Unlocking Color Theory: Powerful Watercolor Painting Exercises with Secondary Colors

1. Welcome To The Class!: Hello, everyone. My name is Will Elliston, and today we're continuing our journey into color theory by turning our attention to the magic of secondary colors orange, green, and violet. In this class, we'll explore how to use these three expressive hues to unlock exciting approaches to watercolor, becoming a foundation of expressive, harmonious paintings. Through a series of swatches and exercises, we'll discover the beauty of limiting our palette while expanding our possibilities. The final demonstration will be a striking rose painting, created entirely with secondary colors to show how much depth, contrast, and atmosphere can be achieved. I've been a professional artist for many years, exploring lots of different subjects from wildlife and portraits to cityscapes and countryside scenes. I've always been entranced by the possibilities of watercolor. But when I started, I had no idea where to begin or how to improve. I didn't know what supplies I needed, how to create the effects I wanted, or which colors to mix. Now I've taken part in many worldwide exhibitions, been featured in magazines, and been lucky enough to win awards from well respected organizations such as the International Watercolor Society, the Masters of Watercolor Alliance, Windsor and Newton, and the SAA. Watercolor can be overwhelming for those starting out, which is why my goal is to help you feel relaxed and enjoy this medium in a step by step manner. Today, I'll be guiding you through a complete painting, demonstrating a variety of techniques and explaining how I use all my supplies and materials. Whether you're just starting out or already have some experience, you'll be able to follow along at your own pace and improve your watercolor skills. If this class is too challenging or too easy for you, I have a variety of classes available at different skill levels. I like to start off with a free expressive approach with no fear of making mistakes as we create exciting textures for the underlayer. As the painting progresses, we'll add more details to bring it to life and make it stand out. I strive to simplify complex subjects into easier shapes that encourage playfulness. Throughout this class, I'll be sharing plenty of tips and tricks. I'll show you how to turn mistakes into opportunities, taking the stress out of painting in order to have fun. I'll also provide you with my watercolor mixing charts, which are an invaluable tool when it comes to choosing and mixing colors. If you have any questions, you can post them in the discussion thread down below. I'll be sure to read and respond to everything you post. Don't forget to follow me on Skillshare by clicking the follow button at the top. This means you'll be the first to know when I launch a new class or post giveaways. You can also follow me on Instagram at Will Elliston to see my latest works. So let's get started and uncover how embracing secondary colors can unlock new levels of creativity in your watercolor work. 2. Your Project: Thank you so much for joining this class. I'm excited to guide you through this exploration of secondary color harmony in watercolor. We'll be working exclusively with green, orange, and violet, diving into how they relate to one another, how they mix, how they can stand out on their own, to create expressive eye catching work. We'll create swatches using different pigment combinations. We'll explore a color triangle and a secondary color wheel to visualize, balance, and contrast. Then we'll apply those techniques in a final painting. This is a great opportunity to push your creativity and build confidence in color mixing. In the resource section, I've added a high resolution image of my finished painting to help guide you. You're welcome to follow my painting exactly or experiment with your own composition. As we're going to be focusing on the painting aspect of watercolor, I've provided templates you can use to help transfer or trace the sketch before you paint. It's fine to trace when using it as a guide for learning how to paint. It's important to have the underdrawing correct so that you can relax and have fun learning the watercolor medium itself. Whichever direction you take this class, it would be great to see your results and the paintings you create through it. I love giving my students feedback, so please take a photo afterwards and share it in the student project gallery under the Project and resource tab. I'm always intrigued to see how many students have different approaches and how they progress with each class. I'd love to hear about your process and what you learned along the way, or if you had any difficulties. I strongly recommend that you take a look at each other's work in the student Project Gallery. It's so inspiring to see each other's work and extremely comforting to get the support of your fellow students. So don't forget to like and comment on each other's work. 3. Materials & Supplies: Before we get started with the exercise and the paintings, let's go over all the materials and supplies I generally use throughout any painting. Having the right materials can greatly impact the outcome of your artwork. So I'll go over all the supplies I use for this class and beyond. They're very useful to have at your disposal and we'll make it easier for you to follow along. Let's start with the paints themselves. And like most of the materials we'll be using today, it's a lot to do with preference. I have 12 stable colours in my palette that I fill up from tubes. They are cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, cadmium red, Alizarin crimson, Opramarne blue, cobalt blue, serlean blue, lavender, purple, viridian, black, and at the end of the painting, I often use white gouache for tiny highlights. I don't use any particular brand. These colors you can get from any brand, although I personally use Daniel Smith, Windsor and Newton or Holbein paints. So let's move on to brushes. The brush I use the most is a synthetic round brush like this escodaPurl brush or this Van Gogh brush. They're very versatile because not only can you use them for detailed work with their fine tip, but as they can hold a lot of water, they are good for washers as well. They're also quite affordable, so I have quite a few in different sizes. Next are the mop brushes. Mop brushes are good for broad brush strokes, filling in large areas and creating smooth transitions or washes. They also have a night tip that can be used for smaller details. But for really small details, highlights or anything that needs more precision, I use a synthetic size zero brush. All brands have them, and they're super cheap. Another useful brush to have is a Chinese calligraphy brush. They tend to have long bristles and a very pointy tip. They're perfect for adding texture or creating dynamic lines in your paintings. You can even fan them out like this to achieve fur or feather textures as well. And that's it for brushes. Onto paper. The better quality of your paper, the easier it will be to paint. Cheap paper criinkles