the Internet. Buttons that people want you to click on are very often bright, saturated red or some color close to red. This creates a sense of urgency as of laid out in the beginning of this lesson, and designers love to make use of that. What's also interesting is that red can induce appetite. This is why many fast food restaurants use red in their logos and company designs, too. But the power of red is so huge that it can be as tiring as it is attention grabbing, especially when used a lot and with high saturation. Red is often and easily overused, and it's just not nice to look at after some time. Imagine if all the walls in your house were painted with deep, saturated red. I mean, I would probably go crazy pretty quickly. In a brand that's only based on the colored and it's used a lot, it's also a bit risky because if the context changes, so can the attitude of people towards the company design. The color red can seem confrontational and intrusive if there are any negative associations with the company. Imagine if you have a problem with customer servers and they send you an email that starts with crimson red letters of the company design at the top. It's just not a good basis to stand on. I know it's a weird example, but maybe you get what I mean. Red is just very intense either positively or negatively. So the color red usually cannot be added as easily and frequently as blue. It's a bit more of a precise tool, both in art and design. You put red where you want people to look and where you feel confident. This is the general idea. However, there are still some differences depending on the saturation and brightness level of red. Dark red, like Burgundy, is a little bit less energetic because it has less light, and it seems more serious. And light red, if it goes in the direction of magenta, will have a bit more childish energy to it, a bit more freshness. If you lower the saturation down to something like Cordovan, it will be more tuned down and professional, as opposed to its high energy saturated form that we usually call crimson or candy apple. With this in mind, always consider your usage of red carefully. Does it really fit the subject? Do you want your viewers attention to go there? And are you maybe using too much of it? It's often a good idea to not use red in its most intense form when you have a big surface, even if you intend to evoke high alertness and attract attention. If you make it a bit less saturated, it still has mostly these effects, but it's not as intrusive, or you make it intense but very small. Then you also have a great weapon to direct attention in art and design. So my final advice is always have a clear purpose when you use red. Put red in places where you want action and use it appropriately and precisely. Don't use too much of it in its chroma and make it stand out amongst other more chill colors to harvest its big energetic potential. It's a great tool. 9. Understanding Yellow: The last classic primary color that we need to cover is yellow. Yellow is a very interesting color because it has similar energetic and attention grabbing effects is red, but it still manages to be totally different somehow. If I had to summarize it, I would say that yellow has two sides. On one side, it obviously stands for warmth, friendliness, happiness, creativity, and optimism. And that's the classic interpretation of yellow. It's naturally found in many flowers, and the fact that it's by far the brightest hue by default makes us associated with the sun. This is also why yellow is often the color for deity in religions, like in ancient Egypt or in Hinduism. It's super popular for logos of brands that want to be seen and exude high energy and positivity. Yellow is often used by food companies, for instance, because it induces appetite. There are many yellow foods like bananas, fries, mangoes, lemons, corn, butter, and many doughs, if you bake them, start looking yellow. So it's a yummy color. On the other side, however, yellow can also stand for jealousy, egoism, betrayal, plus physical illness and caution. It's often used as a warning sign for toxic materials or in traffic because of its high visibility. When you have a painting where one person is wearing yellow and the context in which they are presented is open to interpretation, then viewers will often associate some of these negative terms with it, like egoism or jealousy. So again, the effects of yellow depend on the context in which you use it. It can have a big range of effects. But if you want yellow to be friendly and warm, absolutely make sure that you use it in a bright and saturated form. Unlike the other colors that get darker and sometimes even more intense when you decrease their value, yellow doesn't like darkness very much because it reacts very strongly to black and quickly fades to a muddy, green, brownish tone that doesn't look very friendly and welcoming anymore. You will find this in pretty much no company designs, except maybe some niche organic brands or something, which again, can be an opportunity to stand out. But I would definitely not use this muddy yellow alone, but combine it with at least one other color. There are no real dark yellows. This color literally wants to be bright and shining. So that's also how you want to use it most of the time in design. So, yes, you can, of course, make yellow darker or less saturated. That's not different from any other color. But the unique attribute of yellow is that this always has a huge effect on people's perception of it. I mean, would you call this yellow? It's very close to the chroma actually. And if it were any other color with this amount of extra value, we'd make no distinction and call it what it is. But yellow only looks yellow if it's absolutely shining and saturated. That's what this color is about. Some variations that we can associate with yellow are gold, of course. Gold is darker, but still saturated yellow with a bit of orange in it, usually, and gold stands for being rich, big surprise. But there is also beige, which is a bit more tuned down and elegant because it has lots of white mixed into it. Combined with the naturally energetic effects of yellow, this makes beige a very versatile and interesting color that's especially good for backgrounds. Here's another interesting use of yellow. When editing a visual scene, you can give it a slight overlay or filter with yellow, and it immediately feels more warm and comfortable. That's a very easy and common effect in movies, which you can also use in your art, for example. What's also really cool is if you add a tiny bit of yellow to highlight parts of your paintings, everywhere where there is light, the hues naturally shift a little bit towards yellow. So if you exaggerate this and add completely saturated yellow to the highlight areas, this will pretty much always look awesome and not out of place. So yellow is really useful to make paintings feel more alive. That's something to remember. Also find it frequently used as an eye catcher in news feeds when they don't want to seem super dramatic like with red, but still want your attention. That's a very smart use of yellow. Use bits of yellow like light bulbs that you put somewhere. It works excellently to create contrast, especially when used with dark colors like black or dark blue. That way, it looks awesome. But as a main color, yellow is actually not used that often because like red, it can be very tiring to look at due to its high energy and attention grabbing effects, and it's easily overused, or it just doesn't seem serious enough if you use it alone as a corporate color. Here's another art tip for me. If you draw or paint a yellow object and you add shadows to it, you should always mix in some orange or a little bit of red for a simular effect, because if you just make yellow darker and mix in black, as I've said, it becomes very weird, very quickly. And this is not only for impressionist painting, where you purposefully exaggerate the colors. For yellow, this shift in the shadows is often almost necessary to make it look pleasing. Don't get me wrong. It's still an amazing color and one of the most powerful ones if you use it well, but you just have to be a bit more precise with it and manipulate it if necessary. So always mind the context in which you use yellow, applied carefully and purposefully, and I recommend you use it mostly as a small eggs and color if it's saturated. It works excellently in combination with pretty much any darker colors, whether it's maroon red, dark blue, deep purple. It's all pretty awesome with yellow as a contrast. If you want to make yellow itself darker, for example, when you need shadows on a yellow object in painting, don't forget to shift the hues a little bit towards red and orange or mix in those colors traditionally. Pick the right subjects, and you can benefit from a variety of strong effects, ranging from happiness to illness. Let yellow be a bright accent to contrast other darker colors, and it will stand out like nothing else. 10. Understanding Green: Moving on to green, we got the color of nature and growth. Green is another very popular color in branding for exactly that reason. When something is bright and green, it looks fresh, natural, eco friendly, and it promises future growth, which is why it's a very popular color in the financial industry as well. And banks often use it for their branding, too, just like blue. Green is common for rising stock prices, green check marks, and green traffic lights, which tell you that you're good to go. It looks fresh and clean, and it's also often used in the cleaning industry. The symbolism of green comes from plants, and we associate almost every object that's green with nature in one way or another. Why? Well, perhaps that's because literally everything in nature is green. I mean, what did you think? Obviously, green is the color for eco friendliness and companies that produce organic food from a design perspective. It is kind of mainstream in that regard, and you'll have many competitors. If you decide that your company that has something to do with nature, shall have a green logo or a green website. Great idea. You're not the first one to have it. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad, though. I mean, this is literally the main purpose of green, but only green is very, very saturated at this point. So you should definitely combine it with another more interesting color if you want to stand out. Aside from nature, green also has a few additional symbolisms. It stands for hope, health, freshness and prosperity. And these meanings can also be mostly derived from its omnipresence in nature. Potentially, green can also stand for envy or boredom. Some people also consider it the color of disgust, which is quite interesting because it can also mean cleanliness and freshness. I think it mostly depends on the hue with darker, colder green standing more for envy and disgust and brighter, more saturated green, a bit more growth and prosperity. I mean, I wanted to say positivity, but prosperity also works. Once again, this always depends on the context and the subjects that it's applied to. So be aware of that when using green in your paintings, especially when attributing it to non natural things like the clothing of humans. When you paint plants and landscapes, obviously, you don't have to worry about its deeper symbolism. There is just no way around using it, and people know that. The color just becomes very different when you see it outside of its natural context. Generally, green comes in many, many variations, and it's a big range on the color wheel. So green is not just green. It can be used in so many different ways with its varying hues, tins, and values making a huge difference in its appearance. Luckily, they pretty much all look great, and they also have mostly similar effects. Brighter green looks more fresh and exciting and darker green looks more calm and grounded. But other than that, there really isn't that much variation in the effect that green has, although the different greens can look very distinct. Use green with low saturation, and it will make anything look natural and based, like it comes straight from nature. It's very calm and non intrusive, but it still promises growth and freshness. So that's pretty cool. When used with high saturation, though, green can look surprisingly unnatural and toxic, like very cheap plastic, especially when you apply it to non natural subjects like toys, clothing or cars. The brright saturated green doesn't look like nature anymore when used in that context. Or imagine if the walls of your room were painted in this intense lime green, not really natural anymore, but kind of toxic and unpleasant. So when applied to artificial subjects, green is best used with lower saturation to make it more comfortable because that feels more like nature. What's also interesting is Green's color temperature. As a mix between the cold color blue and the warm color yellow, it's not really warm or cool. Its temperature strongly depends on the hue, and there is a big range. Green can look very cold if it's more on the blue side, but also very warm when there is more yellow in it. So pay attention to the temperature that you want when using this color. It can quickly shift and not have the desired effects. Green will always be your choice when you paint, draw, or design something that has to do with nature. That's not going to change so quickly, but be careful when using it outside its natural context. It's a risky color when used in its chromas. Generally, green is a very popular hue. Most people, although rarely putting it as their number one, will rank it among their top three or at least top five favorite colors. It's also one of these colors that's really hated, a little bit more controversial than blue, but mostly it's perceived very positively. Try mixing green with other colors in order to make your visual stand out. It's a great basis for an artwork or a website. But remember that green has many different variations that also look pleasant, and you don't always want to use it in its most intense form, ranging from sage and avocado to emerald and the ocean, you have many options to choose from. Especially when you take into consideration the countless shades, tins, and tones. Don't forget about those. Green is a color that's truly worth experimenting with. 11. Understanding Orange: Orange. Here we go. Now, this color is very polarizing. People tend to either love or hate it and not really perceive it as anything in between. Fun fact, the color orange is actually named after the fruit, so it's the only main color that got its name from an object, which is kind of funny. But let's get to the point. What do you think when you see orange? Well, orange is the color for warmth. As a mixture of red and yellow, that's pretty obvious. It's on the far end of the warum side in terms of color temperature. It also inherits some of the effects of red and yellow, and it combines them in an interesting way. Naturally, oranges found in fire and sunsets, flowers, fruit and vegetables, leaves in autumn and sand. In warmer regions like Africa or South Asia, orange is almost a sort of default background color because there is much sand, earth, and orange rocks, just the way that green and blue are the natural background colors of the North. This also has some implications for region specific color preferences, which we will come to later. Orange's presence in nature makes it look not only hot but also healthy. And this makes it a popular color for food companies and supermarkets. You can see many, many food products use the color orange. Its general symbolism is energy, excitement, warmth, adventure, change, and vitality. That's generally really nice. But orange can also suggest a lack of discipline or a lack of serious intellectual values because the color is very loose, free, and energetic. So it potentially has a kind of childish energy to it. As you may have guessed, there are also slight differences depending on the value of orange. Darker oranges can look spicy, earthy and comforting because it goes in the direction of brown, while brighter oranges look more soft but still energetic, hot, and healthy, which is a quite interesting combination. But just like yellow, people quickly stop calling orange by its name when you change some values and tones. I mean, would you still call this orange or already brown? Orange is another color that reacts strongly to black due to its proximity to yellow. So the effects will change a lot if you manipulate the values and tones. The more saturated it is, the more this color will unfold its natural effects, which can be really intense. So if you want to use it in marketing, think about who you want to speak to. Notice that highly saturated orange can actually look cheap, but not necessarily in a bad sense, maybe just that it stands for a goodbye. That's open to interpretation. Because of its high energy and looseness, orange speaks to children pretty much internationally. You can see this in the branding for toys or foods that are supposed to appeal to a younger audience. This color stands out like nothing else, except maybe yellow, which is also why it's often used as a warning and safety sign, just like these other warm, high energy hues on the color wheel. So it's frequently used on building sites and safety wise. It has this very practical signaling effect. Orange is very visible, and you'll pretty much always notice the orange bits in a picture, no matter what other colors there are. But this is also where orange becomes a bit risky. A big surface with saturated orange can be really tiring to look at after some time. So better tune it down if you intend to use it a lot. Orange works excellently with its complementary colors like blue or green tones, so it's hot and demanding effects are balanced out a little bit. If you combine orange with black, it pops even more and looks very intense and aggressive. So if you surround orange with very dark colors, it will be almost as much of a light bulb as yellow. While it doesn't appear as clean and bright as yellow, it's a bit more deep and warm, but both colors are very intense. When working with extreme light conditions with lots of contrast like candles in the dark, you can shift the hues to play with these effects. It can make quite a difference. And oranges, just like yellow, are great choice for an overlay to give any scene a warmer feel and bring a kind of comfort to it. But orange is also a nice color to just have in a background if it comes in a dark or also desaturated form. So it's not too hard on the ice but still has these warmth and comfort effects. But of course, then it's a bit more like brown, which we'll talk about later. Orange in marketing does have potential, but it's a controversial color. There are many people who really like it, but almost as many cannot stand this color, especially older people frequently name it as their least favorite hue, probably due to its intrusiveness and lack of seriousness. This means that outside of toys and food, there is actually not that much orange branding to compete with, which might bear some potential, especially if you do what I told you, explore orange nuances, either play with its values and tones to lower its tiring effects or use it as a tiny ag in color to contrast darker hues. That's always great. There is a huge variety of effects that orange can have. So you have many options to make it compelling. If you use it well, you can create artworks and designs that shift back and forth between looking comforting but exciting at the same time. This is the true potential of the color orange. 12. Understanding Purple: Next up, we got purple. Purple is a very interesting color because in nature, it is super rare. It's well possible that most of our prehistoric ancestors never saw a purple flower, bird, or fruit, which is why even today purple mainly symbolizes the supernatural rarity and being special. And it's often referred to as the color of complexity. Purple has actually stayed rare for a long time, and the only known way to dye something purple used to be extracting it from literally thousands of shellfish for a single gram of purple dye, which is why only the absolute richest people could afford to wear it. For instance, in the Roman Empire, this color was, for some time, strictly reserved to be worn only by emperors or very wealthy and privileged individuals. Now, times have changed, of course, and purple is all around us, but it's still heavily associated with luxury, royalty, and wealth. That's the main symbolism of purple for most people. It's definitely learned, so the effects of purple are not as deeply evolutionary as red, for example. They are mostly because of how we see purple being used by other people. It started as a naturally rare color, and it has definitely maintained some of that prestige. This is how we can interpret purple on a base level. Aside from wealth and rarity, purple also stands for mystery, creativity, spirituality, imagination, and the subconscious. It's a deeply mysterious and complex color, and the mixture between red and blue energy gives it very unique effects. Like orange, purple is a polarizing color, and people tend to either love or hate it. They rarely perceive it as something in between, something neutral. I personally, I'm a big fan. I think it's my favorite color along with blue, especially if you mix them. This deep violet blue is really nice. But let's not get sidetracked. Be aware of the fact that purple can be a controversial color in marketing. Notice that purple has slightly different meanings at different values. Light purples like mauve look more loose and lightheaded, while dark purples like indigo, look more sophisticated and intellectual. That's something that applies pretty much to all colors, but for purple with its complex effects, this range is especially interesting. Remember how contrasting the effects of blue and red are, purple can quickly go in either direction as you shift the hue more toward one or the other. What's also important to know for branding is that the amount of people who love purple is significantly higher amongst the youth compared to older adults. So keep this in mind when you use saturated purple in marketing. It's always on the edge between looking a little bit childish and unserious to some people, but also expensive, luxurious, and intelligent. It just highly depends on the context. To be safe, it's best to use it with less saturation like lavender. Then it's easy to stay on the serious and intellectual side. But be careful. Purple can also stand for decadence. It makes a brand seem stupid if it has lots of purple, and the products or website don't provide any significant value. So don't mess with this color. Only use it where you feel confident and your product or service can live up to the high expectations that it induces. You can convey exciting feelings of innovation and exclusivity if you match your company's high quality offering with a purple based brand design. That's how I would summarize it. Purple, green, is a color that's neither completely warm nor cold. It just depends on whether it's more on the right side or more on the blue side. More red, obviously being more warm and blue being more cold. So remember that when you make a painting or design with lots of purple, its color temperature is very sensitive and you definitely want it to be right. Look at the subjects and the theme of your image to decide what kind of purple would be fitting. On average, I would say that purple is slightly more on the cool side. In painting, I really like using purple, especially in its chroma. You can make flowers, clothing, parts of the sky also look great in purple sometimes, but I still use it carefully, often to make very intense impressionist shadows or also to ameliorate light and make it stand out more. Especially in this impressionist or expressionist style that I really like, purple can be a real game changer. Purple shadows always look very deep and they kind of fit no matter what subject you apply them to. Combining purple with other colors, however, can be tricky. Black, white, gray, and beige always look awesome with a little bit of purple, like on my website, for example, these little bits of purple can really elevate a design. But when you make purple areas bigger or you add other colors, it's more risky. Purple can go with both warm and cool hues, but it quickly dominates them. It's a stimulating color that people will always notice amongst others. So don't overdo it. Even if you make it lighter or darker or a bit less saturated, purple maintains both high energy effects from red and deep and relaxing effects from blue. Always somewhere in between with a vibe that is unmatched in its versatility and sophistication. It is very intense and powerful, so I recommend not overusing it, especially if you want to sell something. It has to go hand in hand with very high quality. Otherwise, it seems pretentious. Use it a lot in painting, please, and maybe a bit less in marketing. That's my take here. So always remember that you can use lower saturation and values to influence a color like purple and use it in moderation. That way, you can make it look professional without seeming decadent and you can profit from its powerful meanings. 13. Understanding Brown: Brown. Now, what does brown do here? Brown is not really a hue on the color wheel. It's more like a dark, desaturated version of red and orange. Well, it's here simply because it has meaning, and it's a frequently used color. It doesn't need to be a specific hue to have specific effects because even though brown is a variation of red or orange, it has very different meanings and effects that you should be aware of when using it. As I've told you, unlike blue, green, or purple that maintain most of their effects when you lower their values, this doesn't apply to red as much, but especially yellow and orange. If you shift those hues towards black and gray, you get brown, which is totally different. So let's talk about it. Brown is one of the most common colors in nature. It instinctively makes us think of earth and everything that comes from it, like tree stems, for example, or also many rocks. That's why Brown is often used like Green in designs for organic food companies or brands that want to seem like they are connected to nature and super based and grounded. It's not attention grabbing at all due to its lack of light and saturation, but it's more reserved and sympathetic. Brown looks not as clean, growth inducing, and fresh as green. It's more down to earth, respectable and stabilizing. Brown evokes trust, authenticity, dependability, and something that comes from nature. The color is usually friendly and comforting, but it's not striking and signaling like red or yellow. This makes it an excellent choice for backgrounds rather than main subjects, which is also how it's used most of the time. Brown works very well with other colors and pretty much any of them. You can always add something that's made out of brown wood to a room, and it will not disturb the color harmony, but potentially even improve it because brown always brings a natural, calm, non intrusive wipe with it. Really nice. But unfortunately, brown alone can be a bit boring, dull, and predictable. It can even evoke loneliness because of its simplicity and honesty. Brown puts reality over fantasy. It has no effects of surprise or intensity, like most hues on the color wheel, even when it's used with higher saturation. Sure, it's a bit more intense and warm that way, but this saturated brown is still nothing compared to orange or yellow. It's still mostly a humble background color. One thing that I really appreciate about Brown is how versatile it is, because in terms of hue, it can occupy all this huge range from red to orange to yellow. So Brown is usually a quiet player in an artwork, but potentially a huge supporter, because if you shift its hue, you can harvest energetic effects either more from yellow or more from red, but without disturbing the color harmony, which is a unique quality of this color, you can pretty much always add some brown to a picture if you don't know what other color to add. You can even experiment with it with different hues or values to potentially make big improvements to the whole visual. You can think of the brown base areas of your paintings that you will often need as flexible playing fields. If you shift the hue of the ground in a landscape painting to a different brown, it will most likely still work with the other colors. No problem. But it can still change the vibe of the whole picture and shift it in a different direction in terms of feel. So this is kind of a secret trick if you work out a color palette and you're not super sure which exact use you want to use. Start with lots of brown like earth or wood, and you are free to experiment with all the other colors. Then after that, you can still manipulate the brown in either direction to improve the color scheme or get different effects, but it will still work, almost guaranteed. This versatility and potential to ameliorate other colors is what I really like about brown. It's actually underrated. Similarly, it's a great choice. It's a base color for food packaging or a website. It's always nice and authentic. But especially if you add one or two more saturated colors for contrast. That's where brown really shines, although it technically can't shine because it's dark and desaturated red and orange. But yeah, almost any other color will look great in combination with a comforting brown basis. It's far from being overused in brand design, and I think brown has a lot of potential there. As you can probably guess, brown is rarely named if you ask people for their favorite color. It's pretty far down at the bottom, actually. But that's just because people think of brown alone when you ask these questions, and that probably just reminds them of dirt or old stuff. But as you know now, this is not a reason not to use brown. On the contrary, the subtle basis that makes other colors pop even more is a tool that's hard to lay down once you get behind it. Remember to use brown when you want to seem authentic with your brand or realistic with your painting, for instance. It's a flexible tool that goes very well with pretty much any other color, and it can be used in many variations. Don't forget to add other striking colors in contrast to brown, and it can unfold its potential as a super versatile baseline color. 