The Watercolor Painting Series - Analogous Geometric Diamonds

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] If I would need to decide what is the easiest thing to paint watercolors, I would say that basic geometric shapes, you don't need to overthink them, just paint them over and over again. You can build up some amazing things we've done, for example, a diamond. Hello, I'm the artmother, and this is the Watercolor Painting Series. My name is Alexandra Gabor. I'm a professional art teacher, artist and an online educator. If you're seeing me for the first time, please click the follow button up there so that you can get notified when the other classes are out there. You can check out the classes that are already available, for example, the drawing cars for total beginners, and other episodes from the Watercolor Painting Series. You can follow me on social media, for example, on Facebook, Instagram by typing the name, The artmother. I'm also launching my own website, www.theartmother.com. You can find my illustrations, designs, and online courses I'm offering there. You are mostly welcome to join our growing tribe of watercolor beginners on Facebook. Please just find the group, watercolor painting for beginners. You can find an amazing community there. There are very enthusiastic beginners and you can just get an extra motivation. These series are designed the way that each class can stand alone and it's complete on its own. Each of the classes have three ingredients. Art theory, color theory, and a trending topic. As for art theory, we are going to learn about whitespace and geometry. For color theory, we are going to make a color wheel and learn about color harmonies. We are going to create an analogous color palette, and our trending topic is diamonds. If you feel the creative energy and you're ready to create, let's dive into the class. 2. The Color Wheel: The color wheel. In the last episode, we explored the monochrome color palette and named the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. Well, there are different theories about the primary colors. Some say that cyan, magenta and yellow are the two primaries but let's just stay traditional. In theory with these three colors, red, yellow, and blue, we can mix all the other colors. You need to remember however, that there are different reds, yellows, and blues. Some don't work together and make a muddy effect or the pigments even push each other away and don't mix. This is why it is good to make more variations of color wheels mainly if you have lots of colors. For example, when I opened my Winsor and Newton [inaudible] set, I noticed that they included two pens from ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, and yellow ocher, which automatically set to me that they are their primaries. I made the color wheel with them which looks great. However, I don't really love the greens and purples it gave me. Let's just talk about the colors a little more. Most of the times the colors you have in your tubes or half pens are not pure. Take blue for example. Some blue has a bit of red or yellow in it to create different types of blues. If the blue has more of a yellow in it, it will not mix nicely with red and won't give us a nice purple. The reason is that complimentary colors neutralize each other and make muddy effect. The complimentary color of purple is yellow. If there are yellow pigments in our blue or in our red, they will kick the purple in. Oh no. Also if we have for example either red, green or yellow, if we mix it with blue, the green will be messy, etc. This is why you need to look for the purest colors. We moved on and created several variations of the color wheel. It was so much fun. I explored my palette. Let's just try it. Make your own color wheel too. Take out your paints and just try it with your own blue, red, and yellow, regardless it's name. Try to choose the purest colors. The purest blue, purest yellow, and the purest red. I have pre-drawn a circle and made sure that there is a place for 12 colors. Divide each quarter to three even parts. I'm going to implement wheel U2, so the strength of the color. Basically, I will add more water to the paint as I'm painting to see the possibilities within that color. Let's start with the primaries. Place them on even distances around the color wheel. Now mix the red with a yellow and voila we get the orange. While we mix red and blue, we get the purple and we're mixing blue and yellow, we get the green. When we mix red with orange, we get the red orange or vermilion. When we mix orange and yellow, we get orange yellow or amber. If we mix yellow and green, it makes us the shutters or lime green. Green and blue creates as blue green or teal. The mixture of blue and purple makes us a nice violet. Lastly, when we mix purple with red, we get a magenta. These are the tertiary colors. Awesome. It is good in our paints. I recommend you to do this exercise. Make several color wheels if you have more paints, it will make you more confident when it comes to colors. You will know which color works together, which variations make you the purest purple or nicest steal colors. It will be a good reference in the future, which you will be able to use on your journey. 