easily and is very unforgiving, not allowing you to rework mistakes. It's harder to create appealing effects and apply useful techniques like rubbing away pigment. Good quality paper, however, such as cotton based paper, not only allows you to rework mistakes multiple times, but because the pigment reacts much better on it, the chances of mistakes are a lot lower and you'll be more likely to create better paintings. I use arches paper because that's what's available in my local art shop. A water spray is absolutely essential. By using this, it gives you more time to paint the areas you want before it dries. It also allows you to reactivate the paint if you want to add a smooth line or remove some paint. I also have an old rag or t shirt which I use to clean my brush. Cleaning off the paint before dipping it in the water will make the water last a lot longer. It's always useful to have a tissue at hand whilst painting to lift off excess paint. Also, you never know when an unwanted splash or drip might occur that needs wiping away quickly. I also have a water dropper to keep the paints wet. When you paint, it's important to have them a similar consistency to what they're like in the tubes. This way, it's easier to pick up sufficient pigment. A hair dryer is useful to have for speeding up the drying time and controlling the dampness of the paper. And lastly, masking tape. And this, of course, is just to hold the paper down still onto the surface to stop it sliding around whilst painting. Also, if you plan on painting to the edge, we'll allow you to create a very crisp, clean border. And that's everything that I use even beyond this class. So let's go and start the exercises. 4. Preparing The Rose: Let's start off by drawing out these exercises. I'm just going to roughly guess or estimate where the middle is. It doesn't need to be so precise. Just a few light pencil marks. And then on the left hand side, that's where I'm going to draw my rows, starting with swirly lines, a circle for where that rose head is, and then notice how I'm changing the grip on my pencil to achieve a nice gesturial kind of loose movement with the pencil. Just to lightly go over the shape of the rose. Of course, I've included the outline that you can use to trace it onto your paper if you want to speed this up. Likewise, with the templates on the other side. I've chosen to paint the rose on the left because I don't want to smudge it with my hand on the other side because I'm right handed, but if you're left handed, you can, of course, paint it the other way around. My hand isn't even touching the paper, so I'm keeping it nice and free and loose. This depends on the size that you're painting as well. If you're painting small, then maybe you have to use more of a wrist action rather than your arm action. Or if you're painting larger, you want to use the whole of your shoulder to move and create those nice swirly loose markings because that's where the energy comes in. We start with these loose lines to create the energy, and then we go with a bit more definition after that. Often I start with that thick lead on the right, you can see it next to the paper. But I figured it's okay. We're just doing this for an exercise. It's not going to be a separate painting. I mean, you can, of course, do it on a separate piece of paper, but I like to when I work with a limited palette like this, I like to do my swatches and color wheels on the same sheet, just so that I can observe and have it as reference. Because it's all a journey in the end, and I'm actually more interested in learning watercolor and growing my own skills than creating masterpieces. So I find this type of exercise more interesting than separate paintings. I like exploring and seeing the depths of what watercolor can do, its potential. So now I'm just going back over with a harder line. 5. Preparing The Exercises: So now we've got that rose pretty much drawn out. We can come back to it later if we want to fix it a bit more. We can draw a little border around it. I will be using my ruler. Just to create a nice clean border, a nice straight line. And we'll be using masking tape actually on top of this, but I just want to map everything out just to know that everything's nicely spaced. But I'm not really measuring anything accurately. I'm just using my eye to guess. I want to leave quite a bit of space for the masking tape. I don't want it to be too close to the edge and match the kind of distance from the bottom to the top. And, of course, on the sides. So I'm just kind of adding a little box here. So we can put tape around there. And I want to add a little gap in between the left hand side and the little exercises on the right. So we've got two halves now. And now, within this second half on the right, we can think about how to draw it out. I'm going to use a template. I used masking tape to help me with the color wheel. I didn't freehand draw the circle. You can use a glass, a mug, whatever size you want to do. And then because it's a wheel, we have to create an inner circle. Luckily, the length of this masking tape, the thickness of it matches quite well with the thickness of the wheel I want. So for me, that was quite simple to do. You might have to find a couple of different size cups or glasses if you want to do it. And then, again, I estimate where I want the triangle to be. So I look at the very top and it's about a centimeter down, and then of course, because a triangle is in thirds, I'm trying to match it on the left and right. You can of course, be very light with your pencil to begin with, just to make sure it looks right. Again, I have the outline that I upload into the resource section. So that's going to be very accurate and you can use that to trace if you don't want to fiddle around like this. 6. The Paints I'm Using: So I have everything taped down now. You can paint these exercises on a separate sheet of paper to the rose. If not, I'd suggest taping down the rose first and then these color swatches on top of the masking tape so that we can peel off the tape after painting this and still have tape there for the rose. Also, I'd suggest using a pencil just to write in the top left hand corners and the bottom hand corners of these swatches, the color that you're going to use before you even add the paint just so that you don't get confused in the rush of it all and so that we have a nice matching layout. So I'm using specific colors for this. They're all Daniel Smith. But what's exciting about this exercise is that violets and purples are in so many different ranges and subtle variations. So you don't have to use the same, and you can see how different hues and colors affect the results. But I'll tell you specifically what colors I'm using. This purple violet color is by Daniel Smith called Cobalt Violet Deep. And I love this. I'm going to use purple and violet interchangeably because they're both kind of similar terms and it'll make things easier because you can easily use a purple or a violet. It's not so strict. And then the orange that I've got is Pyl orange from Daniel Smith, which is a lovely vibrant orange. It