14. Understanding Pink: Okay, pink. Before you ask, no, pink is not the same as purple, neither in terms of effect nor in terms of hues. I know they look kind of similar. I mean, they're both hues located between red and blue, but pink has some unique qualities that I want to show you. First of all, there are actually two ways in which you can define pink, and probably not everyone watching this has the same color in mind when I say the word. So this is quite interesting. In terms of hue, we can define it like that. If we look at the color wheel, there is a pretty big range between blue and red. Purple is around here, closer to blue and pink is this closer to red. All these comparably bright hues here. That's a very agreeable definition of pink, right? So it's like purple, but more on the right side and usually quite a bit brighter. It can go either more to the purple side, which is then berry pink or to the red side, which makes it rose. So pink by this definition is this vibrant shining hue between red and purple. But if we look at this color, then there is also a good chance that you think of it as pink, like blush or salmon pink, as some people call it. And these colors are actually no different than red when it comes to you, way brighter and maybe a bit desaturated even. This is the second way we can define pink as this very bright red that maintains some of the energy but just has a slightly reduced intensity. So pink is either red mixed with purple or red mixed with white. That's the two ways of looking at it. Therefore, when we talk about this color, we once again have a few variations that each work a bit different. Either way, however, pink is heavily associated with the feminine. I don't think this comes as a surprise to you, but there is a bit more to it than just that. The lighter, more reddish pinks, like salmon or blush, are usually warmer and more inviting because of the higher color temperature that they inherit from red. They seem a bit more innocent and soft, mostly because there is a lot of white in them. If we made these versions of pink any darker, they would just become red, which is mirrored in their effects. But if we shift the hue more towards purple, then we get this classic pink. This is super feminine, vibrant and stands for romance, just with a little bit less color temperature than red. So it's not as intrusive, or you could also say aggressive and a bit more held back. And this effect increases, the more you shift it towards purple when you get something like Foxia. No matter what version of pink you have, though, it always becomes more intense and romantic if you make it darker and more soft and innocent if you make it lighter. Pink inherits the energizing and compassionate effects of red, but through its mixture with white or purple, it comes with less intensity. It can even see relaxing, calming and comforting because of that, which gives the color contrasting effects depending on how you use it. In general, pink stands for compassion, love, femininity, playfulness, but potentially also emotionality and immaturity. It can simultaneously stand for innocence and intimacy, which is also interesting. Pink is a very friendly color. It induces romance and warmth with a bit of playfulness involved. That's why pink is so often associated with sex. In design, it's definitely a weird color. As you can imagine, in marketing, pink is mainly used if a brand wants to speak to girls or just wants to be perceived as easygoing, casual and youthful. Especially the softer pink with more white in it is just a universally established way to reach a female audience. But this darker, more intense pink has actually become more accepted for all genders, but predominantly young people. I've seen quite a few brands that combine one of their classic corporate colors with a dark, almost purple pink to seem edgy and modern. It goes especially well with yellow, by the way. But here is something to be careful about. Using these dark, intense pinks for larger areas of a design can make it very tiring to look at. That's not much different from red. Lighter, more feminine pinks are useful for that, however. Notice that an overuse of pink can make a brand design seem cheap and careless, also naive or shallow. It's safe to use for a female audience, but more risky if you try to incorporate it in a more general campaign. It's definitely possible, though. Many brands shy away from using pink for anything else than girly things. But in my opinion, pink doesn't even have to be feminine if you use it in the right context. It can also just be a variation of red that tunes it down a little bit and looks more sophisticated, especially when it's darker. In interior design, pink gives you a comforting, cozy atmosphere, at least if it's not used too much. This color has proven calming effects, and many people naturally feel drawn to it. Combined with green, pink immediately gives you a nice jungle wipe or also spring because of this freshness. What else is there to say about pink? Well, I think it's a unique color because it has more variations than people imagine, and the natural effects that they attribute to it are not necessarily true if you change the context. It can be surprisingly sophisticated and versatile, especially when combined with yellow or green. It just looks like it belongs there and seems very modern without being childish. So maybe don't overuse pink, but be aware of it as a tool to evoke strong emotions. People have their opinions about this color, so see this as an opportunity to surprise them by showing it in different contexts. I think it has a lot of potential there. 15. Understanding Turquoise: Turquoise. Now, this is a very unique color on this list. Some might say it's not one of the main hues, and that's definitely true from a certain point of view. Turquoise is not nearly as known as red, green, or orange. But if we look at an RGB color wheel, there is a huge gap if we only consider these classic colors that we've described so far. You see, we got blue down here and green up here, but there is actually a big range of hues between them, and we can summarize those in the middle with the term turquoise and analyze them a bit further. As you can probably tell, turquoise effect lies somewhere between blue and green. Generally, the hue that people call turquoise is actually a bit more on the blue side. So it's this light blue with a tiny bit of green on the color wheel here. But what I'll be covering in this lesson mostly applies to these other hues, too, that go a bit more toward green. So what do we have? Well, turquoise serves as a clean, fresh and relaxing color. It does have a little bit more dynamic energy than blue because it's way brighter on average, but it's still something very comfortable to look at. Colored turquoise has its name from the gemstone, which is quite beautiful. And the gemstone has its name because it was originally delivered to Europe through the Ottoman Empire, specifically Turkey. And Turqui is the old French name for Turkish. So technically it's pronounced Turquois, but I'm not going to do it in this lesson because the word has become common in English, as well, and I'm not even sure if I'm pronouncing it right in French. So let's get back to the matter. The color turquoise is far on the cool side of the color wheel. Most people would describe it as the color with the lowest perceived temperature because it kind of looks like ice, especially when it's more on the blue side, like that. But it can also symbolize more warm tropical seas if it goes more towards green. The water on a beach, if it's very shallow and you can still see lots of sand through it becomes turquoise, and it looks very relaxing. So this color is often associated with the ocean, which you can also tell by playing video games. Areas, levels or worlds that are ocean themed often feature lots of turquoise elements to complement that sea feeling. But aside from that, turquoise can also just induce a sense of freshness and relaxation. It combines the renewal qualities of green like growth and prosperity with the calming and professional effects of blue, and that makes it a super cool color. It can convey clarity of thought because it looks like clean water, but also innovation and creativity. If you lower the value and saturation of turquoise, it immediately looks like things that have sunk into the ground of the ocean, like ancient, rotten, mysterious stuff. That's kind of the wipe that this variation gives. It's still calm and non intrusive, though, so it's not wrong to use this for clothing or decoration. And it surely has great potential when you combine it with more intense saturated colors. But in a company logo or on a website, it's maybe a bit weird unless you have a very fitting reason to use it. I think bright turquoise is very practical in painting to spice up blue areas. Subtle transitions between blue and turquoise give a bit more life to it and make the whole thing look really engaging. Especially when there is a body of water, you can always mix in some turquoise areas where the sun hits it, and it will look way nicer than just light blue. So turquoise is a natural highlight color for blue. In color palettes, I really like combining turquoise with less saturated colors like light yellow or light green or gray, because in combination with other saturated, intense colors, turquoise can be a bit overwhelming. The mixture of green and blue energy shall not be underestimated because it carries lots of different effects with it. It rarely looks good when there is more than one or two other intense colors next to turquoise. So it acts a bit like purple that way, which is also allergic to other deep saturated colors. Turquoise is arguably another color that's a bit underrated in branding, and you won't see many logos or company designs that are based on this color, mainly because other colors feel more familiar and people know them better. Saturated turquoise can seem pretty exotic, but designers also like to simply forget about this color. At least it really feels like that. Turquoise clothing is also nice. It's a bit more summer like than blue and more optimistic, but it still has that calm and sort of competent, trusting vibe. And I love that combination, actually. I think I need more turquoise clothing. With black or other very dark colors, it always looks super glowing and captivating. Once again, combining the deep, thoughtful effects of blue with the exciting freshness of green. That's one of the best uses of turquoise because it's naturally bright and therefore works very well to create a captivating value contrast. Alright, I think there really isn't that much else to say here. Just think of Turquoise as this in between color of blue and green with a bit of extra brightness. This awareness offers you many great opportunities to use it in art and design, especially because it's not overused at all. So have fun with it. 16. Understanding Black: Now on to black. Wait, is that really a color? I'm going to be honest. I don't know, and there is certainly a debate going on whether or not black and white are actually colors, because technically, they aren't is pretty much just the absence of any light in color, and white is the opposite. It's a combination of all colored light. But because they are something that you can add to your design or artwork, I mean, you can obviously see when something is black or white, they definitely have effects on the viewers. And this is precisely why we also have to cover black and white, starting with black. Black is complete darkness. No hue, no value, no saturation, pretty much just nothing. It reminds us of the night where we can't see and can't tell what's going on. So there is this natural aura of mystique around black. Black generally stands for power and intensity. Any color as you decrease its value, will get more and more serious until you end up with black, which is the ultimate symbol for class and authority. When something is black, it often looks intimidating, big, and strong. Black exudes professionalism and superiority like no other color, which is why you see many black cars, for example, or black suits. People like to be perceived that way. A brand uses black in their logo or website if they want to be seen as serious, elegant, and expensive or because they absolutely don't care and just use their company name written in black. That's also possible. But black can also seem depressing, sad, or dominating. There is no empathy, no specific vibe or energy being transported. Because of its complete lack of light and hue, Black doesn't shift in any direction on the color wheel, like warm or cold, energetic or relaxing. Black doesn't reveal anything. It's just there, strong and powerful without any bias or vibe. It can be used in any situation to support any other color, often to make them glow more intensely. Black works excellently as a contrast to bright, striking colors, and it makes any of them way more intense than they would be by nature, which makes it a super useful tool in art and design. Just a few black outlines already make a huge difference in people's perception of a visual. The color black is one of the best ways to frame something or to direct the viewer's attention somewhere. You can use black either as a focus point in a sea of light and color, which makes the subject seem powerful or even evil, or you can use it to surround a focus point, which makes the subject seem weak, helpless, or also heroic. Most of the time, I would say that black is just this tool for contrast to enhance other colors. But black itself can also have some unique effects. Some interior designers swear on the fact that it makes an environment more calm when used sparingly. But black is also known as the color for mourning, loss and death, also evil. So this is an interesting case. Black is arguably even more contextual than any other color due to its simplicity, which you can tell by looking at these contrasting meanings. So it's difficult to attribute any super specific effects to it that always work. This color is the classic choice if you don't know what else to do. Start with a bunch of black or add some black and see how the whole vibe of visual changes. Here's a tip specifically for digital art. Start with a black canvas and sketch and white. I really like that, and I think it's severely underrated. It just feels different and very refreshing. In traditional art, it's, of course, a bit more difficult to draw or paint white on black. Maybe you'll find a way, but in digital art, at least, you must try this out. How you use black in your painting, design or logo can influence a lot how it feels. The addition or removal of even a little bit of black will always make a huge difference in your work more than any other color. What's really cool about black is that due to its lack of light and energy, it literally cannot become hard on the eye. When you have white and you add other saturated, intense colors on top, it can be a bit tiring. But when there is a lot of black as a basis, even the most saturated colors will not get annoying. You have this confident calmness of black that keeps everything in check while still letting the glowing hues do their job. That's awesome. Black is so dominating that colors that get close to it like very dark red or very dark blue will quickly just have the effect of black when you put them next to other colors. There really isn't that much of a difference in vibe between almost black yellow, almost black turquoise, and almost black purple, but just tiny effect differences that can maybe help you optimize color schemes. That's very advanced, though. You will use black a lot as an artist or designer, but be careful with it. Black is not really a color, but more like a manipulation of color, a supporter for other colors that you can always rely on. It's a tool for contrast that lets you create awesome artworks and designs. But once again, if you use it alone as the main color, be very clear about what you want to achieve. It can have powerful symbolisms and meanings that quickly shift as the context changes. Combine black with bright chromas to create contrast, and you're pretty much guaranteed to have something that grabs attention without being too hard on the eye. That's the true power of black. 17. Understanding White: Moving on to the opposite of black, we got white. White light is the combination of all colored light, which means white has no hue and is basically just the definition of brightness. Any color as it gets brighter and brighter fades to white. This makes white pretty much the baseline for most artworks and designs. It's the color of a blank paper, a blank canvas, and it's the default background color in pretty much every drawing and design software. White is a symbol of perfection and completeness, no shade, no hue, just glowing light. It is impartial, independent, and neutral. This is why white is the color of the internationally recognized flag for surrender. There is nothing going on anymore. Just stop it. And white doves stand for peace and neutrality. It's clearly visible in nature because aside from clouds, there are rarely any big white surfaces. All the white that we see is either very small or artificial. So I think white also evokes a sense of order and trust. Something that's permanently white must be taken care of. I mean, a white horse, for instance, will not stay white for a long time if it moves freely through nature. An exception to this natural relationship that we have with white could be fresh snow. When that happens, there is a lot of white. But again, that's also temporary and vulnerable. Snow quickly gets muddy, gray or brown if there is not more of it. So this is where we can start interpreting this color. It's an expression of neutral excellence and something that's new. White is frequently worn by priests or other religious authority. It has unique, ritualistic meanings in different cultures. So many people will put on white for certain occasions, but this differs from culture to culture. It can be the color for mourning in some and the color for marriage in others. White waits to be filled or combined with other colors. It's pure, innocent, neutral, and nice. So its symbolism is mainly peace and neutrality, like the doves or the white flag. There are no shades in white, which makes it the most easy going and soft color out there. Look at toys or clothes for babies. They are often colored in pastel, which means a color mixed with lots of white. This makes any color soft and neutral, no matter its original meaning and effect. With enough white, it becomes easy on the eye and innocent. In the same way, black works just the other way around. Now, is that all for white? Just nice and neutral? Of course not. White can also be used in a very different way to create striking visuals, heroic scenes, memorable artworks and lots of tension inner design. Think of the examples for using black from the last lesson, just reversed. When everything is dark, you look at the single white part of an image, and when everything is white, you look at the bit that's darker or colored. This is just how it works. Because white is the color of light itself, it is, along with black, the best color when it comes to creating contrast. I don't think this comes as a surprise. What's different from black in terms of use, though, is that white can actually become tiring to look at if it's combined with other bright, saturated colors. Because it's the combination of all light, it's naturally very intense. If it's used alone like on a blank canvas or a white paper, this is no problem. It doesn't intrude anything. Also, if it comes in variations like pastel or cream, which are technically not white, but just other colors with very strong tins. All that is very easy going and neutral because we've all gotten used to seeing much white nowadays from clothing, housing, snow or writing. But if you use white as a basis for other intense colors, it can actually be too much. That's something to be aware of when using it in art. Black makes saturated colors glow, yes, but it also suppresses them in a weird way, and they often look smaller when they are surrounded by darkness. So that kind of keeps them in check, and you can experiment more freely on a black surface. White, however, kind of glows along with the other hues. So it can seem like white is trying to outshine the other colors. It can quickly look childish and annoying when you put lots of different colors on top of white. It's not necessarily bad, just risky because it gets very tiring if you're not careful. That's partly why I'm using a dark background in this course, just to be safe when I'm using all these visuals and color wheels. But I also just like it. Brands often use white as the main color in their designs or logos, but mostly because they don't know better or they don't care. They already have a great name with popularity on its own, or they have a very good reason not to use other colors like clothing brands. I mean, the corporate colors of Puma or Adidas are just black or white, depending on what piece of clothing they want to print their logo on. So if your products are always different in terms of color, it absolutely makes sense to just use black or white or both for your company design. But that's more an exception. Because white is so neutral and doesn't go in any particular direction in terms of white, it's not really attention grabbing or memorable on its own. So white alone is not a very useful color if you want to stand out with your design. It's better just viewed as a tool for contrast or something to add a tint to other colors to create more detail. A little bit of white is almost always a cool addition to a painting. Whenever you have some highlights that are naturally just a bright version of the object's color, sprinkle some white on it anyways. It almost never seems out of place and just gives it more contrast. The impressionists really like doing that, and they are some of the best when it comes to using color. So always look out in your painting where you could potentially add some white finishing touches, even if it's just a few dots or sprinkles in the highlight areas. You can probably use it more often than you imagine. So, yeah, white might not be a real color, technically, but it's still an important part of most artworks and designs. You can definitely use it to achieve psychological effects, either as a neutral, clean and innocent basis or as a tool to create powerful contrasts. 18. Understanding Gray: I almost forgot about one color. Last but not least, we got gray, which is also very interesting. Okay, I think I said that about literally every single color here, but I mean, it's true. Colors are just interesting, guys. Come on. Can we agree on that? Alright, let's not get sidetracked. Gray is not a hue. It has zero saturation, and it's basically on a range between black and white. So grays that are closer to black will share these effects, and grays that are closer to white will share those effects. That's basically it. But what happens when we have this gray in the middle? Are there any special effects, any unique meanings that it has? Well, let's find out. When you see a gray surface, what do you think? Is it depressing? Is it boring? Is it calming or comforting? I think people have very individual relationships with the color gray. It's once again, very neutral because it has no hue, and therefore, it's open to interpretation. In nature, gray is found in rocks and stones off the ground and the sky on a very cloudy day. It's this rainy kind of suppressing color that transmits a sense of calmness. From art and cinema, we've been conditioned to think of gray as the color for sadness or loneliness, but it can also stand for professionalism, modesty and self restraint. Just held back and stable without going in any extreme direction like black or white. It's definitely a unique case. Any color, if you mix it with gray, so you're creating tones of it will just have less and less of its natural effects. So it just gets neutralized. Gray can be seen as the color for oldness. Old people like to dress gray, and they have gray hair often. And black and white movies are pretty much entirely gray. So a visual where there is a lot of gray will often seem mysterious and ancient. This can be a cool thing. For example, in video games, gray areas have a very interesting vibe to them, like they are trying to hide something. If a company uses gray, however, it's trying to signal that it's just conventional and not really anything else. This is arguably the least attention grabbing color out there, so it's not really something that you'll see in many logos. It is increasingly used for drinks or food packaging, though, probably because of that mysterious professional vibe. Gray has been very underrepresented in product design, especially supermarkets. So companies are beginning to notice its potential for standing out. But gray alone, it's mostly used as a background color. The color gray can seem dull and monotonous if it appears without anything else. Some people really don't like it because it can seem depressing and sad. But this is, again, not universal. What is universal about gray is this. It's really good to use dark gray with chromas on top in order to get a visual that's not as intense and intrusive as with black, but it still manages to make the saturated colors pop in an awesome way. So that's one of the best uses of dark gray. As you probably know, people really like the dark mode on a website or application, and that is rarely pitch black, but pretty much always dark gray for the reason that I just laid out. It's an awesome basis to put any other colors on top. So this is generally how you will see gray being used. It's not an uncommon color, but mostly for backgrounds and as a support color. It can have potential to create memorable logos for artworks. And especially beginner artists and designers will often shy away from using this color because they think it's boring. But if you know how different gray can appear when you shift its value, that's not the case at all, and you'll realize that it has lots of potential. It's flexible and neutral, and it can always be incorporated if you don't know what else to do. For example, in interior design, gray arguably fits in even more places than black and white because it's not so extreme, especially dark gray, in my opinion, you can probably tell that I really like this color. Alright, as you probably know by now, gray is a bit special, and there really isn't that much to say about it specifically. But based on this and the previous lessons, you should have developed an understanding of how to think about these colors yourself, like, which aspects to pay attention to. That's ultimately what we want. You see, I frequently use terms like contrast, saturation, high energy or low energy to drive the best uses for each of these colors. Maybe you've already started to see patterns here, but if not, don't worry. We'll come back to that when we talk about color schemes and color palettes. And, yeah, I think this is it. That was everything you need to know about the most important colors. Now let's continue. 19. Color & Culture: Now you know quite a lot about the effects that different colors can have on viewers of your artworks and designs. Or do you? There is actually one important point that we should not forget about, and that has to do with where our associations with colors come from. As I've told you, there are two main ways in which color can affect us, based on our instincts and evolution or based on what we've learned in our society. And well, here's the thing. Societies around the world are quite different. Oh, no, so does this mean that the color psychology that we've learned only applies to a few specific parts of the world? Don't worry. Not really. What I've taught you so far are very universal associations that people make with colors, because the symbolism of colors usually doesn't come from anywhere, obviously. The societal effects are often based on the evolutionary effects, and they've just evolved a bit further, which means that you can use what you've learned so far very well in most cases, and it will have the desired effect on most people on the planet. Red stands for energy, blue stands for relaxation, yellow stands for joy, and green stands for growth. This is pretty much the same all around the world, so you can count on these effects. And this is why we've covered just the main colors, even though there are countless hues in between them. If we did analyze those, then there would be a lot more speculation, and the differences in meaning would be so marginal that it's uninteresting. What I introduced you to were just the main poles of color, the general directions in terms of feel and effect that are very reliable. When it comes to specific symbolism, however, that's a lot more tied to culture. Symbolism is something different than the immediate effect that a color has. For instance, red is very energizing, but in China, this is perceived as a more prosperous energizing, while in the West, it's a more romantic energizing. This is how we can think about this issue. The main effects are still true, but there are some nuances in the symbolism. Now, if you make artworks, the symbolism of your colors is probably less important than whether or not they just look nice and fitting. You can mainly focus on color harmony and color palettes in art. That's why we're going to talk about that in depth later on. But specifically for brand and logo design, I have to tell you something before we move on. You often have to deal with the fact that in different countries, colors can have different meanings, which might have an impact on how your brand is perceived, so watch out for that. In India and China, for example, rides are color for weddings. While in South Africa, it stands for grief and mourning. And the color purple looks expensive in most countries, but it actually looks cheap in some others, at least in the right context. So symbolism can vary a little bit, but that's not everything. There are also group specific differences in terms of color preference and color perception. Blue is the number one, most popular color for both men and women. But for number two, it's not so clear because men tend to prefer green and not like pink or purple as much, while for women, it's the other way around. Also, there is research showing that in some societies, including what we call the West, women are generally able to name and distinguish more different colors than men, which is quite interesting. If you ask me, I would say that's maybe because women are on average, more the ones who obsess with interior design or fashion design, like which exact color the new carpet shall have or the new dress. And those are the only two areas of design where these unique color terms are actively being used, like Burgundy red versus Maron. Men are usually more like, A, that's a blue shirt. Nice. Anyways, that's just my personal wild guess and a side note. It's also funny to look at which colors actually have names in different societies. While in Japan, blue and green have literally the same name. The Inuit have 17 different names for shades of white. Yeah, because they spent basically all their life in the snow and they just describe different shades and tones of that snow with different words, which makes sense for them, but seems totally stupid to most people. That's a little fun fact that illustrates how big the difference in color perception is amongst different societies. But not only culture and gender can play a role in our relationship with color. Age, too, is a thing that you should look out for. Young children, on one hand, generally prefer intense and warm colors, which you can tell by looking at toys. They're usually very bright, saturated and have warmer hues. On the other hand, the older people get, the more likely they are to prefer colder, more classy, and less saturated colors. Also, people in sunny climates like Africa, on average, prefer bright, saturated color palettes, while people in colder places like Scandinavia, for example, like tones that are cooler and more neutral. Now, obviously, not every person that's part of a group acts like that group all the time. Not every African's favorite color is red. Not all kids only enjoy warm colors, and not all women are able to name more colors than the average man. These are just statistics and the results of many, many surveys and studies. Individual people often have their own tastes, so you can't make sure that your design speaks to everybody the same way and has exactly predictable effects. That's just impossible. But the statistics are still there, and they simply predict probabilities, which makes them very useful for marketing. When you use a less saturated color palette for a marketing campaign in Norway, not every single Norwegian will love it automatically, but the probability that it works is statistically higher than if you went with a bright saturateed color palette, that one would probably have better chances in South America. Obviously, you should not just research the favorite color of your target audience for a design and only use that. It also heavily depends on the type of product you're selling, your brand image, your personal style, color psychology, and stuff like that. These are all factors that you can take into account when you select colors for something. And you should have understood that by now. But culture and the people who you want to speak to are also factors that can be very helpful in your decision making. It could be that crucial bit of extra information to perfect the color scheme of a design, and many people forget about this. If you want to target a specific audience, this also applies to your art. You can use these group specific color effects to make your work look pleasing for that audience specifically. By doing this, you can increase the probability of your message working and your colors looking great. That way, you're in many cases already far ahead of your competition. Generally, you can rely on the color psychology that I've taught you so far. But if you plan a specific campaign, don't forget to check for additional symbolisms of your colors. A quick search will help you mostly confirm and sometimes adjust. That's just a little thing if you want to achieve certain effects. So because this is only for specific cases, I'm going to link you a resource where you can look up unique symbolisms that colors have in different societies. Check it out. 20. Color Context: If you want to use color in any way, you must be aware of color context because colors can look very different depending on how you connect them. Not paying attention to this is probably one of the most common mistakes that designers and artists make when using color, and you don't want to be one of them, right? Here's what you need to know about color context. Whenever there are two colors next to each other, they influence how they look and how they feel, especially when they are quite similar. That's already the basic point that you have to remember. Take this purple right here, for example. If I place it on a more bluish color, it looks warm and glowing because compared to the background color, it is. But if I now put the same purple onto some sort of red, it looks cold and even a bit exaturated even though it's the exact same color. Or look at this red square, put on different backgrounds. Notice how it has very different effects. It looks