3. Color Harmonies: Color harmonies. There is a frequent question I get. Why do we need to create a color wheel and why do we need to mix all the other colors from those three? Well, the answer is, you don't need to. However, beginners tend to make the mistake of using too many colors in their paintings. But if they use all those colors from the same primaries, the pigments stay the same, so there will be a color harmony within the whole painting. See, I painted two extreme example paintings. The first painting is done with the original authoring crimson, ultramarine blue, and yellow ocher, though their mixture makes dull colors. The overall painting simply looks good. The colors are similar and it creates a harmony. However, in this one, I chose my colors randomly from my Winsor and Newton help and set, a random green, a random yellow, and random red. Some colors are distracting. For example, this green it just doesn't fit the painting. This doesn't mean you always need to do all the colors from the same three. By time you will know what colors work together, mainly if you make your own color wheels. For example, in this painting, I decided to paint the hot air balloon from the same pigments. I took my cadmium red and cadmium yellow and mixed them around to get the orange yellow and the orange. As I used the cadmium yellow, I have learned that it works well with the dip tahoe blue, so I use them to make my greens and teal. However, I now know that cadmium red and tahoe blue doesn't work well, so I chose a different red for mixing purples. I tried rose matter because it is a magenta, so it has blue pigments in it. This purples also came out a bit desaturated, but I like them. I also have a simpler rule which I advise beginners to follow. Don't use more than three colors within a painting mainly if you are not making them from the same primaries. There are several types of color harmonies. Complimentary colors are the opposites to each other on the color wheel. They compliment each other so when they appear on a painting, they make each other pop. When they mix, they desaturate each other and they are used sometimes for shadows. The split complimentary colors is a variation of the complimentary colors. To addition to the base color, it uses the two neighboring colors of its complement. This color harmony has the same strong visual contrast as the complimentary, but has less tangent. There is the analogous color harmony when we use colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. This is the case which we will discuss in this class. Then there are triads which means three colors evenly spaced on the color wheel, the rectangular and square which we'll discuss in a different class. Let's see what the analogous color harmony is about. 4. Analogous colors: Analogous colors. Analogous colors, as I already said are those next to each other on the color wheel. Let's look at this last landscape I created. I used the phthalo blue and cadmium yellow to make the teal green and the shutters and used them all around the painting. Can you see that this whole painting is also in harmony? This means I used five colors within the painting that are next to each other. But usually, when we are talking about analogous color harmony, there are three colors used that are next to each other. I advise beginners to stick at first with the range of one primary and a secondary color. By this I mean, for example, to use red and orange to mix the red orange and use these three in the painting or use orange and yellow to mix the orange yellow and used these three, etc. These are called analogous color schemes. There are 12 combinations altogether. But now for the beginner level, we are going to take just the six with the one primary and one secondary and make a simple exercise with them. When we simply mix one primary color and one secondary color to get a tertiary color and use these three as an analogous color harmony. Choose one color to dominate, a second to support, and a third as an accent. For example, in this landscape painting, I have shown you the dominant color is the blue, the supporting color is green, and the accent is yellow. Let's say that the dominant color has to have 60 percent, the supportive 30 percent, and the accent 10 percent of usage in a painting. Now let's move on to the exercise. 5. Analogous Harmony Exercise: Analogous color harmony exercise. Now, draw six squares and divide them by three lines, crossing on the same point so that you end up with six triangles or rectangles in them. In the first square, we are going to use the red and the orange, and create a mixture of the red-orange. Choose any red and any orange from your paints and create a mixture of red-orange on your palate. Keeping in mind the color dominance, paint three triangles with the red. We are going to leave an even whitespace border so that your neighboring surfaces don't bleed to each other. It is alright if they do, but let's just keep things a bit neat. Paint too with the red-orange, and the last triangle with a pure orange to give it an accent. You can almost taste the juicy fruits, can't you? Follow the same process in the other squares. Choose a primary and secondary color, make their mixture on the palette and paint 3-2-1 shapes with these colors, how you like them. The second square is dedicated to orange and yellow mixture. You can choose any orange and any yellow from a pallet. Just play around. In the third, we will use the yellow to green and the citrus. In the fourth, the green, the blue, and the teal. Then blue, purple, and blue in the fifth. Then purple, red, and the purple-red mixture in the last square. Amazing. You now have tried out six analogous color harmonies on your own. We are going to use this new knowledge in the final project. 