tilts towards red rather than yellow. And I'll get into more about how these secondary colors are influenced by the primaries and wherether they, for example, go to more yellow or red for this orange. And then for the turquoise, the green that I'm going to use, it's cobalt teal blue by Daniel Smith. I love this because it's like a turquoise kind of color. It's not necessarily a definitive idea of what a green is, but that's the exciting thing about color theory. It teaches us how we can break the rules or manipulate them. 7. Violet & Orange: So we're well into this first swatch. But while I was going over the colors that I was using, I didn't really explain how I approach this. But it'll be the same with every single swatch. I use it directly from the tube. I squirt a little bit of pure pigment in the top and bottom corner on the left hand side, and I gradually blend it out until they meet in the middle. And I'm keeping the pigment strong on the left and then slightly fading to the white of the paper on the right. Again, I'm squeezing more of that pigment because I want it to be so rich on the left hand side. I want to see what it's like in its pure pigmentation opposed to how it grades out and we see some of the transparency on the other side. Because the nature of these pigments are very unique. Some of them when they're dry like this violets very dark. Yet this orange color, even when it's at its thickest, it's not that dark at all. It's very vibrant and opaic. So when these two colors mix in the middle, how they react. That's what we're trying to do here to get an understanding. And it's these exercises that go beyond my advice and words. You actually learn it yourself by doing it and feeling it and seeing it and experiencing it. And that's the main way we can learn about watercolor by actually doing these exercises. I was finding it difficult to mix such pure pigment in the center there. So on the masking tape next to it, I'm actually putting pure pigment and mixing it on the masking tape so it can remain thick, but I don't have to lose control of it when it actually touches the paper. And I want to point out a very interesting phenomenon going on here, because usually secondary colors, the whole name suggests that they're made from primary colors because they're secondary. So orange is made from red and yellow and purple is made from red and blue. So why for some reason, when mixing these two colors, it's making a red in the middle. It goes against the normal rules. And it's these kind of things that really open our eyes and breaks our preconceived notions of how colors react. And to be honest, this is something that I didn't realize until I did this very exercise. 8. Green & Violet: So I think we're done with that swatch. It doesn't need to be nice and clean. It just needs to demonstrate and show a nice range of all the thicknesses and the gradual mix of the color. The nice thing about the masking tape is it'll keep a nice clean border. I've pasted this turquoison very strongly because through experience, I know that its potency isn't that strong compared to the purple that we'll use down below. So I need to add more than expected for this. So I just got started with the green, just to get an idea of what it's like and then clean my brush completely and just blocking out all the white of the paper, but still keeping it thick on the left hand side, gradually blending it there. And like on the previous swatch, where we somehow created a red, notice how this is creating a blue, which is, again, a primary color, which is very odd how we can use secondary colors to create primary colors. We don't even need a blue. We can just have purple and green. From what we're seeing right now, that's a very real possibility, and I'm going to use this information for the painting that we're going to paint later with the rose. Now that I know that these colors can do that, I'm going to make use of that and bring out that blue. And what's so magical about it about creating this blue, it's not a generic blue from a tube. It's an organic blue that we're mixing ourselves. So it's got this harmony and connection with the rest of the painting. It's a limited palette, but within this limited palette of free colors, we're creating a whole spectrum. So on that previous swatch, we created that kind of rusty red, almost like a isarin crimson. And on this one, without adding blue, we've got this kind of cobalt blue. I'd say it is maybe a bit of serlean in there. Even though we haven't added that color, that's the color that it's made. That's because of the pigments I've used, and if you use these exact pigments, that's what you'll achieve. But I'll be intrigued to see if you don't have these colors and you want to explore your own green, maybe more of a yellow green, how that affects it. The reason it happens is because my green does edge towards blue a bit more, and my purple, my violet goes a bit towards blue. It's not blue itself, but in terms of the color wheel, you have warmer colors and cooler colors. So a purple can be a bit more reddish or it can be a bit more bluish. 9. Orange & Green: Likewise, with greens, we can look at the color wheel and see what's next to it, and it can be a yellowish green or it can be a bluish green. Still be green, but it has an influence from what's next to it. Likewise, we orange, we can have, like we said, a more yellow orange to a more red orange. And the reason we managed to create red there is because the orange is very close to a red rather than a yellow. And the green that we've used is more close to a blue than a yellow. So that's how the blue nature comes out of it. It wouldn't be the same if it was more of a yellow green. So what will happen here when we mix this green with the orange? Let's find out. If it becomes too messy, you can always clean off your brush and scoop the paint out with a clean brush and put on a little towel or a sponge like I've got here or clean it in the water. This is actually creating a kind of a monotone color, a gray color, which is very useful to know because we don't always want vibrancy in our paintings. We want even within a scene, maybe it's raining scene, and we want vibrant street lights, but the rest of the painting maybe it's more gray, and we now know how to achieve that. If we mix these two colors together, we have this kind of interesting muted color. That is arguably more interesting than just a black color that we dilute to make gray. By mixing a gray like this, we've got actually two different pigments within it. We've got orange and green. So when you look at a painting in real life, you'll see up close orange and green. And then when you stand back, it'll just look like gray. So it has this magical effect that can only be achieved with effects like this. Be careful when you mix colors on the masking paper that you don't accidentally touch the previous swatch. I was dangerously close to touching that previous swatch there, as you can see. Don't be afraid to get really thick with your pigments on this left hand side. And whilst it's wet and wet, you can just dab out gradually. You don't always need to swirl the brush on the paper. You can just add little drops on the brush. 