striking and intense on black, a bit dull on white, brilliant on blue and almost lifeless if you put it on orange. Now, this might seem obvious to you right now because I'm actively talking about it. You know that I'm using the same purple and the same red in each case because I've said it. So maybe the difference in effect seems not as strong to you right now. But in reality, when you consume visuals or we could also just say, Look at colors, this context is a lot more subtle and we often don't realize it. We always interpret colors a bit differently depending on what's around them. So here's the deal. Don't just think of colors as absolutes. This color is warm. That one is cold, this one looks happy, and that one looks sad. Yes, colors do have absolute meanings that you can rely on most of the time, but you should also consider a color's relative position to its surroundings, because adding other colors around it can make it appear very different. Not just in terms of color temperature, but also in terms of visibility, intensity, value, or even the psychological effects. All those things can change when you see a color in a different context. Now, does this always happen? Don't worry. Absolutely not. Color context is mostly strong when the colors are close to each other on the color wheel and have similar values and saturation. Depending on the direction in which you move when adding another color, it will have an according effect on simular colors around it. When you have an artwork with mostly blue and gray that looks very old and you add purple and green, those colors look pretty warm compared to the rest. Green and purple are officially neutral in temperature, but even if you make them a bit colder, they will still look warm compared to blue and turquoise. But if we take colors that are further apart on the color wheel, they pretty much always look pure and accurate because there is lots of contrast between them and they don't really interfere with each other. They don't like, try to steal each other's effects. So when colors are further apart, they don't directly compete and each color can do its job. This green looks very green, and this pink looks very pink. They don't cancel each other out, but instead, they even seem to strengthen each other, which you can use to your advantage. But more about that later when we talk about color schemes. Considering color context this way also has a few implications for looking at color generally. For example, that there is no clear cut off between warm and cool colors, two general poles, turquoise being the coldest and orange being the warmest. All colors just look warmer or colder compared to these poles and in relation to each other. So in the mid ranges, purple and green, this color context is especially important. They can go either way in terms of temperature. Of course, you can make surveys where you show people the whole color wheel and ask them which hues are warm and which are cold. This is how this categorization is generally done. But I guarantee you if you show people these hues in a different context, you can get very different answers from them. This, of course, gives you the amazing opportunity to achieve certain effects without having to rely on the most extreme colors for that effect. You can make your image a bit warmer without having to disturb your color palette with yellow or orange. This is what color context enables. All right. For values and saturation, color context is also effective. A very clear example of this is this gray line put over a transition from black to white. It almost looks like the gray has a color transition, too, ranging from a brighter gray on the left to a darker gray on the right. But if I remove the background, you immediately notice that it's just 1 gray, and you've been tricked by color context. Or also these squares. It's quite interesting how different the brighter squares on the inside seem, even though they are exactly the same. All these classic optical illusions with color are basically just extreme examples of color context. This is how you can understand. For example, also the Bsel effect. Yes, I'm pronouncing this right because he was German. Intertwined lines like this appear to have different colors depending on what surrounds them, even though their color is constant. To be honest, I don't think this effect is as strong here as some of the other color context illusions, but it's a common occurrence in practice, especially if you make very detailed paintings where there are overlapping branches of different values and shades, for instance. Be aware of how your colors could be perceived in cases like this. It's often the best to make each of them distinct not only through hue, but also value and saturation. That's something that many people forget. As I've said, if all the colors are further away from each other, they all do their own thing, and it's easier to predict and control their effects than when they were similar. Color context also works in the dimension of time. So when colors change over time, they may still be influenced by colors that came before them. Here's a rather extreme example of this that you perhaps already know. Look at this yellow screen and keep your eyes on the.in the middle. Just hold on for a second. Don't look away. Just a bit more. Keep going. And here we go. What are cool, bluish purple? Or is it? Actually, this is just white, which will become clear in a second as the effects from yellow wear off. But your brain has gotten used to the yellow during the time you've looked at it. And once it's gone, everything looks like it's complementary to yellow, which is this purple, bluish tone. Another example of color context. In videos or movies where colors can change over time, this is something that you should keep in mind. For example, when the protagonists spend some time in an area with a very dominant color and they enter a new scene, that scene will have a very strong complementary vibe to the previous one, even though it may have completely neutral colors. This effect gets stronger the longer you spend in a certain color environment. So in movies, especially, this has huge potential. So here's what you should remember. Whenever you add another color to your artwork or design, think about the effects that this color would have, not just the absolute effects, like, is this a warm color? Does this color look bright and energetic, but also the relative effects. Is this color warmer, brighter or more or less energetic than the colors that are already there, and would it be fitting? Would it change anything of note? Adding a tone of yellow does not necessarily make an image up here more warm, even though it is technically still a warm hue. Same thing for value and saturation. Always keep our colors context in mind and combine its absolute with relative effects in order to stay in control. That's the way to do it. 21. Color Harmony: Now we are entering the core of this course, the really important stuff that you've been waiting for. Welcome to color harmony. Color harmony is the science, if you can call it that, of making colors look good together, which is quite useful like every time you use more than one color. So we're done with this color does this and that color does that, and we are now going to explore how to pick multiple colors for your work and how to ensure they don't suck. Let's go. The first rule of color harmony is to not use too many colors at once. This is the most classic beginner mistake in pretty much every field of design or art. More is not always better. If you just spam colors and fill your whole image with supersaturated forms and shapes, you won't get more nice psychological effects from that. The only thing the viewers of your work will experience is a strong desire to look away because the colors start competing with each other for your attention, and it simply gets overwhelming. Colors generally work best when there is focus, nice balance, and not too much going on at once, so that each individual color can do its job properly. Choose a few fitting hues and stick with them. Better vary their value and saturation to create variety, rather than throwing in a new unrelated hue for everything. This is one of the quickest ways to make a visual look awful. Now, does this mean that you shouldn't make colorful pictures? Of course not, but every new hue that you introduce has to be carefully considered because it can change a lot. So to be safe, it's always better to just use less of them. Alright. But what if you do want to use more colors? I mean, there are countless artworks and designs out there that have many different hues and still manage to look great. Well, let's have a look. Often, you can observe that there are actually just one or two, maybe three colors that dominate a picture, and the other ones are just in the details. That way, they don't really compete with the main colors and look harmonious without being overwhelming. If you focus on just a few colors, you can usually add a few more in the details that are not directly related, and the picture will look great. Just a bit more spicy than with only a few main colors. Okay, another technique to make colors look good is to bring them closer together by lowering their saturation. Let me give you an example. Right here, we have many different colors that don't really connect with each other. They just look like a wild kindergarten party, and none of the colors really speak because they're all equally loud. But now, if I lower the saturation a little bit, the whole thing actually starts looking like a pleasing texture that could be used as a background for a text or a design or something. And if I now add some colorful brush strokes or letters, they tend to pop and look really nice against the desaturated background, not by themselves, perhaps, but you could surely imagine a picture with colors like this. This is a technique that you can observe in many paintings. The artist uses a few seemingly unrelated colors and connects them simply by bringing them close together with low saturation. This is a great way to create harmony between any colors, and it can be used to give your paintings an extra layer of detail in life. Having not just one color in a texture but multiple colors with low saturation is a pro trick to elevate your art to the next level. But not only scale or saturation can be used to connect unrelated colors. Another way is to create a strong value contrast between them. This is a classic. If you want to combine two or three random colors, you can make one or two of them very bright and the others very dark. We're talking almost black or white here. When there is a huge contrast of value between colors, there is focus and a clear separation. That way, the colors don't directly interfere with each other and each of them can do its job. The amazing thing is that we can actually combine this trick with the last one and create color harmony by bringing colors close together with very low value. And then we can have one bright saturateed color to stand out from them. For example, here, there are all these different unrelated hues in the shadows that create detail, but they are far from their chromas and just chill in the background, which allows us to put a very saturateed color on top. This also works the other way around, of course. When different colors are very high in value and they are close together in that way, we can add another darker, more saturated color on top. So you see, value contrast allows you to do many things. It's a versatile tool that you should pretty much always use to some extent. All right, I would say these are pretty much the basic rules. From a practical point of view, you're always safe if you just follow them. But if we go a bit further, we can actually do amazing things. For example, we can derive unifying principles from these rules that let us understand color harmony on a deeper level. We've established that the more intenser color is, the more it attracts attention and exudes energy. And this limits your ability to add more because it just becomes overwhelming at some point, logically. So you can one use less colors, two make other colors very small, three, make them desaturated, and four, make them very dark or bright. These are basically all just different ways to tame your colors, and they are not just absolutes, but they can be applied on a relative scale. So the more colors you add, the more you have to tame some of them by either making them smaller or bringing them closer together through value or saturation. Because if colors are very close, they don't really count as individual colors anymore in terms of perception. The hues in this texture are not all individual like elements of the color palette that have to be accounted for. They kind of melt into one, but each of them still brings something unique to the table, very subtly. If you don't have too many colors, they don't all have to be super desaturated or super small. But the more you add, the more that becomes necessary. This is how color harmony works. Some painters call this distributing colors based on weight. The idea is that the bigger and more intenser color is, the more it weighs, and the more it has to be balanced out with smaller or less saturated colors. This is, of course, not a mathematically precise balance that you have to use a calculator for, and you can play with more or less tension if you add more or less saturated colors. But it's about the general principle. Use the intense colors less and the neutral colors more. This is an approach that you can always rely on if you want to be safe in painting, no matter if your colors are officially related. All right, let's do a little exercise to make sure you understood the basics of color harmony. Which rules can you spot being used in this painting of mine? Pause the video if you want. Well, I did the following. Most of this picture consists of rather neutral colors, desaturated green and white. Then we have a bit of orange, brown, blue, turquoise, and red in the background here. But all of that doesn't occupy a huge area, and it's also not very saturated. Some colors are even brought closer together in value like this red, orange and green up here. They kind of join into one because they're all very dark. The most intense colors are down here in the flower texture, tiny bits of yellow, blue and pink Cromas combined with white, and I think this is black or very dark brown. This is where the action takes place. But the saturated areas are all very small, and therefore, the whole picture doesn't seem super intense. We often have white or yellow and black or dark green right next to each other, which results in lots of tension between the values. And yeah, I think there is pretty much every rule involved. So technically, this is a very colorful painting, and there is a lot going on, but the most intense colors are the smallest ones, and the heavy lifting to create visual interest is mainly done by the value contrast in the texture. So it's rich and busy but not too hard on the eye. At least I hope, so yeah, this is one way to do it. As you can see, these rules kind of work together very naturally. And once you really understand them, you can literally just scribble something together like this painting, and it's gonna look pleasing. That's the power of color harmony. Here we go. Try to focus rather than having lots of different colors. Choose a few main ones and you can add more on the details. If you want to use multiple hues in the texture, lower their saturation and always use different values to create contrast. Okay, sounds great. But what if you want to create harmony between strong colors? Obviously, not everything can be a desaturated texture or a tiny detail. Well, you've heard me talk about related and unrelated colors. So let's clear up what that means and explore which colors generally work well together. There are probably more options than you're aware of. 22. Color Schemes: Ladies and gentlemen, it's time that I introduce you to the most useful tactic for picking colors and creating harmony, and that is using a color scheme. A color scheme is a framework that you can utilize to find out which hues work well together in an artwork or a design. So hue scheme would be technically more correct, but it is what it is, and it's called color scheme. Color schemes are well explored, and pretty much every artist and designer uses them to some extent. If your selection of colors is based on a color scheme, you can be pretty sure that it looks harmonious. I've split this up into several lessons, so I can completely focus on each color scheme individually, and you can quickly look up how it works if you need one because there are very interesting differences between these color schemes, and they each have unique applications. So pay attention. You definitely want these in your toolkit. Here are the six main color schemes. 23. The Monochromatic Color Scheme: First of all, we got the good old monochromatic color scheme. Monochromatic means it's basically just one hue with different shades and tints. Who would have thought if you use only one color, you can't really go wrong. Awesome. So technically, monochromatic is not a color scheme because you're not combining different hues, but there are still important things to be aware of when using it. So let's talk about what should you pay attention to when using only one hue. Well, the thing about monochromatic color schemes is that your values and your subject need to be really good. When you don't have any interesting combinations of colors, the viewers will naturally focus completely on the subject, the values, and the shapes. So they have to be on point if you want your work to be appealing or just visible. Also, the color has to perfectly fit the subject. For example, in an artwork where you have only one color, a lot of the feeling of the image will be based on the effects of that color. So you have to choose it very carefully and be aware of its psychology, which is exactly what we've already covered extensively. If you make a completely monochrome picture, the color will pretty much become a subject of its own. This is the unique thing about this color scheme. When multiple colors occur naturally because of the subjects, then viewers will not think about these colors too much. Right here, the trees are brown, the leaves are green, you're not going to think too deeply about the symbolism of these colors. But if you overlay a single color, which you often have to do if you want to make a picture monochromatic, there is always this vibe of the color. We wonder, why is everything green here? What does this mean? And that is very unique about this color scheme. The effect of a monochromatic color can even override effects from the subjects. That's how powerful colors are. Even the most chaotic scene will seem kind of calm if it's just blue. And an unspectacular, normal photo, if it switched to purely red will seem very intense, like there is something deeply dramatic going on. So this is important to keep in mind. It can make for very interesting scenes if they have one color, but that color is in contrast to what's going on to the subjects, because the color will kind of become a subject on its own. Many modern artists have understood that, and they often use this juxtaposition of color and subject with a monochromatic color scheme. Could be a cool idea for you, too. In marketing, of course, the message of your logo, if it has a monochromatic color scheme, also has to do a lot with that singular color. So this is the one wipe that makes or breaks your image, which can have positive but also negative effects based on the color psychology and the context in which you are. The monochromatic color scheme has the big advantage that its effects are very predictable. So it's a reliable tool to be precise and stay control of a visual's effects. It can result in a very focused and atmospheric scene or a clear message in design. By the way, if there is just a tiny variation in the hues, it also counts as a monochromatic color scheme. It doesn't have to be all exactly that one hue, but when the hues are just close enough to each other, that value and saturation become the only way to distinguish them. That's when we call it monochromatic. So, yes, you can still have a little bit of hue variation in this color scheme if you want. Just a tiny bit, though. I think it's great practice to create images with monochromatic color schemes because it helps you focus more on values and shapes, and that's a powerful basis if you understand it. We'll talk about the true power of values in the advanced color theory section, but the functionality of monochromatic colors already highlights it. It's awesome to purely focus on values. If you want to make dramatic scenes with lots of light and contrast, so many dark and bright elements right next to each other, it's often smart to make it monochromatic, because with more colors, it can quickly become hard on the eye. But then, of course, the color really has to be fitting. So this color scheme is definitely not just for beginners who want to be safe. Monochromatic colors may seem boring at first glance, but you'll encounter them more often than you think. And they are a fundamental tool that you always need to use sooner or later in art and design. 24. The Analogous Color Scheme: If you want to achieve similar effects, but feel like using more than one color, it's a good idea to go for an analogous color scheme. Analogous colors are colors that are next to each other. So this one uses two, three, or four colors that are adjacent to the color wheel and therefore just naturally work well together because they have roughly the same, let's say, vibe and usually a simular color temperature. Analogous colors are always easy on the eye because none of them really stand out, but they still provide enough variety to have visual areas with different energies, which creates interest. So the analogous color scheme is very flexible and usually results in a comfortable and peaceful mood. You can often find analogous colors in nature with different shades of green and blue that look really nice together or differently colored rocks. This is a very beginner friendly color scheme because it's easy to understand and hard to do wrong. Just pick a few colors that are next to each other, and your artwork or design will surely look pleasing, pretty much without any risk at all. In branding, analogous colors are also versatile and applicable. For example, when you have corporate colors that occupy a small analogous range of the color wheel, you can play with that very well. All the hues are roughly similar, so they don't have a drastically different vibe, but there is still enough distinction to create variety. Make the wipe site more purple, the employee's clothing more blue, and the logo both. So it all fits together in one general be, but there is still uniqueness to different areas, and it doesn't all look the same. That's a safe and common use for the analogous color scheme, when you have to choose colors for many things at on as a designer. In art, the analogous color scheme is very useful if you want to play with values once again. Analogous colors don't have lots of contrast by themselves, which allows you to go more crazy with light and shadow. Generally, you should not overextend your analogous colors. The more hues you add, the more you have to tame some of them. Remember color harmony. It is possible to make a big range of analogous colors, but then it's more risky if you make all of them saturated. It could get overwhelming. So you have to make some color smaller, less saturated or bring them closer together in value. And this usually works very well. However, here comes the issue with the different color wheels because, as you know by now, the RYB color wheel puts a bigger emphasis on the red to yellow range, and the RGB color wheel puts a bigger emphasis on the light green to Turquoise range. So if you use analogous colors from your color selector and a software, which is usually RGB, you can choose from more colors if you are here and less colors if you are here. So you can include a bigger range of analogous hues when they include green and a smaller range if they include yellow, orange or red. That's what you have to be aware of. If you use an RYB color wheel for picking your color scheme, you can extend it a bit more on the red to yellow range. So when you already have many colors around here, it's probably fine if you add another one next to them, and it's still analogous and harmonious. But the green turquoise range is a bit more compressed here and has, let's say, more real hues per angle. So you should make your analogous color range a bit smaller because it quickly seems like there are too many different hues from these greens to blue all the way to purple. Usually the analogous color scheme refers to a maximum range of something like that, like a quarter of a color wheel. That's what I call the safe zone for analogous colors, no matter if it's RGB or RIB. This is one of the most reliable combinations to use, even with high saturation in all hues. That's how well analogous colors work together. It's beginner friendly, harmonious, accessible, and it's easy to understand, right? If you can't really go wrong, if you use a few similar hues. So that's the analogous color scheme. Awesome. By the way, one side note before I end this lesson, looking at these first two color schemes, if you paid attention, you may have noticed that this is all basically just an extension of the color harmony rules. You can create harmony by bringing colors closer together through saturation, value, and now also hue. That's an analogous color scheme. Just colors brought close together in terms of hue. Also monochromatic. There the hues are just very close together. So color theory should start to make more and more sense to you now. But we still have a lot to cover, so let's move on to the next color scheme, which in my opinion, is much more interesting. 25. The Complementary Color Scheme: Alright, now we have something really exciting and popular the complementary color scheme. I'm sure many of you have been waiting for this one. Complementary is pretty much the opposite of monochromatic and analogous color schemes because a pleasing harmony of simular colors is not the only way to make a visual look appealing. Striking contrast is also a method, and that's what complementary colors do. For a complementary color scheme, you pick one color, and then you pick the one on the opposite side of the color wheel, blue and orange, purple and yellow, red and green. These are classic complementary color pairs that you can use to create intense and striking visuals. However, due to the fact that there are slightly different color wheels, you can also slightly move left or right when choosing your complementary color. But in order to have a complementary effect, the two chosen colors should be very far away from each other. That's the criteria. They need to have at least an opposing color temperature. Just remember this and you're good to go, no matter if you're using the RGB RYB or CMY color wheel. So your complementary to yellow could not only be purple as an RYB, but also dark blue as an RGB. They both work equally well with as bright yellow as a contrast. So there is that. Complementary colors are very popular because they naturally create harmony, and using them is a great way to make an image appear interesting and pleasing, but not through a calm and harmonious look, but because of the tension that complementary colors have between them. You don't even need to give your complimentaries different values of saturation in order to create contrast. They naturally have it. If they are both less saturated, the picture looks more complete and harmonious. And if they are more saturated, they definitely get more attention and contrast. When you have a visual where two colors bring totally different effects to the table, you can play with that very well. Often complementary colors are used to intensify the polarity between two parties, like good and evil, for example. And light and shadow areas in movies or video games are very often highlighted with complementary colors orange and blue because that always gives it a very complete look with opposing energies serving different tasks. But they can also be used to give a uniform element more depth, like a pattern. Complementary colors are just a natural eye catcher, and that's why they are pretty much everywhere. Many brands and sports teams use complementary colors in their logos. Plus, complementary colors are the reason why many things look nice, like a Christmas tree or a sunset over the sea. Opposing hues are the classic way to make something look complete. Here's a pro trick for using complementary colors that many people don't know about. You don't have to use only two colors. You can also pick a few analogous colors and then add a single complementary color to them. This results in very rich and pleasing compositions, and it gives you more options than just two colors. But only add analogous colors to one member of the complementary color pair. Really just have a few analogous colors and then a singular complementary to create a little contrast. If you add more complementaries, you'll end up with too many colors, and this should be avoided. Can work in some situations, but the safe way is to choose a small range of colors for one part of the image and then a singular little contrast. Alright. By the way, it may seem smart to use complementary colors and texts to make it readable. Lots of contrast, you know. But this is actually something that you want to avoid. With high saturation, complementary color text immediately gets hard on the eye because there is too much contrast. And even with low saturation, it often looks kind of weird. That is because for text, you want to have a big value contrast. That is important. Hue contrast, like with complementary colors, is nice, but it can be tiring because if you imagine a text, it's basically just many, many small contrasts between the letters and the background. It's a very dense pattern, if you think about it. And if all of these contrasts are with complementary hues, that's possibly overwhelming. Okay. Notice that complementary colors generally work better when one color is dominating the other. Like in this image right here, for example, where we got a complementary color pair, but one color is obviously the main part, and the other one is a small accent. This always works well because you have the interest that complementary colors provide, but not too much tension between them. The same way, you can separate your complementary color pairs by making one of them way less saturated. This is also a great way to achieve harmony between them without making them too intense. If you make an image where two complementary colors are equally distributed and highly saturated, they might start to bite each other a little bit, and it looks like they are competing for your attention, which can be good or bad depending on what you want to achieve. But we'll talk more about the distribution of colors later. I really like to use complementary colors in combination with value contrast. So one part of the image may be very warm but also bright and another part may be cold but also dark. When value contrasts are supported by opposing hues, there is a clear separation of the subjects, and it's easy to play with the effects. This always works. Some might say that complementary colors are overused. They are easy to understand and many people know about them. But still, I would say that you can make very unique things using this color scheme if you explore the different options with analogous colors or different distributions. Always remember that it's a scale. Use more or less saturation for more or less tension or move the colors closer together on the color wheel. You can still make a picture with two colors opposing each other that are about this far away in terms of angle, may not technically be a complementary color scheme, but if you have only two, they still look very different and they can achieve a sort of complementary effect just with less intensity and contrast, but still harmonious if you don't overdo it with the saturation, and if you're aware of this, you will find complementary colors or something close to them in one way or another in so many different situations. It's amazing how flexibly opposing hues can work together. So the complementary color scheme may seem mainstream, but with all these options to modify it, this shouldn't stop you from using it to make artworks and designs that stand out. 26. The Triadic Color Scheme: Alright. Moving on, we got the triadic color scheme. A triadic color scheme utilizes three colors that are equally far away from each other on the color wheel and create a triangle like that. So it's a bit like complementary, but with three colors opposing each other instead of two. This results in a more rich color selection. If you choose to go with a triadic color scheme. The colors from completely different parts of the color wheel each bring a different energy with them. So you have a lot going on with this scheme. It can shift back and forth between perceived tension and completeness. Triadic colors therefore give you many options, but it's also a bit tricky to pull off, especially if you want to make a big artwork with them. This scheme is useful predominantly when you want to color something simple with flat surfaces and not too many values and tones. This is why triadic color schemes are a popular choice for eye catching logos or also minimal websites. You just have a few simple shapes with triadic colors, and then it's fine. They have a good amount of variety while still looking harmonious and complete. Depending on which color will you use, the triadic scheme can also shift. It's definitely still functional when two colors are a bit closer to each other. But the idea is that for it to be a triadic color scheme, you should have lots of distance between all the hues, and they all bring a different wipe with them. That's how it works. I've told you that you can expand the hues on one side of a complementary color scheme. So you can add a few analogous colors to one member of the pair, and it still counts as complementary. This should be avoided with triadic color scheme. It already has lots of different energies, and therefore, it's best to just stay within a tiny range for each element. You naturally, if you make a picture, use hues that are not 100% the same. You will always shift a little bit left and right on the color wheel for each hue, no matter which color scheme you're using. This is normal, so don't worry. But for the triadic color scheme, really try to minimize this. Focus completely on the three main hues and stay precise with them as good as you can. Otherwise, it might get overwhelming and it doesn't look harmonious anymore. It can be hard to pull off a triadic color scheme, because it often makes images look almost cartoony and very colorful if it comes with decent saturation. But if you handle it right, it's definitely awesome. It's safe to use in future lower the saturation in all colors, like right here, we have three very different hues with unique qualities, but they work nicely together because they're not super saturated and appear in different parts of the image. But it's also possible to implement the triadic color scheme with more intensity in some of the colors. But then composition becomes really important. Often, it can be confusing which color you want in which place, and I often recommend to separate your colors by subject or visual areas. For example, you can have two of the colors in the foreground and the other one in the background or a part with a pattern of two of the colors, and the other one filling out the rest. These are some ideas to make it work. Like with complementary colors, the triadic color scheme works best when one color dominates, and the other two are used as accents or two colors dominate, and one is the accent. But try to avoid an equal use of all three, and especially don't make all three super saturated, except you want to have something that looks very cartoony, like a logo, a website, or an outfit. I would say that you don't see the triadic color scheme too often in art, and that's because it's a bit tricky to pull off. But it's frequently used in a very subtle way with two opposing colors dominating, and then another one from another part of the color wheel somewhere in the details. So when the triadic color scheme is used in art, it's often more like a complementary color scheme with a small bonus color. That's how I would describe it. If you manage to implement the three colors somewhat equally and make all of them clearly visible, you definitely have something great and satisfying to look at. So watch out for opportunities to use this color scheme. It'll be awesome. Triadic the colors are a tool that requires a bit more precision to be used, but they are powerful if you can make them fit the subject, and each color serves a purpose. 