6. Useful Resources: Useful resources. Let's just tap a little here. There is a color calculator online tool provided by the sessions college. Type in color calculator into Google. They should be the first result in the search. On this site, you can enter a color, let's say this one, and choose from the six color harmonies. The complementary, monochrome, analogous, split complementary, triadic, and the triadic. This tool can be a great help when you prepare your artwork's color scheme in advance. It is also just a good fun to play around. You can also switch between RYB and the RGB color modes. There is another website I would recommend to you if you are interested in your pigments a little bit. Visit web exhibits.org/pigments where you can read about their origins, history, and examples of use. 7. Drawing the Diamond: So let's just draw a diamond. The first thing I'm going to do is that I draw a 10 centimeters long line and mark its mean to point at five centimeters. Now I'm going to draw an eight centimeters long line and put the two centimeter to this marker point and just draw eight centimeters down. This at the top is going to be the six centimeter, so I'm going to put the three centimeters up here and just connect these sides. Put it down here, and down here. So now we have the shape of the diamond, but the most important thing is what it's inside of it. Now, let's do the top part. I'm going to connect this dot to this center like this, and like this. What I'm going to do now is to erase this line. I'm going to erase this line. What I'm going to do now is to find this point here and this point here and connect these two and this. I have now two x's here, and I'm going to connect this in the similar angle like this one here and here. These triangles down here, I'm going to divide to two parts. You can do that with the ruler. This one's too, but not to the center, but a little bit to the side. So a little bit to the side. Now we have the upper part and let's move to the downward part. Let's say, I'm going to need this shape. This is eight centimeters, so I'm going to go four to six. So find six centimeters here. At this point, draw a light line and divide this line approximately at the center and connect these dots with this other parts like this. Now you can erase this line, even the middle line because we will not to use it. [NOISE] Now what I'm going to do is to connect this point to this part, to this, and to this, to this one and also here. At the side, we are going to go from this point to this level, but to the edge. So like this and the same here. So here. Yes. Cool. Now, find the center of this line approximately and also here, you can do this with a ruler, but it doesn't really matter and join these two here. Well, here is the diamond. You can do the same with different sizes, but I find this size to be big enough to look good, but [LAUGHTER] small enough not to lose my patience while painting it. 8. Painting the Diamond: Let's just paint a diamond. I'm going to use my detailed brush to paint because it is a little bit small. But I will include in the resources little bit bigger sizing so that you can paint this bigger. As we were talking about the analogous color dominance, this shape has 24 shapes together. I'm going to use my teal as the dominant color. I'm going to paint [inaudible] shapes with the teal. I'm going to use the sap green for my supporting color and simple patella blue for my accents. Let's start. I'm going to fast-forward the process so that is not too boring for you. Try to keep an even distance from the sides of the shapes so that the surfaces don't bleed into each other. At the end, we're going to erase the outlines and it is going to look like, where are we good [LAUGHTER]. Try to paint the shapes that are not neighboring so that you have variety within it. Now I'm going to move to my sap green. Now I'm going to use the color blue. Amazing. I can't wait to see your variations of this diamond. 9. The Class Project: The class project. For the class project, you need to choose two or three analogous colors, draw, and paint a diamond. If you wish, you can create more variations, and I would be really happy to see them. 10. Final Thoughts: Final thoughts. We are here again in the conclusion. In this class, we have learned so much. Let's just do a little recap. We learned what is a color wheel, how to use it and we learned a little bit about the relationship between the colors in it. We explored color harmonies. We tried out some analogous color palettes practice to keep whitespace and practice the painting of geometric shapes, again. We learned that the geometry and the diamond and applied our new knowledge on color theory in the creation process. This was fun, wasn't it? If you have enjoyed the class, please give me a thumbs up and a review. Click the follow button and recommend the class to a friend. You are mostly welcome again to join the Watercolor For Beginners Facebook group where you can gather a little extra motivation and share your project, not just here in the project gallery, but also there. Stay tuned for the next episode.