10. Creating Primaries: I'm just going to go back to the middle swatch because on the left hand side, it doesn't seem dark enough. And I'm actually going to mix these two colors on the palette, mix that green and purple on there because I want it to be really thick and I don't want to agitate too much what's already on there. And the purple I've got in my tube is exactly the same purple that I have in my pan, so I just took it from there instead. And look how blue that is. You're welcome to use a palette as well or a plate if you prefer to mix separately and then add it to the swatches. You're also not necessarily limited to one pigment. If you want to mix multiple greens, you can do that if you've got different reds in your collection, maybe you want to mix Caban red with Elazar crimson red to experiment. That's perfectly fine. So we've just used three pigments and mixed them in every single possible combination. And in doing so, we actually have six colors now. Of course, we've got the violet, the orange and the green, but we've also got that red, that blue, and that gray. I'm just cleaning my palette here because that orange is very high in staining. Stains my palette as well as the paper, so you got to be careful with that vibrancy. 11. The Triangle: So let's start with this triangle. A similar process to the swatches above, but of course, this is a three angled approach. And I'd say this out of the three exercises is the most difficult because at least with the ring, it's a clean transition from one color to the other. With this one, we're thinking of three different things at the same time. But it's the same approach. We're using thick pigment from the tube, orange on the top, green on the left, and violet on the right. And instead of going all Brook of the colors straight away, I'm going to activate each of them individually and bring them together in a somewhat controlled way. Mixing to see the general color on the palette this is the green that I tend to use viridian, but that's actually not the green that I'm going to use in this study. But you can see how they're both green colors, but they have a different nature to them. The viridian green on my palette is actually pushed towards yellow a little bit, even though you don't see yellow directly in there, it has, like, the warm or the glow from the yellow more than the kind of coolness of the green that I've chosen to use in these exercises. But let's quickly go back to the basics. What are secondary colors, and how are they different from primary colors? So we've established the secondary colors the green, orange, and violet, and they're usually mixed by two primary colors. But unlike primary colors, which tend to feel bold, direct and dominant, secondary colors are a bit more subtle and complex. They carry with them a kind of memory of their orangins. Like, they embody the relationship between colors rather than standing alone by themselves. And that makes them more nuanced and expressive and opens up a wider emotional range when we paint with them. So it's a useful thing. 12. Limited Palette: So what we're doing with this class is actually using a limited palette, and that's specifically a limited palette of secondary colors. And how does this enhance our creativity rather than actually limit it, which is in the title. It's ironic that it does the opposite thing because using just secondary colors might sound like a restriction, but in watercolor, it's actually the opposite. By limiting ourselves to just green, orange, violet, it becomes a kind of creative spark. It pushes us to stop thinking so literally and to start interpreting more expressively. So instead of just copying what we see, we start asking, What can I use here? How can I shift this color to suit the painting? That way, we stretch the potential of each hue. And by hue, I mean, the title of the color. And how mixing, layering, adjusting values affects the result. And as an outcome of that, we grow our understanding of contrast, color relationships, and overall harmony. These gradients watches, the triangle that we're painting and the color wheel that we're painting next after this are more than just exercises. We're creating them for visual maps really of how color behaves. As we blend from violet to orange, green to violet, et cetera, we're seeing this push and pull this kind of dance between warmth and coolness, light and dark, intensity and calm. And these transitions are rarely predictable. And that's what makes them so powerful. So by observing them closely, we learn how to use these shifts with intention in our paintings to create movement and motion and contrast. All by using a very limited palette. Each secondary color inherits the traits from both its parents, so the warmth or coolness of the primaries we choose will influence the result. For example, if you mix a warm red with a warm yellow, your orange will be fiery and intense, for example. 13. The Colour Wheel: I just made sure that everything was completely dry before taking the tape off because you don't want any smudge marks, and we needed to take the tape off to paint this last color wheel. Let's have a quick color theory refresher, going right back to the core principles of the terms, the names of things. So we're doing the color wheel now. This is a limited color wheel, but a typical color wheel generally maps out 12 hues. Three primaries, three secondary colors, and six tertiary colors in between those. And it helps us see how all these colors relate to each other, basically. We often talk about color in terms of hue, and that's the actual name of the color like green or violet. Then we have value. That can be thought as separal of color, but it is a trait of color itself, how light or dark it is, tints if we add white and shades if we add black. Then we have saturation or chroma, how intense or pure the color is. So if we want to paint neon vibrancy, the saturation will go up, but if we want to paint a foggy kind of day, then the saturation will come down. Then we have temperature whether a color feels warm like orange or red or cool like blue or violet. And then there are color relationships. Complementary colors sit opposite each other on the wheel like blue and orange or red and green. And these are great for high contrast. Then we have ogurus colors, and they are neighbors like green and green, blue, turquoise, and then blue. They create softer, more cohesive harmonies. Then we have triadic colors, and they're more evenly spaced out. And that's what this is. We're painting with triadic colors now, which is orange, green, violet, but you can also use the primaries, yellow, red, blue, but it doesn't actually matter whereabouts on the color wheel. You could divide it in three anywhere and match up those thirds. But let's take a closer look one by one at secondary colors. We have orange, which is really the color of energy and warmth. It comes from red and yellow, which are both warm hues, so it's no surprise that orange itself is extremely warm, vibrant and attention grabbing. All these colors have a history to them, and a lot of symbolism. Orange symbolizes creativity, enthusiasm, harvest time, and even appetite. Think of spice markets or golden sunlight or autumn leaves. 