27. The Split-Complementary Color Scheme: Oh, yeah, now we have one of my personal favorites, the split complementary color scheme. This one is made up of one color and then the two colors next to its complementary color. So it's basically like the triadic color scheme, but with two colors pushed closer together, therefore forming a bit more of a complementary coalition to the first one. You could also say that this is like a complementary color scheme, but with one element split in two with a gap where the complementary would be. So it's not too many hues. In effect, this makes the split complementary color scheme a mixture of the complementary and triadic. And this has a few interesting implications. We have one color, and the other colors kind of surround its opposing color. They have similar effects to the complementary. They are far away from the first color, but they don't quite approach it. So they have a comparable emotional effect, but with more subtlety and also variety because it's two colors and not one. With a split complementary color scheme, you can create tension between the colors, but also balance, depending on how you use it, which makes it really versatile. Generally, a split complementary color scheme with saturated colors makes images look joye and lively like this one right here. Many great artworks make use of this color scheme, which is quite understandable. It's super good and useful in art and design. In my opinion, a split complementary color scheme is one of the best ways to stand out amongst your peers or competitors. It's a little bit underrated and many artists and designers don't even know it exists. Or they've heard about it once, but shy away and just resort to complementary and analogous, sometimes triadic, because those are a bit more simple and intuitive. So this is a great way to create something unique, especially if you explore the ways to vary it. What I like to do and what I would recommend is using the one color as the main color and the opposing two as accents. Or you use the two colors a lot and then the single opposing one as an accent. This is generally the way I would do it because then there is a clear separation. So it's best to treat the split complementary color scheme kind of like a complementary color scheme. So if you look at the two opposing colors as one and put them in one part of the image, not to say that you have to do this, but this is just a safe approach. Once again, as for triadic, don't overextend the hue range in the split complementary color scheme. You want to be precise because there are three very different hues, especially the two colors that are closer together, should not both be wider and also not the opposing color. Probably the most reliable way to keep it harmonious is to extend one of the closer hues, so you can color elements more flexibly, like slightly different greens in nature. But only one, remember that. There is some confusion going on. What exactly counts as a split complementary color scheme? Because the hue distribution is a bit different on different color wheels, there is no exact line of separation between triadic and split complementary. What seems like split complementary in RGB may look a bit more like triadic in RYB or vice versa. Practically, this distinction is not super important because both color schemes work, but it helps to be aware of this to be more intentional with your color decisions. Each of these triple hue combinations in between can work out well. But the main difference between split complementary and triadic is that triadic has three colors that are each very different, while split complementary has two colors that are closer together in terms of feel and effect. So this is the question that you should ask yourself. Are all the colors really different or are two of the hues a bit more similar to each other? Because in split complementary, we have these very interesting opposing elements that surround a colors complementary, but don't quite approach it. This is how you can interpret the vibe of this color scheme. It's probably also underrated in logo design, web design, fashion design. So yeah, don't forget about this one. Split complementary is really nice, really versatile, and a great way to stand out. 28. The Tetradic Color Scheme: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, and finally, we got the tetradic or double complementary color scheme. Some people also call it square or something like that. This is a rare case where you have four saturated colors that are all clearly visible in a picture. Kind of difficult, but it can definitely work. This color scheme is composed of two pairs of complementary hues, like this, for example. So it provides you with a huge variety of color choices. And because there are so many options with so many hues, it can be hard to get a tetradic color scheme right. You should definitely not use all four colors equally in an artwork. This will result in a wild and overwhelming color composition that's really pleasing to look at. Generally, the tetradic color scheme works best when the two complementary pairs appear in different parts of your image and have different scales. You can, for example, separate the foreground and background of a picture very professionally by using different pairs of complementary colors for them. That way, both parts are visible and have internal contrast, but they are still distinct, which is super useful. Pretty much the only time where you can use all four hues equally is when you have a super simple subject, for example, a square, like the Windows logo. In that case, you can go all in, and it will look colorful, complete, and alive. The tetradic color scheme demands a very precise usage of hues. You want pretty much no analogous hue to any of your elements because it's already four very different colors, and you don't want to overwhelm the viewers. Have some mercy and stick with what you got. It's definitely advisable to not include too many additional value contrasts, for example, with black and white. When you have a tetradic color scheme and the colors are intense, better make some of your main hues darker or brighter to create value contrast and abandon their romas in return. You can also focus on one complementary color pair in a picture and then add the other one just the details. This can help you add a lot of depth to your visuals, and it's a very interesting method. So I would say that the tetradic color scheme is an advanced one. It should be used when there is a lot going on in your work that you need to separate somehow, and you really have a purpose for each color. When used right, the tetradic color scheme will result in a very rich and pleasing color composition. There are energies from pretty much all corners of the color wheel, so when done right, it just feels naturally complete, very nice, but still tricky, and I don't use it too often. As you have four main hues, you usually have to adhere to some other rules of color harmony. It's rather that you can just add four big saturated colors equally to a picture. In designs where you usually just have plain colors and not a lot of shades, tints, and tones, it's a bit more simple and effective. But also, there are not that many options. It's just quickly going to look like you're trying to imitate Google or Microsoft, by the very nature of this color scheme. So use it in pictures with a lot going on to nicely separate your visual areas and maybe use it a bit less in design. That's the tetradic color scheme. Here we go. 29. Using Color Schemes: Alright, ladies and gentlemen, these are the basic color schemes that you should utilize to become a master of color. So to be more precise, these are hue combinations that you can generally use with higher intensity and scale, and they will look pleasing. Look at any artwork or design that you like, and you will most certainly find one of these color schemes in one way or another. People sometimes make up more color schemes, but those mostly resolved from the variety in color wheels. So don't get confused if someone mentions another color scheme, this is all that you need to know so far. For example, the diet color scheme that people sometimes mention is basically a complementary color scheme with a little bit less tension. As I've said, with just two colors, you really have many options if you adhere to basic color harmony. A natural approach to making an artwork or a logo is to have a subject with one predefined color and then deciding which colors to add using a color scheme. For example, if your subject is supposed to stand out, you can just add one complementary color in the background. If your subject is supposed to be embedded in a lively environment, you can pick more colors using an analogous or triadic color scheme. Always think about how many hues would be appropriate. More of them usually results in more energy, and it makes your visuals look more alive. Think about whether you want more harmony, in which case, you would choose a scheme with colors on the same side of the wheel or tension for which you lean toward color schemes with opposing colors. You can start by choosing a fitting color scheme to pick the hues for your artwork or design and then simply vary their values and saturation. That way, you can fill your image with a variety of colors while making sure they look harmonious in fitter color scheme. And this works pretty much always. Now, once you've settled with a color scheme and selected the base hues, then it's still a good idea to use some color harmony. For example, let's say you have a nice triadic color scheme and you are ready to give every part of your image one of these colors. Should you make all of them equally big and saturated? Well, it can work because it's a color scheme, but it's still better most of the time to tame some of your colors, as we've established in color harmony. So you can make them smaller, less saturated, bring them closer in value, all that stuff. You will see color schemes and color harmony definitely work well together, and it's very intuitive once you get behind it. Now on to the question which color wheel you should use. When you're on a software, you basically have two options. You apply color schemes based on the RGB color selector, or you pull up an RYB color wheel to pick the hues, and you only change value and saturation in the RGB color selector. As I've said, I like to do the latter. I really like the RYB color wheel to pick my color scheme. So in the software, I mostly shift values and tones and don't pay too much attention to the hues once I've settled with them. I just slightly move them left and right, depending on where I want a bit more variety. But when converting between RYB and RGB, keep your mind open to the actual hues. This one is dark pink because RYB is a subtractive color model. So if you choose a color scheme with this color and you open your design software, you will not find this color as a chroma, because this is an additive RGB color selector. So this pink is super bright and you'll have to go to that and lower the value to get it in RGB. And vice versa, some colors are just displayed a bit differently in the color wheels, so keep your mind open and try to just focus on the hues and ignore values and stuff. In traditional art, you can also choose between RGB and RYB colors. Just look at any color wheel you like and replicate the hues with your paint. By the way, you can, of course, download the color wheels in the course resources. I don't know if I've mentioned this yet. So go ahead if you want them. All right, we're going to talk more about how to implement color theory in your process later. Then it will all become more clear. But this is just some info for color schemes. Don't obsess over the precise use and prioritize basic color harmony first. Then color schemes are a very flexible tool that allows you to spice up your work with a bit more intensity. That's the gist of it. Okay, once you've understood this, move on to the next lesson where we add another dimension to color schemes by exploring color palettes. 30. Color Palettes: Moving on, the next step after deciding on a color scheme is creating a color palette. Now, you might ask yourself, but what's the difference? Not even a bad question. Well, a color palette is like a color scheme, a collection of colors that you put together in order to model which ones you want to use in your artwork or design. But while a color scheme only refers to the hues and how they connect, a color palette is a direct color collection that also includes value and saturation to model the final colors of your work. So this is not only for hues, but for the actual colors that you're going to use, which is very practical because not only hues play a big role in your artworks and designs, but also values and the saturation of your colors. So it makes sense to model your colors and see if they work before starting the creation process. And that's what color palettes are for. This is basically the practical model where you can experiment with combining color harmony and color schemes to make sure everything looks great. Color palettes are very flexible. You can make fancy boxes in a design software or just draw some dots next to each other. You literally just want to see what your colors will look like in combination, so you can do whatever you like, whatever allows you to imagine the final result. Depending on where you look on the Internet, a color palette typically has 4-7 colors. But you can vary that. If you plan to create a big painting with lots of detail, you can make a color palette with eight colors or ten colors to see how they work together. Or if you design a minimalistic logo, you can also just experiment with two colors, for example, and just really fine tune their relationship. But color palettes are also flexible in terms of detail. You can make a color palette for an artwork and just model the two main hues with two different values for each. Or you can model five different values and saturation levels for each and end up with a color palette that has ten colors, which is a very precise plan for an artwork. There are no rules for how detailed you should get, but here is what I would do, my recommendation. Always include the most extreme colors of your artwork. So maybe one or two of the brightest colors, one or two of the darkest, the most saturated one, and at least one of every type of hue that you will use. You don't have to model every value and saturation level before making an artwork. This just doesn't make sense because there are usually way too many of them. But as you know, from color harmony and color schemes, there are usually only two or three maybe four main hues in an artwork or a design. If you make a color palette, you should include at least one variation of each of these hues and also the colors that you use the most. So some brown for the ground or whatever it is. Not every brightness level of it, but sort of the average of what you intend to do the average colors of the big areas. So a color palette, in my opinion, should always include the main hues, the most extreme colors, and the most common colors. And in most situations, this should result in you having about four to seven colors in that range. Alright, here are some simple example color palettes with five colors that I just made. I'm going to go over them real quick and explain them to you so you know the thought process behind them. Usually, a color palette contains a main color and at least one variation of it. So in this case, it's blue, and you can see I got some very dark blue in here as well. That's because we usually don't draw and design with plain colors in the purest form, but we vary them by adding shades and tints. And the color that you use the most is usually the one that comes in most variations, which is why you should include some of them in the color palette, just to see where it's going. And now you can see why we've covered color schemes so intensely because maybe you've already noticed, each of these palettes is based on a different color scheme. First, this is a bit tricky to spot, but we got a double complementary or tetradic color scheme, very desaturated and pastel because four saturated colors would be very intense and possibly hard to combine. But this way, as you can see, it works out great. Could be used to make some edgy, modern website or something. At least that's what they all seem to look like. Anyways, then we have a classic complementary color scheme, very deep and saturated blue, but desaturated orange, which makes it appear brown. That way, the colors don't have super high tension between them, but they look harmonious and easy on the eye, while each he still brings something unique to the table. So it could be used to paint like a ship on the sea or something. Alright, then we got a split complementary color scheme in this palette right here, green and purple shades with some very bright yellow as an accent. This one could be used for painting a garden with flowers or generally a scene in nature that looks very alive and full with color or for a modern website that's supposed to feel energizing, but not too extreme, which is what this unique color combination could do. Then we got an analogous color scheme with a nice transition from yellow to pink, but also from light to dark. These colors would make a very rich scene with one clear mood, like a sunset with many reflections in the clouds in the sea that results in all these colors being used, simple and harmonious. And this one, obviously a monochromatic color scheme, just one hue. And yeah, this could be used for anything that has this one color. You don't really have to make a color palette if you intend to create something with only one hue, because that makes it very simple to imagine. But I just wanted to include this color scheme here. And finally, we have a very intense triadic color scheme, including yellow, red, blue, but also black and white as ac sense. You just can't see the white right now unless I lower the brightness of the background a little bit. And yeah, this one would probably be fitting for a striking company logo or a modern package design. This is something that I highly recommend you do when you design a logo. Check if your color palette works equally well on both dark and bright backgrounds. As you can see, there would be visibility issues with some of these colors if they were used in a logo and you put that logo on a different background. This is also the case when you model the colors for a website. If there is supposed to be a dark mode, don't forget about it and adjust your colors until they work in both dark and bright context. Small hint, this is usually easy to achieve with lots of internal value contrast. But yeah, these are some examples for what your color palettes could look like in different situations. They all vary in their color scheme, in their range of hues and values, in their saturation, but also in their usability for art or design. There are so many options for color palettes that I'm sure you already have some ideas, but hold on to them for a minute. The amount of each color that you use is very important, too. Not only this color and this color and this color, but you should also define what's the main color and what are the axons. For example, split complementary color schemes often work best when the color on one side is the main color, and the two colors on the opposite side are used as axons. What I would do is start with the main color on the left side, maybe add one or two variations, and then the other colors. That way, you have an overview of your color structure before committing to your work. It can also help to model the scale of your colors. So the more you intend to use a color, the bigger you make it in the palette. This could be a great idea if you have trouble making colors work in more complex artworks, so try it out. All right. Before you start making a design or an artwork, create a color palette that gives an overview for your intended range of hues, values, and saturation. Ideally, based on a fitting color scheme. Instead of messing around with the color picker when you work digitally, just select the hues from your palette and only adapt value and saturation according to your needs. I like to put a color palette on a separate layer when working on digital art, for example, I turn it on and off whenever I need it to select a color, which is very practical. This works in any drawing or design software that has layers, which should be any of them. That way, you can make sure that your work is based on a good color harmony, and you don't have to think about fitting colors all the time. You can completely focus on the subject and creating awesome shapes. By the way, when you make a traditional artwork, it often helps to create a digital color palette first to really fine tune the colors because it's way easier to make adjustments. And then once you're happy, you can mix your real life colors so they look exactly like that palette, and it's going to work out. So yeah, there are many, many ways to use color palettes, and they are popular for a reason. Make one to imagine what an image will look and feel like in terms of color. Include your most important and most extreme colors and then fine tune them and make sure there is harmony before you start creating. That way, color palettes are a reliable insurance for your colors in art and design. Once you have a color palette, you don't have to worry anymore and you can completely focus on creating some nice shapes. Here we go. 31. The 60-30-10 Rule: Now, it's, of course, not only important which colors you use in your art and design, but also how much of which color. I've told you that you can use a color palette to make distinctions between, for example, the main color and the other colors. But are there actually any rules for color distribution as there are for color selection? In general, not really. You see, there are artworks that have two colors that work equally together. There are artworks with one dominant color and a few small contrasts. There are artworks with four main colors and so on. There is pretty much everything. So in art, your color distribution depends almost entirely on context, and you will find great looking artworks with very different uses of color, which is nice because you have a lot of freedom if you just use contrast and composition well. The only rules that you can rely on are still those from color harmony and color schemes that determine which hues you want to use. But how much of which color, that's up to you. In design, however, there is actually one reoccurring theme that I want to show you. It's not really a rule, but more a practical orientation for how much of which color you want to use to make something look pleasing. And that is the 603010 rule. The 603010 rule states that 60% of a visual should be the main color, 30% another color, and 10% should be an and color. You can mainly observe this in interior design, web and UI design. I would say, let's have a look at some examples. Right here, we got a super classic room that uses the 603010 rule, 60% white as interior designers like to do it. Then we got 30% brown in the chairs, table, and stairs, but also the carpet. And 10% is a small accent with these green plans that give the whole thing some life. Very classic. Another one. Here we got 60% blue in the wall, 30% brown in the furniture. And as the 10%, we got these white accents all over the room. Now, as you can see, there are also other colors in all these objects, but the point is that the main elements, the things that make up more than, let's say, 90% of the room, follow this 603010 rule. In order to switch it up, here's an example from a website where this is also very popular. We got white as the 60%, blue as the 30%, and nothing else. So it looks clean and harmonious, except a few yellow call to action buttons that they want the viewers to click on. Also, if you look closely, these penguins have a little bit of that yellow, too. On websites, this is quite a common occurrence. You have about 60%, a clean and nice neutral color like white, gray or black, then one color to contrast that. So one that's a bit different that you add to text boxes or other design elements. And then you have a 10% ax and color for the call to action buttons and the details that really stands out and draws attention to itself. So this is usually the most intense color because it's supposed to be noticed, and this often results in a nice harmony. Actually, I really like this website. It's simple, it's functional. It's not overwhelming, but it still has a smart use of color and things to look at. The 60, 3010 based color palette allows the designers to make all kinds of creative things. You see, they have images that follow it, text boxes, things you can click on. It's very effective. However, websites that contain many or big images usually cut back on the default colors because it would be too much. Images are naturally also a part of the visual composition, and if they have colors, which they often do, you have to calculate that in. So when you have many images on a website, maybe just use one big neutral for the background and a small accent for places to click on. That usually looks appropriate. So you can play with images more freely and don't have to worry which colors they contain, but you can still direct attention with the accent if you need it. In the case of our example website, they solve this issue by having a photo that simply follows their color palette, too. Also a smart solution. Actually, this applies in interior design, too, if you think about it. If you plan to hang multiple colorful paintings in a room, maybe cut back on the default colors of the furniture or make sure these paintings somehow fit into the color palette based on the rules that we've covered. Then it's especially awesome. Alright, you may have noticed the 603010 rule usually doesn't refer to only single colors, but more like groups of colors. The main color might not only be plain white, but white and light gray or white and light brown, like in this case. And the secondary color might not just be blue, but blue and a bluish green, for example. The only important thing is that the colors in each segment should be quite close to each other. If you look at their hue, value, and saturation, at least two of these aspects of the colors in one segment should be almost identical, so they look like they belong together. And when you are able to categorize your colors in three groups like this, you can use the 60, 30, ten distribution for all these color groups. Take this room, for example. The main color, the 60% is white, which allows for some variation in the hues of the other segments. So as the 30% segment, they put brown and blue. These two colors are quite different at first glance, but they have pretty much the same value and saturation, which is why they work together as one segment. And as the 10%, the accent, we obviously got these bright yellow chairs. They clearly stand out and therefore just make a very small part of the room. This is a great example for a more sophisticated use of the 60, 3010 rule. The rule is mostly used with neutrals like white, black or gray occupying one segment, often the big one or another desaturated color like beige, and pretty much any other two colors work with that. If you choose, however, to have three saturated colors, it makes sense to use, can you guess it? Of course, a color scheme. Cool. Obviously, as you have three segments, a triadic color scheme or a split complementary color scheme would be a good choice. But depending on how many hues you have in each segment, this can vary. Just remember what I told you in color harmony, you should probably not make all colors super saturated in most cases. On our example website, for instance, I could imagine expanding the accent segment with a tiny bit of pink, some equally bright and saturated hue that attracts even more attention. This would make this website feel more complete because it would make it a triadic color scheme with the blue. However, maybe they would have to cut back on images when introducing another hue. That would have to be tested. Another option would be to switch up the accent color depending on what sub page you're on. In the contact segment, you could make a 60, 3010 scheme with white blue and yellow. In the offering segment, white, blue and pink, and on the main page, pink and yellow as the accent. As you can see, this 603010 rule is quite flexible and it's fun to play around with, especially when you have, let's say, dynamic situations like websites. So when you make a color palette for our design, you can already think about color distribution by modeling it according to the 603010 rule. That way, it's easier to imagine what it will look like than if you just model all colors at equal sizes. Here is an idea. Open a design software and make different layers, each resembling one color with its approximate scale, and just multiply these layers. You can then move them around and see how the colors work together, and if they fit with the 603010 distribution. That way, you can make an abstract model of something where you can just check out the colors. Such a color sketch, as I like to call it, can also be useful even if you don't use the 603010 rule. It could just be a nice outlook at what your colors look like in different arrangements. This is like one level after color palettes. It's not super common to do that, because usually it's enough to just make a color palette and imagine the distribution of the colors. But if you make a big artwork that requires a lot of work and therefore risk, you could use such a color sketch as an insurance. Remember that? Again, for a color palette, it doesn't really matter if you make clean boxes or you just scribble with a brush to approximately resemble the distribution. You just have to be able to imagine the final result. Alright, going back to the 603010 rule, it's a clever solution if two colors are too boring, but you don't want to be too colorful with your design. One main color, one medium contrast, and one small accent at roughly 603010. Follow this principle in interior design, web and UI design, and you can be pretty sure that your colors look pleasing and professional. Some artists have also tried implementing this concept in painting compositions. I find that very interesting, but I don't think it's a universally applicable rule, because in painting, the goal is not necessarily to just make it look pleasing, like in design. You can have very different goals to evoke certain emotions and all that stuff. So there are many, many options for distributing colors, and I don't feel comfortable recommending you this one general rule for painting. Still, this could be something that you personally find useful. So here's the idea. Instead of calling it 603010, we can also say dominant tonic and accent in painting. The dominant color is usually something neutral, like beige, gray or something close to black or white. Then the tonic, about half or less of the dominant color can be something different, something more saturated. And the accent, usually the color to direct attention, is a very small thing, and it's often far away from the tonic on the color wheel, so we have a nice complementary color contrast. That's very popular. So we also have a model for art with dominant tonic and accent colors. There is definitely a bit more variation than in design. So sometimes it's more like 70, 255 or 60, 25, 15, but it all roughly revolves around the 60, 3010 distribution. This appears to be something that's generally pleasing to look at for humans. Here we go. That's the idea of the 603010 rule. I think one of its main advantages is that it's very accessible. The rule is easy to understand, so you can quickly generate ideas for compositions and play with the subjects just by giving them colors at sizes that roughly fit into the scheme. Just remember, in painting and art, you have many, many options for distributing your colors. There is no one rule like that. 603010 or dominant tonic accent is just a potentially helpful suggestion if you have trouble figuring out something else. In design, however, you can find the 60, 3010 rule being used all the time. It's a reliable way to make something look pleasing, be it a room, a website, or a video game environment. And remember how flexible it is. So you should definitely try it out. Perhaps this is something that you'll find very helpful. 