14. Colour Variations: Then there's variations of orange, too. You have a red orange which feels bold, dramatic, and more like fire. Then you've got yellow orange, which feels sunnier and more inviting. Orange is great for suggesting closeness, warmth, and intimacy, especially when placed next to blue, which is its complimentary color. Let's move on to green. Green is the result of yellow and blue. And that means that its temperature can swing either way, depending on the mix. So a yellow green feels fresh, citrusy, spring like. A blue green is deeper, more sophisticated, like this, it's a teal, kind of a deep sea kind of color. Green is generally calming, grounded. It's used to represent health, growth, stability. That's why a lot of currency is used as green because it has that connotation with growth. In painting, cooler greens tend to recede into the background while warmer greens tend to come forward. So when you mix green with red, it's complimentary. You can neutralize it into beautiful earthy grays and natural tones, a lot like this swatch we've done on the left there. Then let's move on to violet, which is a very mysterious color, which is obviously made from red and blue. Generally a cool color, but it can be shifted depending on your mix. If you have a reddish violet, it leans towards magenta and passion, whereas a blue violet, blue purple feels a bit more melancholy or dreamy. We can use violet to convey twilight skies, imaginative scenes because it's quite an artificial color. It can convey a lot of mood. And it mixes well with yellow, which is its complimentary color, and that can mute intensity or create soft earthy tones as well. If we go back to the history books, Roman emperors used to wear purple in their robes because it was so rare and luxurious. Even now, it's associated with royalty. 15. Rose Underlayer: We're going to start off with some light underlayers for this rose and see how I'm using yellow to mix my own green here. I found in hindsight, this was a mistake. I really wish I left it with the green that we used for the exercise and kept it pure and in line with the color palette and the exercises that we already established. But even so it's not necessarily breaking the rules because it's still a green. We're still using a secondary color, even if we use yellow to mix it. But you'll see yourself how the choice to use this color makes it stick out rather than keep in line and keep in harmony with the rest of the palette. But that's a lesson in itself. The main thing about this painting is how each of these colors plays a specific and expressive role. We're going to use their characters to amplify and make the most of what they are because the orange acts as a source of light and warmth. And, of course, that's what we're going to use for the rose to add glow and energy, even without using the yellow. And then the violet becomes our kind of anchor. It brings it into shadow, mystery. Into depth. And we're going to use a lot of that blue in that middle swatch where we created where we mixed violet and green to create that kind of bluish violet. It lets us reach dark values without having to turn to black or white because you can see that violet that we've used is the darkest pigment we've got. So that's the darkest we can achieve, which is actually dark enough. When it's so concentrated like that, it looks black. And then we have green, which naturally we already associate with leaves and the stem. But here, we're going to take it further. We're going to make it do more than that because it acts as a balancing force, and it neutralizes areas, and it creates contrast, and it helps the background feel grounded and atmospheric, especially when we blend it with the other hues. We can use it to make the gray with the orange, as well. So it's interesting how we're going to use these colors not just by themselves, but as relationships to other colors and the interplay and the surprising mixing possibilities that emerge. One of the most exciting things about painting with secondaries is how they can behave like primaries again. It's almost like they loop back around on the color wheel. The skills and the awareness that we're building in this class doesn't just apply to roses, though. We're just using that as an example. This approach of working with secondaries and learning to create harmony from a limited palette, it can be applied to so many different subjects, not only florals, but landscapes, abstracts, still lifes, even portraits. It gives us confidence in mixing and it helps us understand value more intuitively, how to make bold expressive choices with color. 16. Edge Control: Notice how I referred to the swatch in the top left to mix a red basically using that orange and violet color. The swatches and exercises we did, we were very free and we were encouraging pushing it to its limits without so much control. But the painting of this rose adds another element to it because we have to be a bit more conscious. And that's another element of the painting process. We're not just painting things randomly at the end of the day. So we've got to take what we've learned in those exercises and focus it and work the part of our brain, kind of the muscle in our brain that thinks a bit more about how to apply and our own personal decisions and what we want to express. And one of the ways we can do this is through edge control and not only making the use of the vibrancy of the colors, but using neutral colors to shift the vibrancy to make certain areas pop. So we want it to be a bit more neutralized in the background to make the leaves and the rose really pop. Because we're not just thinking about color when it comes to paint. I know this is a color theory class, but actually color doesn't stand by itself. It's affected by all the other elements. They're interlinked with tone, how it interacts with form and space edges. And edges, in fact, play a huge part in this painting. The crisp, defined edges of the petals. That's what pulls the viewers focus while we have soft blended edges of the background to help everything else fade away gently. So that contrast between sharp versus soft is just as powerful as light versus dark. And we can use color to take that to the next level. You can see we're already experimenting with tone on the bottom of that rose. 17. Starting The Background: Now everything's pretty much dry, especially the leaves and the stem. We're going to negatively paint them. So we painted the outline a bit further than we planned just so that we can reach the edge, and now I'm going to go back with a dark, neutral kind of color to negatively paint that stem. So it's going to be a kind of light on dark subject. Mixing up a lovely neutral color using green and violet. And we can even add a bit of orange in there. Like in the center of our triangle, it's very neutralized and gray there. When you mix secondary colors in just the