32. Color & Light: Okay, now we have to talk about color and light, at least for a moment. This is going to be especially important for the artists amongst you. But for designs, too, it can be helpful to understand this because color and light obviously interact, and that has many implications. I won't go too much into detail here because light itself is a huge topic. It would certainly deserve its own course. So this is still just about color. But there are some interesting things that happen with color and light that I don't want to leave out in this course. And here they are. First of all, if you look at the color wheel with all these hues in their purest form, you may think that hue is the only thing that separates them. Same saturation, same value, just, you know, blue, green, red, et cetera. Let's add a few of these chromas here. Just a few brass strokes with different hues in their purest form. Now I'm going to set the image mode to gray scale in Creta real quick so we don't have any more saturation. And then, look at this. These basic romas actually have very different values. If we select from an RGB color wheel, but also the RYB color wheel. You can even see that on the color selector now. If I slide around here, the value of the color changes, even though I'm technically only changing the hue. This becomes very clear if we take pure blue and pure yellow from the bottom right corner of the color selector and put them over each other. Let's set the image mode to grayscale once again. And yeah, this is a clear difference, almost black and white. So different hues have different values by default. Now, what do you do with this knowledge? Well, it's not that useful, something to keep in mind when making artworks. Sometimes you can just add a different hue instead of adding tint or shade. And this can result in your images looking very alive because there is more color. Also, if you want to make an image with a dark feeling, for example, make use of dark hues, not only dark values or vice versa. You can achieve great value contrast by just using different hues instead of only relying on black or white. This can give your visuals that little bit of extra spice and make it more immersive. So remember this. I might come in handy at some point. Next, this one is a bit more intuitive, but colors get brighter and fade to light blue the further they are away from you. You can see this very clearly in this picture right here, where we got this big dark rock which looks kind of neutral and even a little bit brown. These other rocks, which should be of the same material, get brighter and brighter and more blue, the more distant they are. This is the case for any object, as you can observe in real life or any pictures of landscapes. To determine how much your colors are affected, I recommend looking at references or going by your feeling. There is no exact formula for this like every 100 meters, your values shift 5% and hues shift by four degrees on the RGB color we. No, none of that. It literally depends on factors like how the weather is and air pressure and all of that. So you just have to look at references, and you can eventually develop an intuition for this. If you're unsure or you want to paint without reference, do it like this. The things in the middle, the ones that usually the focus lies on, are the ones with the most diversity of values. So the most value contrast. There are very dark and very bright areas, and in the middle, those are usually very close to each other to create lots of detail. Then you can make the things closer to the viewer darker and the things further away brighter. This is the heuristic to live by. Okay, seems quite logical so far, but now comes the really weird stuff. When light hits an object and produces shadows and highlights, it doesn't only change its values. You know, darker whether is shadow, brighter whether is light. This happens, yes, but there are also some things that happened to the hues when they were affected by light or shadow. Let's have a look at a seemingly simple example. This ball right here is struck by light from the left and therefore casts a shadow to the right. It's bright on the left side and dark on the right side. Makes sense, right? So far so good. But if we look closely, we can see that there is actually a lot more going on because even though the original light source is clearly up on the left, there are reflections from both the ground and the white box behind the ball. The ball is a bit blue at the bottom, where the reflective lights from the ground hit it. And here on the right, where the ball should be dark, it's actually bright because of the reflection from the box. As you can see, even in very simple objects, colors can get crazy and unpredictable, depending on all kinds of factors. For example, light angles, the materials, reflections from all sorts of directions, or even multiple light sources, which also happens. And then it gets really wild. This makes it quite challenging to draw or paint realistic objects that are struck by light. If you just look in an object and go like, Alright, this is a ball. Light comes from the left, so it's a bit dark on the right. It's not going to feel very natural if you paint like that. I mean, it does work if you just draw or paint a ball that is far away and not very detailed. Nobody will care about your reflective lights or stuff like that, if your object is not the focus point and just very small. But if you want to make something that really has this realistic look in terms of light and that is detailed, look closely, and you will very often find that there is a lot more going on with the colors than just highlight area and shadow area. You need to include this in your drawing or painting if it's supposed to look realistic. Alright. Here's another example that illustrates how light can affect hues. In this photo, we have these beautiful trees and a gray street, very natural scene. Now, look at the color selector as I pick the exact colors from this image. This is the color of each pixel that I click on. When there is direct sunlight, the street is not just gray but a little bit yellow and orange. In some places, it's even saturated with bright hues that make it look warm. If I pick the colors from the shadows, though, you can see that the hues are on the total opposite side of the color wheel. The shadows are not only darker, but they have colder hues as well, like blue, purple, and sometimes green. Also, if I pick the colors on this tree, yellow and orange where there is light and dark and blue in the shadows. Here's the thing. Light and shadow do not only change the values of objects they hit, but also their hues. Shadows move them toward green and blue and light moves them towards yellow and orange. You can observe this everywhere from good character sketches to real life. Generally, when you draw or paint something that has light and shadow areas, shift the hues in the shadow areas toward blue and in the light areas towards yellow. It doesn't have to be absolutely blue or yellow, but a slight shift in hue can often be that one detail that makes your image more real. For example, in tree paintings like this one that I made for another one of my courses, we use, well, lots of green for the foliage and lots of brown for the tree trunk and the branches. But look at the color selector as I select the hues now. The green is clearly more on the yellow side in the highlight areas and more on the blue side in the shadow areas. And this makes it look very natural, even though it's all quite saturated. And on the tree trunk, it's the same thing, starting with a different hue. We have brown, which is desaturated orange, but in the highlight areas, it's a bit more on the yellow side, and in the shadow areas, it's a bit more on the red side. Plus, we even have a little bit of blue reflective lights here. So that's a reference to the previous point. Always keep this effect in mind. Pay very close attention to the colors of your references, and that way you're on the safe side. Then, one last major point here to be aware of warm versus cool light. When you have naturally warm colors and they are struck by warm light, they become very bright and very saturated. But if you strike them with cool light, they lose some of their saturation. It's not necessarily that they start appearing cool themselves, but depending on the intensity of the light and the color, this can certainly happen, but they first become less saturated. And vice versa, when you have cool colors that are struck by warm light, they become desaturated, too before they become warm themselves, and they are more saturated if their cool color is being highlighted with cool light. These are some of the interactions between color and light that you have to be aware of. I like to heavily exaggerate this in impressionistic art, knowing how complex the interaction between light and color can be and which effects it can have bears huge potential for creating artworks that feel natural but are very unique, like in this birch painting that I made, where the shadows on the tree stems are straight blue and purple, but they don't even feel out of place. And the highlights are just saturated yellow brusthrokes. Somehow it fits, and that's because of these interactions between light and color that we intuitively understand. Impressionists like Claude Money absolutely loved playing with us. Here, the shadows are literally blue and the light is orange. Big contrast here, but the image doesn't even look that unrealistic, just a little bit over exaggerated. This tells us that we deep down know how light affects colors and that it changes the hues. But if we want to produce art ourselves, it's easy to forget that. We have to actively become aware of it, and that's what this lesson is for. Alright. Before you panic about all this input, at the end of the day, my simple tip for you is just use a reference if you want to paint something with realistic light and colors because it can get complicated very quickly. Can study light all your life, and you can make all these calculations and measurements and reconstruct references in your own way. But most of us simply do not have the time to do that. Just find a reference that has similar light conditions to what you want to paint and pay very close attention to how the colors are manipulated by the light. Often, you'll find these interesting effects. If you don't replicate all of them perfectly, the viewers will most likely not notice it. But these general trends and shifts like cooler in the shadows, lighter in the distance, et cetera, should be included in all your paintings if they are supposed to be immersive and at least somewhat realistic. Once again, to ensure this, just using a reference is generally a winning strategy. Don't forget, if you want to ascend to the next level of artistic expression, you can exaggerate the interaction of light and the color, and you can play with all these awesome effects. But then you have to pay even more attention to get it right. So use references, study them carefully, and you're good to go when it comes to color and light. Don't underestimate the craziness that can happen to color when it's affected by light. That's pretty much the point here. 33. Color Transitions: Alright, here's a little lesson about color transitions and gradients. By the way, that's the same thing, because it's not only possible to have single colors interact like one color and then another color next to it. Sometimes they flow into each other and create a transition. Especially the designers amongst you will know this because that's a common effect. For many people, even experienced creative workers, this poses a challenge when creating color schemes and color palettes, because they don't know how gradients and color transitions fundamentally work and how they fit into color schemes because it's not trivial. And this can either lead to problems when using gradients or to the avoidance of gradients, which is also popular. And that's a pity because color transitions can be incredibly useful to elevate your visuals to the next level. They can really give you that extra bit of depth. So let me clear up a few things and let me give you some tips. This is going to be interesting. First of all, it should be noted that color transitions and gradients reduce the contrast between two colors. That is because you have all the middle versions in the transition area. For example, when you have a transition from black to white, you have all sorts of gray between them. So a transition like this removes the hard edge, the immediate juxtaposition of two colors, which is responsible for the contrast. This can be used to give your pictures a little bit more detail without making it too hard on the eye. Instead of having hard edges, you can reduce the internal contrast of certain areas by letting the colors flow into each other. And the longer the transition, the more smooth it becomes. This is the first principle of using gradients. The shorter the transition, the bigger the contrast between two colors. So when you have a big gradient, it often seems more like one color instead of a transition between two because it's so smooth. And if it's an immediate edge, so little to no transition, that's when it gets striking and intense. You have a big range of options between these extremes to play with these effects. That's the general idea of using color transitions. And it works easily for value and saturation. Nothing to worry about if you want to make transitions between shades, tints, and tones. You can play with these levels of contrast and direct attention, however you want. Value and saturation transitions easily fit into most color palettes because they are just natural extensions of your colors. For hues, however, it's a bit different. Subtle hue transitions are awesome to introduce a few different hues to a sunset, for example, to make it more interesting and more life without having too much contrast. There are many options to make transitions between similar hues to give them a bit more depth and detail. As I've said, in the color scheme section, you will frequently need small transitions of analogous hues. So in a triadic color scheme, you don't always have exactly three precise hues. But depending on what you're making, you usually work in these tiny ranges of hues, and they can freely flow into each other because they are simular. This should make sense at this point. However, what if you want to create a color transition between complementary colors? Complementary colors have lots of contrast. So would a transition between them make them more harmonious and perhaps even calming? Is this a good idea? Well, let's have a look. I'm going to fill this image with bright orange first, and then let's add a blue gradient on top of it. Blue is a complementary color of orange. I'm going to pull it over here, and then boom, here is our color transition between orange and blue. Be honest. Does this look nice? Well, the software does its best to make the colors flow smoothly, so it does have some appeal because it's a bit like a pattern and the human eye likes patterns. But in terms of color harmony, well, it doesn't really work. We have this weird, gray, muddy looking area in the middle that wouldn't be a smart addition to most designs. And this happens with the other complementary, too. When I fill the image with green and at a red gradient, when I fill the image with purple and at a yellow gradient and so on, the transition area is just always well, ugly. And actually, there is an interesting reason for why that is. Look at these hues on the color wheel as I select the colors from the image in this transition from blue to orange. I'm clicking many times here so you can see many, many samples. And have you noticed something? The hue slowly shifts all the way over the color wheel from one hue to another. This is how a transition works. You need all the colors between the two. And you should now understand why a color transition between two complementary colors doesn't really work. You just need too many different hues to connect them, which contradicts basic color harmony. This is the case with any complementary colors. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We have all these different hues in between that destroy any chance for color harmony. Now, the software actually makes use of one of the tricks that I've shown you in order to avoid a complete rainbow pattern. Look at the saturation of the hues as I select colors from this transition once again. We start with a very saturated color, then it becomes less and less saturated in the transition. And then saturate it again. This is why the transition doesn't look like a rainbow because all the hues in the middle are less saturated. As I've said, you can bring colors closer together and make them harmonious if you lower their saturation. But it still looks horrible because there is still some saturation in the colors on the edge, and you just have too many different hues to connect the complementary colors. Even if they're not super intense, it's still a lot. You have to move all the way over the color wheel. So don't make transitions between colors that are far away from each other on the color wheel except you have a very specific reason to do so. I can't think of any good example right now. Maybe you can. Maybe you can make the complementary colors very desaturated in the first place or something like that. But remember, in order to have a transition between two colors, you need all the colors between them. In classic art, this should not be a problem, because as you mix two very different colors, they immediately become ugly and you'll notice that you shouldn't be using them. But in design and digital art, don't let the software fool you because it's desaturated. It will still probably look bad because there are too many different hues. So if you want or need a colour transition somewhere, make it more subtle. Use shades, tints, tones or analogous colors. This is the way to do it. A colored transition between blue and light blue or green and blue or orange and red looks very nice. Just notice that the further the hues are away from each other, the more hues you need between them, and this can influence your ability to use color schemes or saturation because it already acts like a small analogous color scheme. This is what most people get wrong about color transitions. As soon as they introduce them, they have too many hues and their image looks awful, so be aware of that. If you make an artwork, you can always slightly move left and right for each hue, and the color scheme will still work. You can use a few slightly different variations of blue. You can make them flow into each other, make a transition, and so on. As long as you have a very small range, it will still count as one segment of a color scheme, and you can choose other colors relatively free. The bigger the transition is, the less other colors you can use because it will quickly become chaotic. You can observe this in many great paintings. There is not just one exact hue for one segment of the color scheme, but a few different ones that are just very similar. And sometimes there is a small transition or gradient. This often makes artworks and designs far more exciting than they would be with sterile color areas, where the colors are just flat and clearly separated. Whenever you extend a transition, you need to calculate that into your color palette. If you have a transition from yellow to orange and then blue as a single complementary, it will work in most cases. But if you have a transition from yellow to orange and then one from blue to green, it's probably too much if they are all saturated because there are too many hues. This is how you can use color transitions, keep them subtle and analogous and be conscious of basic color harmony. Then gradients and transitions can be a great addition of depth that elevates your art and design and lets you control levels of contrast. 34. Using Color Theory in Art: Now let's discuss how to put all of that together, because I'll admit it was quite a lot of theory, and using all of it in your process can be confusing at the beginning. This is normal, so don't worry. That's what this lesson is for. I'm going to give you examples for how when and to what extent to think about color theory in art and design and give you ideas how you can start implementing it without getting overwhelmed by all the things you have to do right, because it's actually very intuitive, as you will see. So let's go. First of all, there are a few different ways how you can apply color theory to your work, and I don't want to preach the exact approach that you should always follow because it doesn't exist. Every good artist and designer uses the principles that we've talked about consciously or subconsciously, but everyone's process is a bit different. So is there anything that we can generalize about the process? Well, it heavily depends on what you're making. So let me give you a few examples for different situations in art and design, starting with art. First, if you draw or paint something purely from reference, you don't need color theory at all. You see the thing, you recreate the thing. Simple as that. Color theory is only useful when you need to make decisions related to color when you add something new, which you don't have to do if you just replicate an already beautiful photo. But here's the deal. Oftentimes, it's very smart to make slight adjustments based on color theory, even if you paint from reference, and that's probably the easiest way to start using it. Take a reference photo and try to find small optimizations for the colors. Which ones could you leave out to approach a color scheme? Which ones should be a bit less saturated to make it more harmonious? Perhaps you want to paint a meadow, and you found a nice reference photo, but there is a little blue plastic bottle on the edge. Just leave it out. You are the artist. You can choose. And if something disturbs your harmony, either in terms of subject or color, change it. If it's a simple small thing, just leave it out or give it a different color. This is the second option you have Modify subjects to fit a color scheme. In that case, you can apply color theory to achieve certain effects or simply make your image more pleasing. You can make the red flowers in a bash more saturated than you originally see them in order to increase the contrast with green and give the image more tension and intensity, or you shift the hue from orange to red to approach a complementary color scheme and increase the contrast. Many artists automatically do things like this subconsciously, and it's very cool if you become aware of it. You can leave out elements of a certain color when you paint a scene in order to achieve a complete color scheme and set a clear mood for your image. This is a very interesting technique because by using it, you can use pretty random scenes as references and make them look artistic. What I also really like is adding color, for example, in the details to spice up the composition without disturbing the color harmony. Or you can bring all those hues in the background closer together through low saturation and value. Perhaps that even makes for greater value contrast, so it's a win win. You can either do that from your mind directly in the painting or you can edit the reference photo. In digital art, you can very well implement color theory during the process by modifying elements in a scene to fit color harmony and color schemes better. And you can practice this. Try to optimize the colors in photos by adding paint or filters. Just the colors. See if there is something that you could leave out and edit away, for example, with the Smart patch tool and Krita. That's a very cool one. Or you make everything except a few spots desaturated in order to make them stand out. Try increasing value contrast, add some brush strokes just to see how it would look with an additional hue. This is a great intro to using color theory practically, so try it out. What's a common approach is to compose a scene made up of different elements that you draw from different references. In that case, you also have to make color decisions, and you can apply the knowledge from this course. But this is hard for beginners because you often have to adjust the lighting of the different elements, which can be complicated. But when putting together objects from different references, you also have to make color decisions to make them work together. Doing these little adjustments based on color theory is one of the best ways to start. You're probably already painting frequently from references if you're practicing art. At least I hope you're doing that. So try to get used to looking for small things that color theory could make better. Could you shift the hues of the uncomplicated background to approach a color scheme? Could you increase the value contrast to make it more interesting? Are there any disturbing colorful spots that you could just leave out or replace with a totally different color? You will find that these small decisions to improve color harmony can go a long way, and they make the painting process easier more often than harder because it just looks better already during the process, and that's motivating. So this can be a great intro to practical using color theory without too much risk. And I do it all the time. For example, when I recently painted the sheep from reference, but I found it a bit boring when I was done. So I spontaneously added these orange flowers from my head because I know the picture is very desaturated, so an accent like this will look good. There is already brown, so these yellow and orange flowers will fit the analogous color scheme, and if they are bright, they will deliver some nice value contrast to the dark background. So I did it. And that's the painting. But it certainly gets more interesting when you create your own compositions because there is a lot more judgment involved, what you want to do. And this changes the process. When you make your own composition, ideally, you want to plan what the colors will be because it still has to make sense, you know? You don't want to just add blue dots at some point if you feel like you need blue, but a person with blue clothes or blue flowers, subjects that fit into the color scheme and make sense in the painting, especially in traditional art where it's harder to make adjustments, it's better to have a plan beforehand and make sure the subjects work together with color theory. Imagine you wish to paint a beautiful artwork. Oftentimes, you already know at least one subject. You know, you want to paint a scene of somebody doing something and maybe some trees in the background, for instance. In that case, you already know a few things. For example, you will need green for the trees, blue for the sky and brown for the ground and the tree trunks. So there are a few colors that are pretty much fixed, and you need to make them work. But there might be other things that you have not yet decided on like the clothing of the character. And these things are where you need to make good decisions. The clothing of the character is probably going to be a focus point of your image. So it makes sense to stop at this point, look at the color wheel and ask yourself, what would be the best choice here? Do you want the character to stand out? Maybe choose a color that is complementary to green and blue. Do you want the character to fit into the environment? Then choose a color analogous to green and blue. And you'll notice that these compositional choices often work very well together with color psychology. If you give the character blue clothing, they're going to fit in, look sophisticated and harmonious, not only because blue is an analogous color to the environment, but also because that's what blue does. Give them red clothing, and they're going to stand out, be an energetic focus point against the calming background scene, and possibly even look like an intruder, not only because red is complementary to green and blue, but also because that's just what red does. It's an aggressive energetic color. And of course, this works for all angles on the color wheel. Colors that are further away from each other usually have very different psychological effects. So by applying them purposefully to different subjects, you can use that to your advantage and get great effects, both in terms of color harmony and color psychology. And how do you experiment with this and find out what's fitting before committing to your work? Of course, by making a color palette and testing your colors and their effects like that. This shows how color psychology and color schemes can beautifully support each other. You can observe this in many great paintings, actually. In classic art, you have many options for implementing color theory, but you're always safe if you think about it first, immediately when deciding on a subject. And as soon as you have one idea or subject with a fixed color, start a color palette and then use both color schemes and color psychology to complete it. If you want to paint a fox, it's going to be orange. Do you want it to harmoniously fit into the environment? Put it in an autumn forest or make it lie in the sand or stand on some desert rocks? Wanted to stand out and