right ratios, you can get those beautiful gray down tones like smoky blue grays, it feels ethereal or you've got muted purples or even earthy browns. And it's these subtle colors that create balance in the painting because they're all made from each other. They have the same not genetics, but they have the same heritage, so they work together as part of the same family. I'm going to use this background to be very expressive and make the most of the more unpredictable part of watercolor, especially when we're mixing all three of them together, and we're trying to achieve a muted tone anyway. So it's a perfect time to be a bit wild and let yourself go with watercolor, especially. I mean, you could do these things in acrylic and oil, but what I enjoy about watercolor is the expressive nature of the water and the pigment and how they can move in ways out of our control. We don't always control what the pigment does. Sometimes it flows, it blooms. Creates those little hard edged explosions. It surprises us. So rather than forcing it in this area, we can learn to respond, practice that side of it, where it doesn't really matter. We can learn to listen to it, experiment. It becomes less about imposing our will on it and more about collaborating with the paint. That mindset of working with the medium instead of against it. And that's something that stays with us outside of painting, actually. I'm having fun experimenting with little gradual shifts in the color. So you can see it's a bit darker at the bottom, at maybe a bit bluer, cooler. And as we're going up, it's almost pure violet in that section. And then let's add a bit of green into that again to vary it a bit more. I have to make it particularly dark because I don't want to see any of that underpainting of the stem and the leaf. You should have your pencil drawing quite clearly drawn out so that you know which parts to leave. It's always important to experiment with your pigments before you work on them on an actual final piece because there's going to be challenges and pitfalls that we don't know until we've actually interacted with them. Now, while we can mix secondary colors with pure primaries, that's not what we're doing today, achieving clean, vibrant virgins isn't always straightforward. 18. Pigment Bias: There's something called pigment bias, which means that if we want to create or mix vibrant colors from other colors, it's not necessarily as theory puts it. For example, if you want to make a nice vibrant purple, mixing red and blue theoretically would be how you do it, but it's not always going to be the case. If you mixed a warm red with a cool blue, the violet will actually turn out muddy or dull. If you wanted a brilliant green, using a cool blue and a cool yellow is usually best rather than using a cool blue and a warm yellow or a warm blue and a cool yellow. So understanding your individual pigments, not just the color names, but how they behave is crucial. And sometimes you can determine it. Like I said, if you see a color like green and decide and observe whether it's a warm green or a cool green and likewise, of any pigment, whether it's a warm red or a cool red, a warm yellow, cool yellow, you can look at a color wheel and kind of distinguish it, know what you're mixing it with, and you can kind of predict the results of that. But if you want to do it intuitively, this is basically how we do it through trial and error. Sometimes theory can overwhelm us because it's so much information, and they're just rules, basically, rules that feel like limitations. So it's easy to become overwhelmed, but of course, we're drawn to theory, and we look out for theory and composition rules and all the technical knowledge because it gives us something to hold onto, something we can mentally grasp. So it's reassuring, in that way. It's clear, it's logical, and it gives us a framework that makes us or makes the creative process feel more structured and manageable. And in many ways, that's a good thing because you do have to know the nature and how the techniques are done. As the famous saying goes, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. There's a comfort in learning the rules, and it's satisfying to understand why certain colors work well together or why a composition feels balanced. And that intellectual understanding gives us a sense of progress and makes us feel like we're doing things right. But there's a little bit of a paradox because it's something that it took me a long time to realize only quite recently that the very thing that helps us feel more in control can also become the thing that holds us back. When we become too focused on theory, too obsessed with getting it correct, we start to fill our minds with expectations and mental checklists instead of responding to the painting moment by moment. 19. Breaking The Rules: When we don't respond to the painting in the moment, we start judging it and analyzing every move we tighten up, we second guess. And then that natural expressive energy, that spark that makes a painting feel alive, it starts to fade. We might spend hours thinking about color temperature contrast ratios, but we lose touch with the intuitive voice that simply knows what the painting needs. We might have every rule memorized, but still feel stuck because we haven't practiced that more intuitive expressive side. Because real art, so to speak, the kind that resonates with us, the kind that moves us, it doesn't come from following the rules perfectly. It comes from somewhere deeper, from a willingness to let go, to listen to feel, to surrender, control, and respond to the moment. Of honesty, and it sounds a bit airy fairy and because it is. It's coming from an area that can't be written down in textbooks, and it's the area that I struggle with about how to let go of theory sometimes or at least stop clinging to it. And that's when the magic begins to happen once you've kind of internalize the theory to let go of it a bit. And we stop overthinking, we start feeling our way through the work, begin to trust ourselves, not just our skills, but our instincts. We start painting from presence, from emotion, from something more raw and alive, something that, again, can't be written down in textbooks, something real. And often what emerges in those moments are the spontaneous brushstrokes, the unexpected color blend, the soft edge we didn't plan. It's something far more powerful than anything we could have calculated, because it's real, it's human and it has soul. So theory isn't the enemy. It's a tool, and that's what this is about, and we have to know our tools. It's a language, a support structure, but it's not the destination. We learn the rules so that we can move through them and eventually paint with freedom, with clarity and confidence. Because at the end of the day, we're looking for what really draws us to painting in the first place. It isn't just to get it right. It's to feel something and to express that feeling with honesty. However, imperfectly it may be, that's where the real art comes from. And it can take a lot of bravery to do that. But that's why we break it