be an energetic focus point with its orange color. Let the fox walk through a snowy field, a dark cavern with green, bluish light or sail on a boat in the ocean. This is a very dumbed down example for how you can make these decisions, but it's exactly how it works. Color theory should be part of your idea finding process, not just the painting process, but really it should be on your mind from the very start. That's how you can make sure that everything fits together. Now, what if you want to change something about the colors during the process? Maybe you find out that your color palette doesn't allow for all the things you want to do. You want to add a few more colorful objects that do not fit into the color scheme, but somehow you need them. Well, this is where the rules of color harmony come into play. Make sure whenever you add a completely different color that's not part of the basic color scheme, that it's very small, desaturated, dark, or bright. This is the way to do it. As I've said, you don't have to model every single color in your palette, but just the big important ones. So you are pretty much always free to add something else in the details. Do little unexpected things here and there, and it will still work. Just make sure that you don't overdo it, and most of your picture still follows your initial color palette. Then it's fine. Okay, let me summarize the general idea. This is my model for implementing color theory and art that you can follow to be safe. Think of a color scheme already when you choose the subjects and work out an idea in accordance with color theory. See to it that all your intended subjects would make sense from the perspective of color theory before you start. Then you make a rough color palette of the most important colors, and then you use the rules of color harmony during the process to keep everything in check. So you can make adjustments, spice up the details with more colors if you want, make some things more or less saturated, darker or brighter. But you generally follow the color palette, which is based on a color scheme, and you have color harmony in the back of your head as an insurance in case you want to change something. That's it. This model ensures that you have some sort of freedom during the process, which we definitely want as artists, but you still adhere to the important rules, and you can make sure your colors look great. So remember this paragraph. I'm probably going to copy paste it into the PDF. I think I said that very well. But, yeah, this is how I would do it. Now let's talk a bit more about abstract art. Abstract art is a lot more flexible because you don't have to match colors with subjects at all. It's more like that the colors are the subjects themselves. You know, the main protagonist in an abstract painting maybe a yellow circle. And you can take this as a basis and just play around with the other colors until you've achieved some sort of harmony. This is the natural approach. So you can make a plan like other art if you want, but you also have the freedom to go with the flow and let the color harmony unfold during the process. In abstract art, this is very much based on feeling, and you can choose pretty crazy colors and still make them work together. That's the cool thing about abstract art. Intuition and flow are key here, and many abstract artworks don't follow an official color scheme because they try so hard to be different and unique. They want to disturb the viewer, throw them off, put out something unexpected. And if it's not many colors, this is still mostly fine, as you know from color harmony. But remember, color theory is always there to help you out, whether you want to make an artwork look more harmonious by adjusting it, or you need ideas in the first place. Of course, there is way more to abstract art than just that. And I've taught some courses on it that go a bit deeper. It's a very interesting topic, actually. But I'm telling you, having a good understanding of color alone is pretty much already enough to make awesome abstract artworks. Pick a color scheme, put these colors on the canvas, and it pretty much always looks like a pleasing abstract painting. That's the power of color theory. So these are some ideas for how you can implement color theory in art. And because this lesson is kind of long, let's continue with color theory and design in the next one. 35. Using Color Theory in Design: Now on to design, how do you use color theory in design? Well, a design always has a purpose. That's the key difference to art. Art is open to interpretation. It's a self expression, and design has a goal. There is something it wants to communicate, effects it tries to achieve. So in design, it's a bit more straightforward, no matter what kind of design, a website, a logo, a page, a pattern, although pattern can be a mixture of art and design. But whenever you have given outcomes that you ought to achieve, you basically want to collect keywords and as many as possible. These keywords can precisely describe the desired effects, the target audience, or they can give you just a rough outline, depending on how flashed out the purpose of the design is. Strong and striking or easygoing and playful, full of action or calm and relaxing. Talking to a young audience or an older one, cheap or expensive, smooth and pastel or bold and clear, flashy and outstanding, or just natural and authentic. This is what you have to find out and document when you make a design. You want to have as clear of an idea as possible before you start. Again, not only in terms of color psychology, you know, red for action, blue for Trust, and so on, but also in terms of color schemes like we've talked about, complementary colors for a striking effect, triadic colors, for a rich and complete look, analogous colors, for a smooth and harmonious look, and so on. Color is directly connected to brand identity. So whenever you find yourself in a situation where you have to make a logo or a website for a company, ask for as many keywords as possible. Who is the target audience? How should the brand be perceived? Where and how frequently will the design be displayed? Then you can use color schemes in color psychology to create a color palette, and then you can use it to create the design. And if your design is supposed to look pleasing, maybe consider using the 60, 3010 rule in addition to that, which you can also include in your color palette as I've shown. So this is the basic process. Notice that design is less adjustable in terms of color during the process. You often have to work out a color palette first that fits all the keywords and adheres to color harmony. Then you present it to the clients, perhaps make some adjustments, and then you start the actual work on the design. And this usually means moving around shapes, adjusting angles, finding the right scale for things, lots of composition. But the colors actually rarely change because whenever the colors change, so does the whole perception of the design. And this must be coordinated with a principal party like your boss or a client. In art, it may be technically more difficult to make changes to colors, but it doesn't have one clear purpose, or if it does, it can obviously change as you make the artwork because you as the artist, are free to express whatever you want, as long as it looks good. In design, however, it's always best to be very, very clear about the colors before you start. Tiny adjustments like saturation and value will likely still work, but even that is often risky. So ask many questions and be transparent about your process, communicate to your clients in how many ways color can have effects, and let them work out a clear vision so you know what to do. Look up color psychology to match keywords with colors, select an appropriate color scheme, create a color palette, and then start the work. You then mainly work on the composition and the shapes, and you only make tiny adjustments to the colors. That's how it works. So these were some examples for how you can apply color theory to your work. Keep in mind that these are just useful ideas and common practices, not necessarily what you have to do in order to succeed. You can also use keywords to find colors for an artwork when you make an artwork for a clien, for example, or you can make a very artistic website that doesn't have a clear goal. There are many options, but don't get confused. You will develop a better understanding of how and when to incorporate color theory if you simply just start. Get going with these common practices, and then you can make slight adjustments to your process, depending on what works best for you and what you're working on. Art and design can merge as high fashion shows, for instance. I don't know if these designers made a clear color palette from the beginning that they strictly followed, or if they made adjustments during the process based on their feelings. Both is possible, and it's probably a mixture for most of these fashion show outfits, starting with a design idea with a purpose, but transforming it more and more into art along the way. Designers and artists all have their own unique process, but at the end of the day, they pretty much all adhere to the general rules of color theory, whether they're implemented in the first place or used as a rough outline during the process. In design, it's usually more of the former and in art, more of the latter. That's the core idea. Here we go. That's color theory during the process. You're always free to return to this course and rewatch the important lessons whenever you need them, or simply look at the PDF files to match colors with keywords. It's all there. Practice this knowledge, and you will find your way to apply color theory in any field of art and design. Cheers. 36. Exercise (Color Palettes): Okay, Hurria, you now know all the basics that you need as an artist or designer. But we all know that knowledge alone isn't enough. So let's actually practice some of this stuff that you've learned here in a very simple way. Because this is a general course that applies to any field of art and design, it wouldn't really make sense to give you a super specific task like draw a landscape with nice colors. The designers amongst you would be pretty annoyed. And, vice versa, if I told you to make a website that follows a color scheme, the artists would probably not be motivated, either, which is understandable. But something that everybody could profit from, in my opinion, is making a few color palettes. Yes, that's not too much to ask, is it? I mean, I've praised color palettes so many times as a tool that it would be kind of a waste if I didn't give you the opportunity to practice making them. So I have added this image as a downloadable file with presets for three color palettes. Download it right now and simply open it up in your favorite drawing or design software. Anything works here, Gimp, Photoshop, pain.net, Procreate. I recommend Krita because it's completely free and works on any operating system. So you have no excuse. But if you absolutely don't want to use the software, you can, of course, also just grab a piece of paper and put drips of paint next to each other or scribble with your colored pencils, but that way, your options are pretty limited. It's harder to mix colors and therefore harder to get them perfect. But you can try. I just made this file to make it as simple as possible for the software users. Just do whatever is the most comfortable for you. All you have to do is fill these boxes with well chosen colors that fit the theme. So we got three different color palettes with a different amount of colors and a different topic. One palette with four colors that's supposed to look flashy and modern, one with seven colors lively and authentic, and one with six colors calm and classy. You can probably already tell that each of these palettes would be most useful in a different situation. The first one with only four colors, flashy and modern would be most fitting for a logo or perhaps a color combination for an outfit or a shopping website. The second one has seven colors, so that would make a big artwork with a lot going on, lively and authentic. So it could feel harmonious and comforting, but still somewhat energetic. See if you can come up with a color combination that achieves that. And this final one has three segments at 603010, which makes this color palette useful for a website or a design of a room, for instance, or even an elegant outfit. The task looks simple, but that's why you should be very precise with your color selection. Really think about which colors would make, in your own opinion, a color palette that fits these terms, flashy and modern and so on, and make them look harmonious, of course. Try to apply the lessons from this course. This will help you manifest what you've learned, so you won't forget about it so quickly, because if there is one thing you should have learned in this course, you should make lots of color palettes in art and design. By the way, don't worry if the colors fit the boxes precisely. Technically, you don't even need these boxes. They are just an instruction for your scribbling. I just want to see that you're capable of combining colors in a purposeful way. That's the whole point here, okay? Maybe you even want to use these palettes for your individual projects, an artwork, a website, your outfit at the next party, you name it. And if not, it's just really good for your future work if you practice thinking about pure color selection. At least this one time. Once you're done, feel free to share it with me and ask me for feedback. I'm always happy to help. So enjoy. 37. How and When to break Rules: Alright, I've been excited about this. Welcome to the advanced section of this course. Here we're going to go beyond the basics and explore really interesting concepts to make your colors look amazing. I should say, the things we've discussed so far are pretty much all you'll ever need in any real situation in art and design. We've covered color basics and color psychology, learned how to combine colors purposefully and different ways you can implement color theory into your process. You will get very far if you just adhere to these points. Usually, that's all I need too. So this right here is more like a bonus for the absolute color enthusiasts and nerds that want to go further. Still, there could be some eye opening insights and ideas to elevate your color game. So let's see what we got. First of all, there are rules, but if you look closely, many artists break them. Why? When is it okay? Is there more to color than the known color schemes and stuff? Well, let's find out. And let's start with a groundbreaking question. Is it possible to create new color schemes? Yes. Oh. Oh, my God. What's going on here? As I've said, there is flexibility in color schemes due to the fact that there are different color wheels. So even though something may not look like a color scheme in the RGB color wheel, it may very well be obviously triadic in RYB. You should have understood that by now. But even if a hue combination does not follow a traditional color scheme on any color wheel, there is still the possibility that it looks pleasing. For example, I think something like this can work so reliably well that it's almost fair to call it an official color scheme, like biased triadic or warm triadic or analogous with gaps, whatever you want to choose. But if you look closely, you have to admit a few things. There are still underlying rules of color harmony in place. We only have three separate hues, and if we expanded any of them a bit more, it would probably be too much. And basically, this is a classic analogous color scheme just so far expanded that it's necessary to leave out some hues in between and create these gaps. But the colors still all come from the same side of the wheel and therefore carry analogous effects. So this is my point. You can disregard color schemes, create your own ones, but only if you really know what you're doing. By definition of color theory, this is not even a new color scheme. It's one of the basic ones just very stretched out using other rules of color harmony. If you look at a nice artwork and you cannot identify any of the classic color schemes that we've covered, that doesn't mean that color theory is debunked. There is still some version of it in place. I can promise you that. It's still all valid. Color harmony is important. Color schemes are reliable. But by combining them, you can find very unique hue combinations that still work. Just don't overdo it and keep creating value contrast. Then you can make your own advanced hue combinations if you need them. Always remember that color schemes are more important, the more saturated and present the hues are. Other than that, you have lots of options. But you can even break with that. Overwhelming the viewer with too much color and saturation and being, let's say, obnoxious with color can be a stylistic choice, too, but it should only be done sparsely and not for too long. We've mostly talked about how to make colors look good and how to make them pleasing and harmonious, which is what you want to do most of the time in art and design. But every once in a while, it can be useful to break with that. Use colors that are absolutely annoying to deliver a message. Remember that color is a very flexible tool. It is most of the time preferable to look at things that make sense are harmonious, rich and complete in terms of color, perhaps still with some contrast, but being overwhelmed by color or disturbed is potentially very memorable, and it can leave a lasting impression if it's applied to the right subjects. You know, you wouldn't want this as the interior of your house or your website. But for a small painting that you put in there where people don't look too closely, it could actually be interesting. I cannot find many examples for this, probably some famous abstract paintings or videos and movies from time to time, but it's certainly a thing. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but experts who have worked with color theory a lot and need something extra. Please don't use this as an excuse. That's why I only mentioned this in the advance section. But breaking with color theory can be just as much a way of artistic expression as adhering to it. Just be aware of the consequences. They are potentially enormous. Okay. Last rule to break from time to time, I've told you that it's ideal if you think about color theory first at the beginning of the art and design process, because that way, you can ensure that everything works out the way you intended in terms of color, and you have a clear path moving forward. So color theory can also make you a bit more productive, but that's just a side note. However, what if you want to insert color theory at a different part of your process? Well, this is also possible, although not as beginner friendly. I think this is mostly something that applies to experienced artists. Beginners better stick to the basics and mostly digital artists because those have more options to manipulate existing colors. Nevertheless, it is probably also possible in traditional art or design. Although in design verse, you have a climb, this is really a good idea. Anyways, you should still think about your colors always before you start creating. There should be a rough direction in which you want to go, but it is possible to leave some gaps in the plan like, Alright, I've got some nice analogous colors. Let's see which complementary of them I'm going to give the flowers as an accent because that is where you can actually choose later on. Or you can start with two colors for the foreground and the background, but you leave it open, whether you want to go more in the direction of a triadic color scheme or split complementary color scheme, or if you want to add another one and make a tetradic, those transformations are possible because of the different color wheels that allow for flexibility within color schemes. If you're aware of this and have a genuinely good idea that allows for some variation along the way, you are free to not decide everything about colors before you start. I do this from time to time, but I would say it's usually still better to have everything laid out. It just makes it more likely that you actually finish the work, but it's an option. Okay, often, you will find this. Even if the rules are seemingly broken, some underlying color theory principles are still in place. For example, in a video game level that looks very cool, you may find many colors on screen. So apparently it doesn't follow a clear color scheme. It's too many hues and it's oversaturated. But if you look closely, you will discover that there is still separation between foreground and background. The different colors are still brought closer together in terms of value and saturation and are therefore tamed. There are still contrast between the different elements, and the density of different elements varies across the screen. This is how color theory fundamentally works. It's not that you have to follow every rule of it every time, but you always have at least one or two principles that either tame your colors or match them together, then it still works. If you're advanced, you don't necessarily need to make a color palette. Once you have enough practice, you'll just feel how color theory has become part of your subconscious thinking as an artist or designer. That's what I believe happened to me as someone who spent years actively using color theory and thinking about concepts. At least in art, I usually just start painting and think about color theory along the way. Still, even if you think you're advanced and you don't need to actively think about color theory, it still makes sense to take a step back once in a while. Look at your past work. Are you actually using good color schemes? Or could you improve something? Being conscious of color theory at least once in a while is a necessary insurance for you as an artist. In design, it's once again a bit more straightforward. You'll naturally think about color theory more if you need to combine three simple colors into a logo, or you need to find a color palette for a website. It may differ a bit from field to field, but you will find your own way of using color. Just remember, be conscious of it, keep up your awareness of the theory, and analyze your own work once in a while to determine if you could make improvements. For example, you may discover that you're defaulting to the bad habit of not using enough value contrast, and you often make up for it with more hues, or perhaps it's the other way around, and you often shy away from using more than two hues, because you've made bad experiences with that in the past. It seems difficult, and you rather just rely on value contrast. That's not necessarily bad, but you're probably leaving a lot of potential on the table. So use your knowledge of color theory to envision alternatives. Could your work be even better with more value contrast or more interesting hues? Is your art style what you want it to be, or could you apply some basic color theory principles to get it to the next level or potentially break with them? Keep asking these questions and you will find color theory not only useful but also fun to play with. 38. Values over Hues: Okay, this is a lesson where I'm probably going to repeat some points that I've made before, but I really believe that it's worth dedicating an extra lesson to values because they are just so important. And there are a few more facts that you have to know about them. Value is pretty much everything. Color schemes and hues are most helpful when you have similar values or just as a nice bonus. But if the values of your subjects are excellent, that's literally half the game, and you have more options to combine different hues. That's the big advantage. Darkness and brightness are the most primal, instinctive way to distinguish visual areas with your eyes. Contrast of value is the most effective way to direct attention. It outshines every other one, and it can ameliorate every other one. Complementary colors are eye, and they work, but it's only when there is a value contrast in addition to them that they really have this full separation. Values are what really guides attention. Areas with lots of internal value contrast, so more density and variety of values are naturally the focus areas. It works every time. These dense grids or chaotic areas with very bright and dark colors right next to each other, just signal that there is something going on. And this makes us look. So it's not only about the very dark or very bright areas contrasting each other, but the subtle use of values and their density, that's what really elevates artworks and designs. This is why in landscape paintings, where you have many different areas like sky background, foreground, the middle ground where the action is going on, always has the most variety of values. This is a timeless rule of composition that many great artists of the past have perhaps subconsciously adhered to, because it just works. Value is obviously what's most affected by light, so you always have to carefully study it. Darkness and brightness are also easy victims of color context illusions, as you can see here, the bright bits in the shadow areas often look brighter than the dark bits in the highlight areas, but it's usually still the other way around. All the stuff in the shadows is darker than all the stuff in the highlights. That is an excellent heuristic if you're unsure or you want to create something without a reference. So values have to be carefully studied if your art is supposed to look not wrong. But beyond that, values are a way to unlock more creative freedom as an advanced artist. Color schemes with well chosen hues are awesome, but predominantly for beginners, you will find when artists make art for a long time, that they start to incorporate more and more random hues at some point, especially the impressionists who are universally being referred to as the masters of color and light. They used more and more unrelated hues at some point. This is not breaking with color harmony, though, because they still prioritized values, these levels of value density, the contrast between light and shadow. This is what allowed them to go crazy with the hues. This is what brought them the freedom because different values create separation and therefore focus. Still, color schemes and classic color palettes are all over the place, and they are surely a tool that we all should use. But my point here is that ultimately, if you really understand value well and you're able to incorporate it into your work, you can actually break with some other rules of color theory. That's how powerful values are. I suggest that you do a little test once in a while to check your values. Go to a software and set the image mode to gray scale, so all the hues are removed. Alternatively, in real life, you can take a picture of your painting, import it into a software, and do the same thing. Might be a little bit more complicated, could be worth it. But if you work digitally, there is no excuse. You should absolutely do this from time to time. And this setting is in pretty much every drawing and design software. Because if it looks weird without hues, it probably is weird. If your values do not already make clear what the highlight and shadow areas are, and if they do not suggest three dimensional shapes on their own, I can almost guarantee you that hues will not save it, and it will look wrong in the end. You better be an absolute master of expressionism and color usage if you make up for a lack of values with different hues. It is possible, but it's definitely easier and more reliable to prioritize great values and precisely determine how dark and bright every area of your work shall be so far so good. Now, some art education actually over emphasizes the value of values. That sounds weird. But that's what I think because there is a common recommendation to only focus on values when painting. There is this idea that beginner artists, if they want to make realistic paintings, should have a pace of weeks, possibly months, where they paint only in grayscale. Yes, that's actually what many of them do. Now, I believe that this is not what you should only do because it just gets boring. But there is a reason for why this is a common recommendation. Values are just that important, and understanding light and shadow on a deep level and having lots of practice just focused on value is generally a good way to understand your subjects better and improve at realism. But as I've said, light affects hues, as well. And if you just leave this out of the equation, transitioning back to painting with colors may be very difficult. Color itself has to be practiced. You should be making color palettes, learn how to combine hues, et cetera. As a color theory expert, I am naturally a big proponent of using many colors. Who would have thought? But it's probably a good idea to still make pure value studies frequently at the beginning, not just value studies, however. The danger is there that it demotivates you and you quit making art because everything looks and feels like tedious practice. And as a painter, you just want to make an actual painting once in a while that looks awesome. This is really important, in my opinion. That's what keeps you going. Another danger of exclusively painting a gray scale is that you totally forget how to work with colors. Also possible. And you have to watch this whole annoying course again. See you. So make value studies. It's a good tip, but not just value studies. Alright. Back to an advantage of values. In design, this is one of the easiest ways to bring variety to something without over relying on different hues, because that's something that's really popular. Logos with great values are underrated, in my opinion, value contrast, transitions, levels of density, all that is amazing and underused. So go ahead, please. On the other hand, in the field of web design, I think people have really understood the power of values, and sometimes I wish they would use a few more different hues to make it more interesting. Anyways, one seemingly minor but still impactful advantage of prioritizing values is, well, color blind people. Think of them. Color blind people can benefit more greatly from a rich use of values rather than hues. There are no value blind people. If you can see light, which is seeing, you can see values. That's the point. As artists, designers, and color enthusiasts, it's very easy to forget that there is a plurality of people out there who cannot tell the difference between red and green because the receptors in their eyes function differently. But if your work has good values, lots of separation and contrast, it's not actually that important. They will still be able to enjoy it. And that's a very inclusive move, right? That's what we want. But even if you absolutely don't care about color blind people, it's just nice for everyone. A variety of values makes any image feel richer and more complete. And if they are correct and there is a lot of separation with different levels of value contrast in different parts of your image, you can play with hues more freely, and you don't have to worry as much about precise color schemes. So that is why values are so important. Remember the value of value studies ha ha, as a tool to practice more realistic art, not exclusively like some art teachers propagate, but certainly once in a while. That is going to improve your art a lot and possibly make it more expressive in the long run. And also design, right? Take a screenshot off your website, import it into a design software, and set it to grayscale. If everything important is still visible and you can tell apart the different buttons and elements, that's a good sign that your colors are working, and you don't even need hues to check that. So that's the test. Make sure your values are good and you're on a promising path to success as an artist and designer. 39. The true Strength of Relative Colors: Now we're getting deep into it. In this advanced lesson, I want to talk about the true strength of relative colors. We've already covered the basics of this in color context, but specifically for art, we've merely scratched the surface. Relative colors are huge, and I want to demonstrate this. Look at this painting. It's a very nice one. Rough and impressionistic, cool shapes, and really nice colors. We have green, blue, red, yellow. So, yeah, it looks like a nice tetradic color scheme that's a bit desaturated on average. Many different hues, but it still feels very harmonious and not too much. Right? Wrong. This is just completely one analogous color scheme. Don't believe me. Have a look. I'm going to pick the exact colors from this image. So right here, well, yellow orange, a little bit more reddish orange. Right here, we have white. That's not blue. That's not green. How about this? This is also yellow. There is pretty much no green in this whole picture and no blue. This sky is just completely desaturated yellow and orange. Maybe in some tiny pixels, you can find something that goes in the direction of green. But, well, this is pretty much just analogous colors, the whole thing. Yeah. This is the true strength of relative colors. One small exception might be these decorative dots here. Yeah, they are blue, but everything else that looks green is yellow or orange, and everything that looks blue is also yellow or orange. That's the thing. So this is something that you will find predominantly experienced artists use. They seemingly use many different hues, but they keep them analogous and harmonious by not even using different hues, but just making them appear different through relativity and color context. That can be very helpful to create a more coherent mood and to create more freedom with hues. The reasons for why this is the case are very complex. Usually, this can be achieved more easily by lowering the saturation of your colors, so when they approach gray, like in the example painting, the orange sky looks blue because it's super desaturated, and therefore, it looks like it's far away from these more saturated houses. When a lot of the intensity is removed, the hues don't clearly shine with their individual effects, but they become more dependent on the relative colors around them. However, it also works with more saturated colors, and that's where it gets weird. In order to illustrate this, I want to show you this, by the way, Outstanding painting by Victor. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. You can look it up on YouTube. Absolutely love these colors. But here is something that you may not have seen coming. There is pretty much no green in this whole painting. Yes, that is my contention. Let me pick the colors here once again. I have the color picker tool, and then let's click on this beautiful green grass. Yeah, there is no green. Up here, too, this is just completely yellow and even a little bit orange at times, but it does not go up to green. This right here. Look at that. Also yellow. Even here. And there, it maybe sometimes goes a little bit in that direction. But if we just look at the hue, this is pretty much exclusively yellow. Everything in this picture, even the leaves up here, look at that. Yellow. That's kind of green, you know, when it's very desaturated, very, very much in the shadow areas. But right here, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow. Everything here is yellow and orange. That's crazy, except these blue reflective lights here, obviously, because this is an impressionist painting. But yeah, now you understand it, I think. This really highlights the importance of relative colors and the implications that this has for the feel of your paintings. Imagine if all these yellow areas were actually green. You can surely see how this would have totally made the whole image feel a lot colder. Nothing wrong with that necessarily. But considering the subjects, this warm light, the comfy forest with flowers and sunshine, it's just very fitting with a clearly warm color temperature in the highlights. And that's what the artist did by just making all of them yellow. Right here, I believe that the subjects too play a subconscious role in how we perceive these colors. We have this idea that leaves are always green and they are almost green in this picture, so we just conclude that they are green. If the subjects were different or completely abstract with just these colors, I think this would not look as green as it does now. So relative colors and subjects can work together and create stunning illusions. This is an absolute pro trick to use color schemes. You can stay within a conservative range of, for example, analogous or triadic color scheme. But if you manipulate shades, tins, and tones, maybe let the subjects play a role, too, then you can actually make it look like you're using more hues than you are. And you can harvest their effects without ruining your color harmony. This is the deal. Keep your mind open to the possibilities to exploit relative colors. You can push them very far if you're smart and they might really come in handy if you want to manipulate the feel of an artwork and stretch your ability to use unique hue combinations. Perhaps you can also find a use for this in design. In logo design with minimal colors, this may be tricky. But in interior design or wipe design, I think this has potential achieve effects of a color and direct the mood with it without actually using the color. It might require a lot of experimentation to get this right. This is what I would ultimately recommend. Just try, just make different color combinations, and you may be able to find really good uses for color contexts and relative colors. It could absolutely be worth it. 40. Analysis of my Work: Welcome to the lesson where I'm just going to yap. Yes, this is an analysis of my work, some of my paintings, and how I used color in them. You can check them all out on my website, dpdsigns.com slash Gallery. So, yeah, I should say, this is not supposed to be a flex of my artistic capabilities or showing off how awesome my color usage is. There are way better painters than me. But analyzing their work would not give us any insights about how they think. We could make guesses, we could try to reverse engineer their process. We could interpret things like all the other tutorials about color theory on the Internet. Or I could just show you my paintings and tell you exactly what I thought. So that's what we're doing. I'm going to talk about as much as I can remember about the process and the decisions regarding color theory. Is it even in there? Let's find out. First of all, I want to show you this painting, which is called the rest. It's very abstract and free style. Didn't use a reference for it, what I felt like making. But we certainly have some interesting colors. Can you guess which color scheme I used here? Well, obviously, it's very tense, so complimentary. We have a range of blue with a dark blue and light blue and a range from red to orange contrasting it on the other side of the color wheel. So there is a lot of tension between the main shapes, the main colors here. There is also a bit of value contrast with these white and black lines throughout the whole picture. So this has lots of contrast in general. It's maybe even a little bit too much contrast for my taste. I made this a while ago, and I thought about color, but not too much about contrast. The thing is there is a consistent density of lines and also contrast on this picture. So it's a bit like a pattern. You see the black lines are everywhere, the white lines are everywhere. The blue is kind of evenly distributed, although it's a bit more present on the bottom half of the image, but it definitely has a consistently high intensity due to the present contrast, without any clear focus or separation that would have tamed it. It's a nice composition. I don't do cubism style paintings often, but yeah, there are a few things I could have definitely done to improve it. For example, I could have lowered the overall saturation of this picture to make it a bit less hard on the eye. But in this case, I actually feel like this would make the picture a bit less interesting because the colors get blurred together and we lack this tension that the picture has. But I think in these abstract compositions, having saturated colors is actually nice. So maybe it would be an idea to decrease the value contrast. The black lines definitely need to be there because they kind of define the overall composition. Like every relevant shape here is surrounded by a black line, and they contrast each other with straight versus round lines. They direct the attention and all of that. I think they are very important here. But the white lines are actually something that I could have perhaps left out. The colorful shapes here are actually quite bright on average, so the white lines don't stand out from them as much as the black lines. So leaving out the white lines would probably not lower the overall contrast too much, which could be bad or could be good. I don't know. But I think what I should have definitely done in this picture is limit one side of the hue range of the complimentary color pair, namely the blue. The red and orange is necessary here. It's very nice, very rich, but the blue is a bit too far expanded. We have these dark blue areas and this blue that almost goes in the direction of turquoise. That's a little bit too much, I think. I think with one kind of blue or a very small range of blue, this would actually look better, have less overall contrast, and more clear separation. That's my verdict. As I've said, when you have complimentary colors, it's usually best to limit one side drastically and expand only the other. For example, here, we have yellow, orange, red, but then a range of blue on the other side is, I think, too much. So one blue would have been the best choice here, which I didn't make, so it's still alright. But yeah, there is always something to improve. So these are my thoughts about this painting. It was a bit more like a critique. So in the next one, I want to talk more about the process, and that is this gane. And that one, I think, is technically a lot better, although it has less overall contrast, and I'm generally a fan of contrast. But right here, it's actually really fitting. It's a harmonious collection of different patterns that I created using many different brushes. And, yeah, I took a photo with my phone in Switzerland of this beautiful river and used it as a reference. I once again made it very abstract, although not too abstract, but I really wanted to focus on the textures here and the different shapes because those were also so awesome in real life. Now the thing with color, as you can see, there are lots of stones and a very desaturated background. So there is generally not a lot of color in this picture. The one that's there is pretty much just what I added manually because I felt like it. We have these tiny bits of yellow and orange and red, very desaturated put on these stones. So I made use of this classic tactic to spice up your paintings, which is to add some random colors in the details if it's not too much. And in this case, I think it was definitely fitting because the overall composition is super gray and desaturated. Furthermore, I definitely made the water a bit more saturated and turquoise than it is by nature. So we have still quite a few different hues that are absolutely not connected. There is no clear intended color scheme or anything, but they still work because they only appear in the details, and the whole thing is still dominated by these big gray shapes. That's the way to do it. What I could have done is maybe add even more colors in the details like some purple shadows or something like that. But I didn't feel like it. I think this is okay, and I just let the texters do most of the work here, not just the colors for once. Alright. As the next picture, we have this, which is called focus. There is a lot more inherent value contrast than in the last one. There are very dark and very bright areas due to the fact that this is a winter forest. It took me a long time to paint this. I used a reference, and I definitely thought quite a lot about color theory here, although it doesn't look very colorful at first glance. I think what you first notice here is that there are these patterns with value contrast with very dark and very bright areas right next to each other with the trees and the snow. And honestly, this is usually enough to make a picture interesting, and this is what the reference had, you know, just dark trees and bright snow, nice, dense pattern, very awesome. But I definitely felt like pushing it a bit more in terms of color. So the first thing you can see, the shadows are pretty much all relatively saturated blue. This is something that you can always do. You can exaggerate the shadows by making the blue or purple. And yeah, this is a classic case where this becomes very useful because the sky is already blue, and we are not adding any additional hues by making the shadows blue, as well. Very practical. But aside from that, I felt like adding a bit more color in addition to the blue. So I searched for opportunities to elevate things in this painting. Big, colorful areas would not really make sense here because I'd have to add different objects, different subjects, which would be disturbing or even too much with all the inherent value contrast here. So I just pumped up the saturation of some areas. I exaggerated the highlight areas of these tree stems by making them completely red, and I made some of the leaves in the background a bit more green. Very uncomplicated intervention, but now we have red green blue, which is the classic Triadic Color Scheme in the RGB color wheel. And that definitely fits the subject. You know, this rich, complete, harmonious feeling supported by a very subtle triadic color scheme. So yeah, this is something that I thought about during the process of making this painting. I had this reference. I knew I was going to need lots of blue, but I was looking for ways to play with the colors and make it feel more complete without having to add any new subjects or whatever. So that's an approach that you can always follow in your painting process. You start with something safe, and then you look for subtle manipulations to improve it and make it more interesting. Alright, next painting a lot more straightforward, a lot more intense and saturated, purple woods. Can you guess the color scheme in this one? By the way, I want to apologize for maybe not showing you too many different examples. Nature paintings are just my thing and what I feel most comfortable showcasing here. But yeah, back to the colors. What color scheme is this? Well, the dominant colors are purple, yellow and green, so it's a classic split complimentary color scheme, supported by lots of value contrast with the sun shining through these dark trees. There is also some brown and orange in these trees in the background and on the path here, but that is so small that it doesn't really play a role in the overall feel of this image and therefore the color scheme. Very cliche painting, nothing too deep, but, yeah, it's just nice to look at because of the value contrast and the colors. And, of course, this dense, chaotic texture of flowers and grass where all the different colors come together, and I spent so much time scribbling that. I was so glad when I was done. And yeah, once again, I didn't do too much here. I had a reference, and I just pumped up the saturation of certain colors to approach a color scheme. I left out some details that would not fit with it, and I focused on creating lots of value contrast and maybe adding a bit more yellow to these flowers, you know, classic exaggerated highlights and a bit more yellow in the background to make it feel very warm. Regarding color psychology, I also really like it because this purple just makes it feel very rich and sophisticated. You don't need any special subjects, just, you know, this color that has a lot of energy to it. And yeah, the rest is also very warm. The green is warm, the yellow is warm, definitely fits the vibe of the sun. What I could have done here in terms of color is, I think not a lot. I really like the Split-Complementary Color Scheme. It's a very nice one, but I could have definitely added a bit more detail to the leaves up here, certainly or maybe a few more branches to make a contrasting texture to this flower field. But yeah, those are details. And the colors in this one are very straightforward, and I think you know what I meant with this painting. Just something that's pleasing to look at. And if you follow color theory and pick a simple subject, it's really not hard. Alright, then the last painting of mine that I want to show you is this the Advanced routine. This one is definitely a bit deeper, I could say, and also a bit more realistic. It's very colorful. There are, at first glance, many different colors, but there was a lot of thought behind them in this painting. My process was basically this. In December 2024, I decided that I want to paint a bird a colorful hummingbird snacking on some flowers with a pitch black background, so I don't have to paint anything there when there is a lot of focus on the subjects and some nice contrast to the bright and saturated colors that hummingbirds and flowers usually have. That was my original idea. And because I couldn't find any reference where I both like the bird and the flowers, I decided that I'm going to make a combination of different references, which I knew was going to work well because of the simple black background that I had intended. So first, I found this reference with a green hummingbird, and that's when I started thinking about color theory. I wanted to have a rich and intense composition. So I looked for flowers that have a complimentary color to green. So I found these pink flowers at the right scale, and I painted the bird and the flowers. There were some slight adjustments. For example, I made the beak very bright because of the dark background to have a lot of contrast there to make it visible because in the original reference, it was a bit more gray and that would not have looked so nice here. But like that, the beak is a nice focus point being completely white and bright. After that, I thought like, enhancing the composition with this Japanese proverb, which I thought was very fitting. And yeah, if you know Japanese, maybe you can guess what it means. But that was basically my finished painting. A nice composition with lots of empty space, bright colors that stand out from the dark background, complimentary color scheme with some random colors in the details, which is fine, as I've told you. But unfortunately, it was so much fun to paint this that I was not really content. I wanted to make more of that and basically paint the same picture again. So I had the idea to just do the same thing again twice and make a series with three different birds, three different types of flowers, and three Japanese proverbs. So I would get a nice practice in composition and painting birds. So I turn to color theory for advice to find a way to introduce variety to these other paintings while still following a pattern with the colors. The first image has a complimentary color scheme with a very cold bird and warm flowers, which is definitely a principle that you can repeat. Therefore, I started an intensive search for references with cold hummingbirds and warm flowers. And I basically ended up with the ones that you can see in the final painting, two more complimentary color pairs with a cold bird and a warm flower that I combined from different references. We have this light blue turquoise with yellow flowers here, and this dark blue purple with orange flowers here. Both paintings also took me a lot of time, and they have lots of tension between the colors, along with value contrast to the background, of course. I think I also made the beak more white than it was in the reference in both of these other birds. Just look so nice against black. And I found some more fitting Japanese proverbs to add. In the end, I just put all three paintings right next to each other to have this very colorful series as one whole composition. And if we look at this as one painting now, it doesn't follow a color scheme anymore because there are basically hues from all sides of the color wheel, but it doesn't look too hard on the eye, I believe, because of a few things. First of all, the colors are all tamed and somewhat separated. Each complimentary color pair appears in one third of this composition. So it's not like the colors are all over the place, but each one kind of has its separate space where it belongs and stays. But what I think is even more important here is the big black background. There are all these huge empty spaces separating the image into individual parts and also suppressing the energy of the hues a bit. As I've told you, black is really good to put more saturated colors on top rather than white because white light is the combination of all colored light and therefore always shines along with more saturated colors. And that makes it very intense and potentially hard on the eye. Black, on the other hand, does the opposite. It doesn't have any wavelength or energy, and therefore, lets romas do their jobs without interfering or competing while still contrasting them and letting them shine more intensely. And I believe that this is what this painting is all about. The main color is black, and we just have some intense Cromas in the details. That's basically how it works. I started with a simple complimentary color scheme with value contrast and repeated a pattern with slight variations to arrive at a completely different color harmony. That is certainly a way to do it, and I think it's very replicable in different situations. Start with simple principles, a nice simple color scheme, and then expanding on it by making a series of variations while keeping color harmony in the back of your head. And, yeah, that's basically it. I think you kind of see it at this point. There are very different, very unique approaches to color theory that still all kind of follow the same principles. I showed you some different examples from my work, which I didn't select but these are my best paintings that I ever made, but I just wanted to showcase different ways that I used color. So all of these paintings kind of had a different approach to color theory, a different process and all of that. So, yeah, I hope this was very insightful for you, even if you don't paint like me. I think this has still given you an idea how different color theory decisions can overlap and follow each other up or also how color theory can help you find ideas, like in the last painting. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed this lesson. 41. Dynamic Color Theory: Now on to a topic that is very, very special dynamic color theory. I literally came up with this term because I don't think anybody has talked about this, at least in the context of color theory, but it's basically that. So far, we've only looked at colors being distributed throughout space, like you have it in art or logos. Where are these colors on a two dimensional plane? How do they interact? Which effects do they have, blah, blah, blah? But here is the thing. There is also the possibility to distribute different colors through time, which means colors change as things happen, such as in movies, games or also environments that you move through in real life. This is why we've jumped from two dimensions directly to four dimensions, including time, because the third and fourth dimension always come together in the context of design and art. If you imagine a three D situation like a room, there has to be a fourth dimension in order for you to perceive it as truly three D. Otherwise, it's a static image, which can also be depicted in two D just for clarity. So when you have a three D space with different colors, the distribution of these colors will obviously change with time as you look around. There is the possibility to use dynamic color theory. In a video, there is not always a Triadic Color Scheme that follows the 603010 rule. Sure, some parts, some screens of a video might follow it if the director paid attention to my course. But how do these rules apply if the visuals are changing over time? Does every frame of a movie and every wall of a room need to have an optimized color palette and composition? This is also a question when you're making a video game or also a website because people scroll and don't just stay on the same screen or also interior design because guess what? People move and they will look at different parts of a visual presentation at different times if they have the opportunity. How to handle that is the topic of this lesson. And I want to start with color schemes and color palettes over time. Are they still valid when things change? When you have a room, it can absolutely follow a color scheme. Even though people can turn their head and perceive different combinations of colors depending on where they look, the context in which they do that can still be made pleasing by following a color scheme. When you're in a room that only has one or two doors or a window, that's like a closed space, like one design, like one artwork. And you can absolutely use color theory in the context of that room, distribute it three dimensionally. It can change over time what exactly the distribution of colors is from the perspective of the viewers because they will look around, but on average, your room can still follow a color scheme, and that makes it great. I'm telling you it will make a difference if there is a good color palette. Even if your viewers or I should say visitors in this case, don't perceive it in its entirety the whole time. If they want, they can look at the floor and only see brown. That's fine. But there is still this human instinct to perceive the room as a whole. Whenever you enter a new confined space, you look around and try to perceive everything as broadly as possible. How big is it? What's the purpose of it? Are there any windows or doors where I can move on? That's how humans naturally think. And if there was a nice color palette applied to the whole situation, they will notice and appreciate it consciously or subconsciously. Three dimensional games naturally work the same, so color theory is still valid even in these situations. Here's the idea. Try to apply a color palette to a context that people will perceive as one. When they spend time in a situation, there should be one color palette for the situation. I know it's perhaps hard to grasp the concept at the beginning, and it's difficult to draw the line where exactly that holds. But let me give a negative example for clarity. You don't want people to look to the left and see a triadic color scheme, then look to the right and see a complementary color scheme. Stuff like that can work when you have an art exhibition with lots of neutral vaults and lots of space between the paintings that all have their own color palette. But in a natural situation like your house, you want some sort of separation. If it's possible to see multiple rooms at once, like when they're separated by a half wall or a see through glass, as you sometimes see it, I think you can be flexible. There are people who prefer more colors, more palettes next to each other, and people who want to keep it more uniform or separate. So I don't want to preach here, but remember to limit the possible amount of color palettes that people can look at at any given time. That's the core idea. However, you also don't want them to perceive too many different palettes right after each other. For example, on websites, if you have one screen with a color scheme, and then immediately as you scroll down, there is another color scheme, it's probably too much. Give it some time, put it on a different tab, a different sub page, or make a slow transition with lots of neutral stuff between. In interior design, this would be the equivalent of having many tiny rooms that you walk through that each have completely different colors. It's just a bit stressful and definitely not nice. Too many different color palettes after each other in the dimension of time can be really annoying and exhausting, like this video right here, maybe not as extreme, but it goes in that direction, and nobody wants that. So use different color palettes for different situations dynamically, but put some space or time between them. Apply one color palette to one context that people perceive as a whole, like a room, a sub page on a website, a five minute scene in a movie, or a section of a level in a two D platforming game. It's all the same if you understand colors on their ground level. Dynamic color theory comes with many, many opportunities, and it's perhaps a bit overwhelming, especially for me as I have to try to explain it. But I think about it as something that you can truly play with as an opportunity to really immerse people in something. For example, by using contrast over time, make viewers used to a vibe and then break with it. You don't have to break with it radically, but you can make incremental changes. A change in saturation as the video progresses might be an interesting stylistic device for your artistic expression. Dynamic color theory truly comes with a lot, and there are not too many rules that always hold true. But I think a genuinely good heuristic is to not throw everything at your viewers at once in the beginning. You know, in a game, you don't want the fanciest, most colorful levels right at the start. I mean, you do want to put good colors everywhere, depending on what's fitting, but I think it's always good to build up to something, whether you're working on a game or a movie or something like that. So if the colors get a little bit more exciting as you go, when the time is right, that might be a good thing. It just makes it more interesting. You know, you don't want the experience to degress over time. You want to come up with different color harmonies for different situations. Always keep it interesting, but not overdo it somewhere. So everything that comes after seems lame. I think many interior designers do this subconsciously, or they have a different terminology for describing this rule. But it's quite logical when you enter a house and the entrance room is the most colorful, most interesting, and then you go to all the other rooms and they are more neutral and conservative, that's a bit weird, and it doesn't really feel right. It's way better if you come into a nice, but not overblown foyer or corridor, and then all the individual rooms that come after are more exciting. They don't all have to be different, of course, but more individualistic and intense than the first one. That's how to prevent disappointment as people move through a three dimensional space over time. Therefore, I believe that putting your most intense colors at the start might not be the move. Exactly the same thing in movies and video games. You can play with different things like story plots or character building and whatnot. I don't know about other stuff. I'm the designer, the color guy, but this is just my take on it. You want to reserve the intensity with your colors for the special moments. Alright. Then remember color context. That is especially important in dynamic situations. When your characters in a film are in an environment with warm colors and they move to something more neutral, that neutral area will seem very cool, could be good, could be bad. Always depends on your intentions, but you must be aware of this. In interior design, this is the same. When you have a room that is absolutely super intense and warm with saturated orange and yellow, pretty much anything that comes after it will seem cold. Even if it's mainly savannah green or crimson red, there is still going to be a psychological effect of it feeling cool and refreshing if right before you were in that orange room for some time. You must keep this in mind. The more intense your colors are, the more their relative effects come to the surface and influence the perception of other colors, especially over time in dynamic color theory. Let me show you a little example of how I use color dynamically in one of my works. I'm not a movie director, but I have made my own game Super Mario and the Cliffs of Spring. It's a mod of the game new Super Maribus We by Nintendo. I made all the levels and graphics myself, so there is a lot of thought behind every object you see on the screen here. And finally, I did use quite a bit of color theory here, although at the time when I made the game, I didn't know nearly as much about it as I do now, but I kind of intuitively succeeded at a few things, simply because I was always aware of the importance of colors. I just wanted the colors to be different, to be engaging. By the way, this is not an ad. This game is completely free and open source. You can find it on my website, doblusigns.com and watch a play through of it on my YouTube channel. But this is what I did in terms of color. Basically every level has just a tiny bit of saturation. It's mostly gray. It's mostly tones of simple colors. They usually still follow a color scheme like split complimentary here or complimentary here. But at the end of the level, I always put a little surprise, and that is a flower field with very intense and saturated flowers. So every time after you beat one of these long and difficult levels and you make it to the end, there is this visual reward, this bright contrast. And that really resonated well with the players. They can immediately tell when the flowers come, you can relax. It's over, and the goal is right there, and they get excited looking for this color combination. So you have this gray, calm, focused vibe when you have to perform. And then once you're done, boom colors. The different situations are highlighted with different color palettes that are clearly separated. By the way, the color of these flowers is different in every level, and they are random and not connected to the level's color palette. But because the default textures are all desaturated, it works. One color on top of gray tones always looks nice, and that's what I did. So this is my take on dynamic color theory. I think this might be a huge topic, but there just isn't enough research, not enough interesting data that I could tell you. These are just my ideas for now. So take everything here with a grain of salt. But probably you will find the classic principles of color theory to work very well in this dimension. You know, it's probably good to use classic complimentary colors after each other to ameliorate a difference in vibe or to not oversaturate every scene. I don't think there is a huge difference in the best practices between two, three, and four dimensions. Just keep the few rules in mind that are told you in this lesson. I think they are very important. You just have to think outside the box a little bit more and see if you can import something from classic color theory to make it dynamic. And doing that well and intelligently, I think that could be a huge thing to make better movies, rooms, games, websites. So yeah, keep that in mind. I'm sure you'll find using color dynamically an interesting challenge. 