down and experiment with limited color palettes. Experiment with primary colors, experiment with secondary colors, practice with toe, practice with edges. Still working our way around the background, you'll find that most of this painting is actually negative painting. So once we've painted the background, the rose has actually appeared. By painting the background, we're painting the rose. 20. Complementary Colours: We're not actually using the complimentary colors of the secondary colors in this painting. Hence why it's a limited color palette, but we should talk about them anyway, because when we use them, they can be used for harmony and contrast. Each of the secondary colors has a complimentary primary color that it doesn't contain. So orange doesn't contain blue because it's made from yellow and red. Green doesn't have red in it because it's made from yellow and blue, and violet doesn't have yellow in it. So these combinations create maximum contrast. Perfect for when you go forward with this outside of limited palettes, and you want to create a strong focal point or a high impact emotional moment in your painting. When you have these two colors next to each other, not mixed, because when mixed together, that's when we create those grays or the browns or the neutral tones we talked about. That helps us control the vibrancy, bring balance and the tones. These secondary colors also work well with anoglus combinations. For example, green, blue green and violet. That creates a kind of gentle, naturalistic kind of palette. A. Now mixing another dark combination of colors down in the bottom. So it's going to be much darker at the bottom and fades up to a lighter mix at the top. See how gray it is. One of the most common assumptions in painting, especially for those starting out, is that we need black or even blue to create strong shadows or dark values. It feels natural to reach out for those deep pigments when we want to add this strong contrast or structure. But what this class shows is that well, the truth is we don't need them. Within a limited palette, even, we can still achieve a full expressive range of values from the softest, lightest tones to deep dramatic shadows without ever even touching the black or blue. It all comes down to understanding how value works and learning to trust the power of our colors, even when we're working with unexpected combinations. It can feel a bit wrong initially to use such thick dark pigment in watercolor because we usually associate it with light washes or illustrations that are just for sketches rather than finished final paintings that require full tonal depth. 21. Tone Without Black: We can still manipulate tone and drama without using black or blue, like I said, and get the full tonal range. We can still shape the form with light and shadow. And we're using layering to do a lot of this. Let's say we want to create shadows on one side of the rose. Instead of reaching for called blue or black, we can use violet, and it carries that cool, moody quality. And by gradually building building it up with a thin, translucent layer, we can push the value darker and darker while still maintaining that subtle transparency that's unique to watercolor. Likewise, if we're working on the stem or background, we can deepen the green. A green that might start off soft and fresh can become rich and earthy when layered. With this green that we're using today, this cobalt teal, it doesn't get too dark. We can see on our swatches. But if you look at my pan, that green viridian green, that goes very, very dark. That has a big tonal range. And then we want to mix in orange into that or violet, then it may not give us a solid black, but it gives us something better, and it keeps it more atmospheric. It adds complexity to the shadows rather than just a dull, motionless black. So this approach teaches us something important that darkness doesn't have to mean dullness. Shadows don't have to be flat or colorless. When we build our darks from within the palette, we already have, they feel connected to the rest of the painting. They harmonize with the light areas. They carry the same energy and mood because they're made from the same colors. And in a way, it's more honest, more unified. The whole painting feels like it belongs to the same world. So instead of relying on blacks or blues as shortcuts outside of this class even, we can start to see value as something we create, not something that we add. It's a process of observation, of layering of subtle shifts. Now that we've finished the background here, you can see how blue it is, despite not using blue at all, using that cobalt teal and the violet. Once you've experienced how much depth and richness you can achieve with just a few colors, you realize you don't need those extra pigments. It's incredibly empowering. And we will always go to the art shop and get inspired by a new pigment and buy it anyway. But that's also okay, too, because they have different qualities to them apart from just the hue and the color. And we can talk about that in the next lesson. It's not about having more colors, ultimately. It's about using what you have with clarity and confidence. And when you learn to do that, you can push value within a limited palette, and your entire approach to painting starts to shift, and then you know you have that much more power with fresh pigments that you buy. So begin to trust yourself and start seeing color as something fluid and expressive. And then you'll find your work gains, unity, subtlety, emotional depth without even needing a drop of black. Oh 22. The Nature of Pigments: Let's take a moment to shift our focus directly from color theory and think about something a bit more subtle within this element of pigment. Something that's easy to overlook, but plays a huge role when we come to choosing our colors and how our paintings come to life. Specifically in watercolor and how the pigments behave in water. Because we often talk about color in terms of hue, orange, green, violet, and how to mix or layer the paints. But in watercolor, pigments aren't just colors. They're actually living reactive substances, especially these Daniel Smith pigments, you can see that they use actual rocks and minerals from real elements. And they all have their own personality. And learning how to work with them like really with them can transform the way we paint. Some pigments are bold. They charge across the paper at the moment they touch wet paper, like the orange in this is just super spreadable. You just tap it and it's potent almost impatiently. And it stains my palette. It's like they want to take up as much space as possible because the pigments are so thin, they just travel with the water. Yet, the green, this teal, it's quite quiet. They need a bit more encouragement. They settle in quite gently. They stay where they are. They barely move unless they're encouraged. And then like this green, it's very granulated. They like to granulate. They break apart into little specks and they settle into the texture of the paper or the teeth of the paper as it's generally known as. It creates soft, sandy, magical effect. Unlike, again, the orange, which is thin, it's smooth, it's seamless. It flows like silk, basically. The problem with this orange, as vibrant as it is, like I said, it stains. Once they touch the paper, they're there for good. I mean, you can take the thickness of it out, but it's going to be orange paper no matter what. Yeah, others lift very easily, and we can use that to reshape or soften or even completely remove it if we make a mistake. And if you look in the tube of the watercolor paint watercolor tubes or the paints, they have little logos that tell you the nature of the pigment. It's like a little hidden world of watercolor. It's not just what we paint, but how our materials behave. And the better we understand this, the more we can let go of control and paint in harmony with the medium rather than constantly wrestling against it. 23. Tricky Green: And then there's green, a color that can be made from a huge variety of pigment combinations. Some greens are smooth and transparent, perfect for laying, like viridian. Others have beautiful granulation like the one we're using today. I think we should do a deeper dive into green and the nature of it, because if there's one color that causes more frostration than any other, especially for beginners, it's green. That makes sense because green shows up everywhere in landscapes, florals, still lifes, yet it's not really straightforward. In watercolor, green isn't just one color. It's like a whole spectrum within itself. Green is often tricky because our expectations of it are so strong. We see green in nature all the time, grass, trees, plants, moss. But in reality, the most natural greens are muted, complex, and they're constantly changing rather than just the same hue. They're full of shadows, temperature shifts, and subtle variations. But many of the greens we get out of a tube, especially synthetic ones, they're incredibly strong, artificial and overpowering. So when we use them straight from the pan or the tube without any modification, the results can look unnatural, flat or jarring and almost cartoonish. So that's where the struggle begins. There are, in fact, more variations of green available than almost any other color on the palette. And each one behaves differently. Some are warm, lean towards yellow, like sap green, green gold or olive. And then we've got some cool greens that lean towards blue like palo green, viridian, or cobalt green. And in fact, some greens dry much cooler than they appear wet. So, of course, in the context of this painting, we can warm up a cool green by adding a touch of orange and we can cool it down, cool yellowy green down by mixing a little bit of violet. And with just these small little shifts, we can take a green from looking artificial to feeling quite earthy. The green in this painting is very artificial, actually, but because it's inside the limited palette, it kind of works. It just makes sense. But if we were trying to create a more natural, realistic looking scene, would have to be a bit more conscious of that. If we were working outside of a limited palette with any color, we could use red. It's complimentary color. We're not using it in this cast, of course, but we can create similar effects by adding it depending on what green we're using. 24. Observe Nature: The main idea with greens is to only ever use it in mixes, not in isolation. Instead of thinking of green as a standalone color, that should just be the base. You should always mix it with violet or orange or red, or any color, you can just experiment. You can look at my color charts and see the versatility of it all. And a good practice that you can do in your day to day life is to observe nature more closely because nature never uses one green. Even a single little leaf can contain a little yellow green for highlights or a cool green for the midtones and a deeper kind of violety green for the shadows or even like stems of orange and red. So being observant and assessing whether it's a cool green or a warm green in real life could just help make you understand it, which is a useful thing. I'm adding a few highlights to this rose at the moment, just using white. So that's still allowed because it's white. It's nothing to do with hue. It's about tone. Being ever so subtle with it, though, I don't want to overdo it. Just a few little indications of highlights just makes it pop. It's very easy to overdo it with highlights. I've done it many times. But it's that holding back, that little indication where it's still visible, but just adds a bit of clarity, bit of precision, bit of fnesse just makes it look a bit more sophisticated than if we just add big sploges of it. Like this little leaf. I'm not sure it's called a leaf that's coming from the bottom of the rows, a little thin line. We know it's a highlight, but it has that sharpness. 25. Final Thoughts: Welcome back, and congratulations on completing this class of unlocking color theory using secondary colors. I hope you enjoyed the process of playing with orange, green, and violet just as much as I did. From swatches and theory to our final floral painting, we saw how a restricted palette can actually open up more expressive possibilities, enhancing our understanding of color harmony, temperature, and contrast. Remember, watercolor painting is not just about technical skills, but also about expressing your creativity and personal style. I encourage you to continue exploring, experimenting, and pushing your boundaries to create your own unique watercolor masterpieces. As we come to the end of this class, I hope you feel more confident and comfortable with your watercolor painting abilities. Practice is key when it comes to improving your skills, so keep on painting and experimenting. I want to express my gratitude for each and every one of you. Your passion for watercolor painting is so inspiring and I'm honored to be your teacher. If you would like feedback on your painting, I'd love to give it. So please share your painting in the student projects gallery down below, and I'll be sure to respond. If you prefer, you can share it on Instagram, tagging me at Will Elliston, as I would love to see it. Skillshare also loves seeing my students work, so tag them as well at Skillshare. After putting so much effort into it, why not share your creation? If you have any questions or comments about today's class or want any specific advice related to watercolor, please reach out to me in the discussion section. You can also let me know about any subject wildlife or scene you'd like me to do a class on. If you found this class useful, I'd really appreciate getting your feedback on it. Reading your reviews fills my heart with joy and helps me create the best experience for my students. Lastly, please click the follow button up top so you can follow me on Skillshare. This means that you'll be the first to know when I launch a new class or post giveaways. I hope you leave this class feeling inspired to use these techniques in your own watercolor paintings and to use watercolor in interesting new ways until then happy painting Bye for now.