42. Exercises to practice Color Vision: Okay, everybody, we are pretty much at the end of the course. Well done, at least if you paid attention. I know it wasn't very practical so far. I mean, it's color theory, after all, but I have a few more suggestions for you for how you can practice. Specifically, I want to give you exercises for improving your color vision, finding the right colors of something, and henceforth, developing a deeper, more intuitive understanding of how color works. Let's go. Number one, import artworks into a drawing software and try to guess the difficult colors. I would really recommend you to look up impressionist or expressionist artworks because there are usually very interesting discoveries to be made or more realistic artworks with unusual light conditions. You can also do this with photos, but I think learning directly from great art is superior. Still, if you don't really care about art and just want to understand colors better, photos are fine. So here's what I would do. Download an image, take a screenshot, take a photo yourself in real life, and upload it to your computer, whatever it takes to have it, and then pull it into any software that lets you select colors. Gimp Photoshop, Procreate or, of course, what I always recommend Krita, the best one. There is no excuse that you can't afford a software. Krita and Gimp are completely free and open source, and there is no excuse that you have to learn the program. You just drop an image, search for a tool that's called color picker and a tool that's called brush. In Krita, it's literally two and one. You can click on this brush icon, then you can put paint on the canvas. And if you hold control while clicking, you're selecting the color that you click on. Simple as that. So what color is this? Probably black or very close to black. Let me look at the color selector. Should be this. Let's click next to it. All right. And that's how close my guess was. This is literally the whole exercise. Very minimalistic, but very effective. It looks super easy, but it's actually not if you do this with more complex paintings, and you actually have to think about color theory. For example, let's have a look at this image by Camille Pizaro, very cool impressionist. And as you can see, there are many colors in here. So this is phenomenal for this exercise. Let me make the brush a bit smaller, and then let's try to guess the colors from this image. So the sky looks pretty complex. Many different hues in there, from blue to green and yellow. But if I had to guess the average color of this, it would be something like that maybe green, more saturated, less saturated. I think it would be this for the bottom part. So, that was actually pretty good. But as you can see, it's a little bit less saturated in the painting than my color. So that's something to take note of. Then up here, maybe blue, dark blue like this, perhaps. And no, that was totally off. It's literally all green. As you can see, I fell victim to color context. As I've said, once again, there are all these warm hues, and as soon as it gets a bit colder and desaturated, it starts looking like blue in comparison. So yeah, this is an exercise that you can do, very simple but very effective. You can always analyze why you were wrong or how wrong you were by picking the colors. You know how to judge that because of the scars, so make use of it. Especially if you want to become good at painting complex light conditions, this is going to help you develop a deeper understanding of colors. Then another exercise. Try to guess the color scheme, not just the colors. And this one is a bit more open end because you cannot check for a color scheme. You can just take your best guess and then live with that. But it's still very good to just look at different well made photos or paintings and try to find one of the basic color schemes that we've covered because oftentimes you will find one if you really look for it. It's not super obvious in every case, because the artists often use more colors in the details or they play with value and saturation a lot as of satin color harmony. But color schemes are still very common. Small tip, first search for the feeling of the image. Does it feel complete, harmonious, tense, varied? This can give you a clue for the main color scheme. So keep it in mind. This is also something that's worth practicing. The last exercise that I want to show you is to reverse engineer color palettes. So this is yet another step further. Simply look at a painting or a photo and create a matching color palette for it. This is a great way to find out how many colors you need to model in a palette in order to imagine a painting. Some of you may be able to distill an artwork into a palette with four colors and find that to be an accurate representation of its color space. And some of you may always be drawn to make it more like ten colors just to get a better idea of it. There is no right or wrong, but I would recommend that you adhere to the rules from color palettes. Remember, the most extreme and most common colors should be represented. And ideally, you want to do this exercise in the same level of detail that you would apply to your own work. So if you usually prefer to make a color palette of four to six colors before an artwork, you should be looking for about four to six colors in this exercise as well. That's the idea. Then there are levels of difficulty to this. If you think this is too easy and boring, look at that. I'm going to pxels.com, a Royalty free image site, and I'm clicking on next, any Image and then just next. When there is something interesting, I'm going to look at it for 5 seconds, and then I close it. Now the color palette. See? This is how you can make it more challenging. Just look at it for 5 seconds or only 3 seconds. And if you're really interested in the immediate effects that color has, so if you want to grab attention on social media or whatever, just look at an image for a split second and try to recreate the color palette. This will give you a good idea which colors really shine, which ones are completely irrelevant. So yeah, that might give you some insights. For this, obviously, you can curate a playlist of images. You can look at other artists galleries like mine, or you do it on pexels like me because there you can always type in a topic like blue nature. Okay, okay. This looks interesting. Let me close it and then try to model the colors. Then you can, of course, also vary the level of detail. At the beginning, it's probably better to find the foremost important colors and try to make them as accurate as possible. And as you get better, you can try to remember more colors like more tins and tones of the main colors. Or you start modeling the colors at their approximate size and position too and create a color sketch like that, as I've shown you before. This is really good to understand which colors actually catch attention, which ones perhaps directed, and which ones are more subtle supporters. So everything should be clear now. You go to go and try out these exercises and modify the difficulty if you need it. Guess colors in complex situations, find the right color scheme and reverse engineer color palettes. Doing these exercises from time to time and switching back and forth between them will surely make you better at picking the right colors for your work. Have fun with them. 43. Common Color Errors: Now you know everything about colors that you need in art and design. Probably way more than that, but, yeah, I hope it was at least interesting. Before I can let you go, however, I want to warn you of some of the most common and detrimental errors in color usage. This is the part that I've been waiting for the whole time because now I can rent. I've made a bunch of severe color mistakes in the past, and I'm fine, but it's always better to learn right away about things you shouldn't do. Saves you time. So let's talk about these horrible errors so you can minimize the probability of them happening. First of all, I'm just going to say it again, but using too much color and too much saturation. Yep, you've heard it before in this course multiple times, but it's still the most common mistake that designers and artists make with color. So you must internalize this. Tune it down unless you know what you're doing. If you've got a color palette, look at it and ask yourself which of these colors really have to be saturated? An artwork with desaturated colors and just one intense accent that really sticks out always works. The pros do it all the time. So see this as a basis and add more saturated colors only if you adhere to color schemes and color harmony. Just because you know about all the nice psychological effects of blue and green and orange and white doesn't mean that you have to use all of them at once because they'll cancel each other out and become hard of the eye unless you're a master of abstract art. Always ask yourself which colors really have to be saturated and which ones can be tuned down or left out. When you use more than two or three saturated colors, they really have to fit together, and they must have a very good reason for being there. Otherwise, they become annoying. So use color moderately and appropriately. If you really want something to stand out, saturation is nice but not necessary. Always check if you could also use other types of contrast like value or shape, for instance. This brings us to the second mistake, and that is, well, not using enough contrast. Man, I see this so often. If you want to achieve anything with a painting or a website, there has to be some sort of contrast that guides the viewer's eye. Value is the most common and versatile form of contrast that you can use. When almost the whole page is bright, you look at this one part that is dark. That's how it is, and you should have understood that by now. So I always recommend using lots of value contrasts in your work because that's one of the easiest ways to make an artwork or a design interesting. Hue is also great if you limit it. Colors that are somewhat complimentary and otherwise just appear in different shades, tints, and tones are such an easy way to make something look harmonious. Don't shy away from using a mainstream color scheme, if you can combine it with other epic contrast. For example, contrast of saturation or contrast of shape, like gray versus chroma, hard edges, versus soft edges, round elements against straight lines. There are many options, so make use of them. Don't just rely on uses to create contrast, but still create lots of contrast. Pictures that are homogeneous are often boring and not engaging, and websites where you can't even tell apart the different elements because there's too little contrast won't hold visitors for more than 2 seconds, especially nowadays. There is a reason why we pretty much always use black or dark blue on white paper to write something or white on black or dark gray, like right here. Treat your artworks and designs the same way. If you want something to be visible, it has to be different to its surroundings, which is contrast, and it's awesome. Another common error that people like to make is not deciding on which colors to use beforehand. I mean, you should have learned from this course that you first want to make a color palette and test your colors before committing to your work. But in art, this is really important. So I want to mention it again, especially traditional art. It's very hard to change the colors of individual objects in a complex painting without making ugly mistakes. In digital art and design, yes, you can adjust colors after you've made a picture. As I've said, I sometimes shift the hue of an image after I'm done just to see how it feels with different colors. In abstract art or patterns, this always works well because you can just shift the hue of the whole thing, and sometimes you immediately end up with a superior vibe. But if your artwork has something realistic like a tree, water, or a human being, you obviously can't just change the colors because that would make it totally dysfunctional as an artwork. Selecting individual objects can work, but it's not very precise and super easy to make mistakes. Trust me, I've been there quite a few times in the past, and nah, you don't really want to have to do this. It's always best if you just know what the final colors will be during the process. That way, you can work with a clear vision and apply it to the whole picture. So the subject, the shapes, the composition, and the colors all work together and speak the same language. This is how to elevate your art to the next level. So plan your colors and think about what you want them to do before making an artwork or a design. That will give you the best results. Okay, this next color error is, once again, mostly for art, and that is being too conservative with your colors. Yes, making realistic art is nice, and having colors that look like they come straight from nature is generally a good thing, but it can get boring. If you look at pictures that have super awesome colors that seem so deep, you'll often find that they are actually not that realistic. Colors are powerful, and this is the reason why many artists choose to exaggerate them, especially in expressionism and impressionism. These art movements have gifted us some of the most memorable paintings of all time. But color exaggeration is also popular in illustration. You should definitely experiment with colors that are not necessarily natural, but that would look nice and have an interesting effect. For example, by making some parts more saturated or slightly shifting the hues. If it results in greater contrast or you can approach a color scheme at the cost of realism, this is often a worthy trade off. People like looking at cool colors working together. Let me think of an example. Like when you have an illustration with a blue background at a human that's not necessarily supposed to be super realistic. You can shift the hue of the skin a bit more toward orange and make it more saturated. That way you have more intensity and more contrast because you approach the complimentary color scheme of blue and orange. Stuff like that can really go a long way. Of course, this doesn't mean that you should oversaturate your colors or add too many of them, which would be the second mistake that we've talked about. But these are just ideas that I want to share with you because we need that. If your illustrations sometimes look boring, maybe consider experimenting with colors more, even if they are not that realistic. Use this to break free from boring visuals. Don't be afraid of using crazy colors once in a while. I'm telling you, as long as your color harmony is right, it's going to work out. People don't care if it looks realistic, as long as it looks interesting. Alright, next up, we have color trends. Oh, God. In my honest opinion, color trends are precisely 100% useless. They are nothing but a crutch for people who don't know how to handle color themselves and want to outsource their color decisions to corporations. And if you paid attention to the lessons of this course, you are not one of them anymore. You don't need to be up to date with color. You only have to understand how it works and what you want to achieve with it. Clop psychology exceeds any color trends, and it absolutely trashes them when it's one on one. Do what you have to do and use your whole color knowledge to achieve results with it. Why would you restrict yourself by only using colors that are currently in? There are artworks out there that look great and their colors achieve effects, even though they are 1,000-years-old. Do you think Michel Angelo asked around which colors people prefer this season? This course shows you how to use color, and the principles that I've taught you are timeless. Unlike any color trend that you might come across, you have enough competence to not give a damn. So if you have any goals with your artworks or designs, other than blending in, don't waste your time researching trendy colors and reading these pointless articles. Even if you want to make, like, a seasonal artwork or design, like adjusting the colors of your website when it's winter, don't use the colors that some magazine praises as the January color combo of 2025 or something. Use colors that you associate with winter and that you like. It's really not that complicated. Colors are wavelengths of light that we can perceive. No color, not a single one will ever be outdated. It just depends on what you do with them. You can now use any color at your will only based on intention and practicality. So they always look awesome, not just during the spring. So apply what you've learned in this course, and you don't have to be up to date with color trends. At all. Thank you. Okay, now, last but definitely not least, make your own color palettes for real. It actually feels kind of embarrassing that I even have to mention this, but somehow people still get sucked into these marketed psudo helpful tools. But, come on. It's just a color palette. You've seen how it's done, so there is no need to outsource this part of the creative process to some website. I mean, sure, some people just showcase color palettes that you can use for inspiration. But tools like Adobe color where you click on try it, you move it around. It's going to make some color palette. These are very deceiving or even worse coolers where you literally just press the space bar, and it generates a random color palette for you. Let me tell you something. You don't need this. Even if some of these look nice, there are major problems that come with using a generated color palette. First of all, most of them don't even look good or even terrible. This proves that there is more to finding colors for your work than just doing it technically correct by using a color scheme. Your colors have to be specifically selected with purpose, and that's clearly missing from these palettes. You can use color schemes to find out which colors you want to add to your palette, but that doesn't guarantee a good look. As I've said, even in color schemes themselves, there is variety that you can choose from like slightly shifting left or right when choosing a complimentary color. There are models and rules, but using them is still a quite intuitive and human process. These websites just generate palettes that follow some formula and are just supposed to look not wrong, which they often don't even succeed at. But even if a generated palette looks alright, you haven't made it, so you cannot rely on its functionality for your art or design. How would you know if you actually need these colors, you know? If you pick the colors for your work step by step with purpose, as I've shown you, they will look way better and be more fitting than any color palette that you can find on the Internet. I can promise you that. It feels way better when you do the work if you've actually succeeded in finding an individual color combo that actually works for you. Plus, it might even save you time. Choosing a main color, having an idea for accents, and adding some variations to them is most of the time a quick and intuitive process once you know the basic rules and you know what you want to create, and it's fun. Do you really want to sit there and click again and again, waiting for the website to give you the perfect color palette like a gambling addict on a slot machine? I mean, you have taken this course, so why not use your skills and your knowledge? You can look at websites like Color Hunt, where the palettes are at least uploaded by users and not automatically generated. But I would use that as inspiration at most and always make modifications for your purposes. It feels so satisfying to come up with an awesome, unique color palette yourself and applying it to your work. So don't skip this step of the creative process. You will learn more. You will have more fun, a better workflow, and a better result. All of that guaranteed. So, ladies and gentlemen, I think this is it. Using too much saturation, not using enough contrast, not deciding on colors beforehand, being too conservative with colors, following color trends, and using pre made color palettes. These are absolutely detrimental color mistakes that happen in all fields of art and design. And now that I've told you, you have no excuse to repeat them. Sorry, trust in your own abilities, apply the teachings from this course, and you're good to go when it comes to color. Thank you. 44. Color Fun Facts: Ladies and gentlemen, that is it for this course. We've talked about everything related to color that you can practically use. But because we are already this deep into the topic, I want to finish with some, let's say, less important but still interesting facts about color. Just because it's a fascinating subject, and it would be a nice conclusion to this whole thing. So let me rapid fire through a few color fun facts. First of all, does my red look the same as your red? Well, who knows? Color is not an inherent property of reality. There is no gray in the stone, if you know what I mean? It's just light hitting objects, and some wavelengths of this light get absorbed and some are reflected. Those that are reflected and retize need to be within a specific energetic range, and then they can be transformed into electric signals. And those electric signals can then go to our brain and be interpreted as a color. That is a big simplification of this biological process, of course, but you can already see there is a lot of abstraction and a lot of transformation. What we call a color only forms in our brains, and our brains are very different, unique, and also unexplored in how exactly they work. So there is absolutely no way of knowing if your red looks the same as my red. Perhaps my color wheel and my perception of reality is the other way around, and everything that's red to me, looks like it's green. Or you see completely different colors than me that I can't even imagine. Practically, this makes absolutely no difference because there is still statistical data which colors people can distinguish and which feelings they have when looking at them. Those are all valid. So it makes sense to assume that other people see colors the same way as you as an artist and designer. And well, there is no way to disprove that. At least not until we've solved consciousness scientifically, from which we are far away. So, yeah, that's a color fun fact. There is nothing to be gained from asking that question, but it's just some food for thought, as they say. However, there are actually proven differences in how people perceive colors, for example, color blindness. As you probably know, there are people who cannot distinguish between red and green if they have the same value, or in rarer cases, blue and yellow. Or in very rare cases, people can only see shades of gray, so no color at all. Humans normally have trichromatic color vision, which means that we have three cone receptors in our eyes that are responsible for distinguishing colors, short, medium and long or S M and L cones. S cones most sensitive to blue light, M cones to green, and ces to red light. They work together to produce all the colors that we can see. And if one, two or three of these cones are defect or mutated, that's when a type of color blindness occurs. So when there are only two working ones, it's called dichromatic color vision, and when it's one, it's monochromatic color vision, which really sucks, I suppose. However, there are reported instances of people having four cone receptors. I think pretty much only woman and very rarely. This is known as tetrachromatic vision, and apparently, it allows you to distinguish way more individual colors, which makes me very jealous, not going to lie. Not all people who have four cone receptors can distinguish more colors because you also need extra nerves to transport the electoral signals and yeah, all of that stuff. But it's a very interesting thing in my opinion. Most mammals are, I believe, dichromatic, for example, dogs. They can distinguish between yellow and blue, but not between red and green. Those are pretty much just gray for them. But they don't see everything in black and white, as is often assumed. On the other hand, bees and butterflies, for example, have four color receptor cones. This allows them to better make out flowers because those often have ultra violet patterns on their blossoms, and certain insects can perceive those. But now here comes the real MVP of color vision, the mantis shrimp. This thing has 16 color receptive cones in its eyes, and it can move its eyes independently from each other in different directions. I have no idea how to even imagine what that would look like or why this is the case. I guess this makes the gray ocean floor where the Mantis shrimp lives more exciting to look at. Perhaps it looks like an awesome, colorful environment with its eyes. But yeah, this is certainly something. Now I want to talk a bit more about color models because we've merely scratched the surface with those. This is a chromaticity diagram that models the color gamut of human color perception, which means these are all the colors that we can possibly see. All the colors on the edge here are the chromas of visible light in the purest form, except the so called magenta line down here, which is just a mixture of red and blue light because those are on the opposite side of the spectrum in terms of wavelength. And this is basically how the rest of this diagram works too. You can draw two dots, and then if you draw a line between them, all the colors on the line are the ones that you can mix from these two light dots, depending on how much of each you use. Now, what's important to note here is that basically any monitor or color display can be modeled within this spectrum as a triangle. For example, SRGB, Adobe RGB or DCI P three. There are different color gamets that different monitors have, and that means that they can only display colors within their triangle here. So all the greens up here, for example, may look very similar to you right now, but technically you as a human would be able to tell them apart if you saw them in real life and not on your monitor. Or I don't know, maybe you have a very good, very futuristic monitor that goes all the way up here or something. But that's the idea. So just be aware of this. If you buy a new color display, then maybe it's worth looking into this. You know what its color gamet is, but other than that, this is just another color fun fact, at least in the context of this course, using color practically. If you make a movie that's supposed to be displayed in theaters, then it makes sense to work with wider color gamets. But other than that, it's fine to not worry about this. This is being taken care of automatically by your monitor and your drawing and design softwares. You usually have a very good color space. And, yeah, I would say that's pretty much it for color fun facts. I'm going to link you this article, which I also found very interesting, color and time perception, evidence for a temporal overestimation of blue stimuli. But generally, I don't want to talk too much anymore without giving you practical advice, which was the point of this course. So I'm going to conclude this. 45. Outro: Alright, this is it. That was the color class, everything you need to know to use color like a Pro in art and design. I put a huge amount of work into it because this is a topic that I'm very passionate about, and I really believe in its importance. Color theory has the potential to do a lot of good. Now, a few final words. You may have noticed that this course was less like, always do this or always do that. But more about the underlying principles, because I believe in your competence to make your own decisions and develop your own intuition for using color. I don't want to take you by the hand and guide you exactly where I want you to go, but rather give you lots of inputs so you can think for yourself, too. I believe you'll be able to practically use the course's teachings very well if you really understood what I said. So let me know if that's the case. Also, please don't let color theory discourage you from trying truly unique color combinations. Maybe you want to add purple to light red and make an artwork that looks very different. These unorthodox color combinations that are perhaps not even based on any color scheme can often look interesting, too, especially in abstract art. The thing with color theory is it simply predicts whether or not people will like your work on average. And Clop psychology predicts how they will react to certain colors and which emotions they will feel. You can make your own combinations and, for example, combine light blue with desaturated pink and some green or whatever. If you like this, if you think this looks good, maybe your taste is a bit weird, but it's fine. Who am I to tell you which colors to like? You don't always have to follow every rule of color theory, as I've told you in the advanced section. But then don't expect other people to like it. Color theory works very well for the most part. So the chance that you enjoy a color combination that doesn't comply with any color harmony is not that high, actually. And there are already so many possibilities for awesome, unique color palettes with the color schemes and harmonies that I've shown you. So you won't run out of ideas so quickly, even if you strictly follow every rule of color harmony. But if you like something that's not described here, why not go for it? In marketing and design, however, where you try to speak to many people, color theory cannot be compromised. It is your tool to make visuals pleasing and to influence how people think about your products. So if you have anything to add, any ideas, any comments, leave a review and tell me about it. This is very useful for me, so I'd be grateful to see yours. And I want to thank you a lot for taking the course. Don't forget to download the PDF files where the most important theory is summarized. I recommend you immediately apply the lessons and test your new knowledge in practice. Maybe just make a spontaneous abstract artwork with random shapes. Test if you can make it look pleasing simply by using a good color palette. Just an idea. Also, don't worry if at the start, your color palettes are not as perfect as you imagine them to be. Color can be understood. Yes, that's why I made this course, but it can still be practiced, too. It's not that easy to immediately put everything into practice if you've never worked with color theory before, which is good because you can get better and better at using it. You can improve your intuition for choosing colors, using them intentionally, and making your artworks and designs more effective. For example, by doing the exercises that I've shown you Color alone can make an image great, as I look at abstract art shows. I'm not trying to say that color can save everything, but honestly, almost everything. So don't overcomplicate things in your work. Always focus on good color harmony, good contrasts, make a color palette, avoid the color errors that I've shown you, and maybe even add a little bit of color symbolism. Everything you need is in this course, so feel free to return and rewatch the important lessons. Share this course with some peers of yours that need it and make sure to visit my website, toplesigns.com to check out my projects, artworks, articles, and Say UT date. With that being said, I hope you have a good day and have fun creating. Let's make the world look better.