Watercolor Painting Basics: Color Made Simple

1. Watercolor Painting Basics: Color Made Simple: Hi. I'm Chris, a watercolor and creative skills teacher and coach living in the desert. I have over 25 classes here on Skillshare in a variety of creative topics. And I also have a YouTube channel plus more in depth courses available on the website. And in my free watercolor group. I've produced creative lessons for Bonnie Christine's flourish membership, Emily Jeffords collective membership, Peggy Dean's art blog, been a guest on several podcasts, and I've created video tutorials for sustainable paint brand Viviva colors. I'm back on Skillshare with a series of shorter classes that will cover many of the watercolor basics like color theory, color mixing, inspiration, sketching versus drawing, watercolor hand lettering, how to break Creative block and Me. Even if you've been painting for a while, it's a great idea to go back to some basic every so often. In case you'd like to refine your process, try some new ideas or up your painting game by going deeper. In this class, we're going to go over just about every artist's favorite subject. Color. I'll talk to you about color palettes, some color psychology because each color has a different meaning and invokes different kinds of feelings. Pantone.com, the world's leading color authority. Let me share what I call the no fail color palette formula. While you're learning, this will help you keep your color palette balanced. And we'll actually mix some color together. They also have a PDF dide so you'll have resources to refer back to as you gather your tools and choose your colors. This class will be perfect for beginner to intermediate watercolor student. I'll be sharing examples with you along the way so you can stay on track with your processes. You can see that color is a vast topic. If you don't understand how any of this works, yeah, stick with me, and I'll take you step by step. In the meantime, I'll see you in the next lesson to get started. 2. Your Project: Project in this class will be to follow along with me in the class videos and choose your color palette based on the lessons I've shared. Or follow along with me on my color palette. Paint it on small squares of watercolor paper as I'll show you in the following videos. I've created a workbook for you as your companion to the class lessons. Be sure you download it in the Projects and Resources tab under the class videos. I really hope you plan to share your project. I grew exponentially when I first started showing my work. It was magical to have feedback and comments, and it helped me grow so much faster than I imagined. If you've never done it before, here's how to upload your project on Skillshare. First, you'll go to the Projects and Resources tab under the class videos. Then click the Green Create Project button. From there, you'll want to upload your cover image for your project. Choose a file. Then click Submit. From here, if you want to replace your image, just click the button below, find an image, and below, you can make it larger or smaller with a slider, or you can drag it side to side to position it. When you're happy, just click Submit. Now your project needs a title. It can be funny, descriptive, or whatever you like. Below is your personal project field. Click Image to Add Image files. Then position your cursor underneath the image to add descriptions. I'm adding a series of images to show my entire process for this project. You can do it anyway you like. Below, you can also add a video or links. When you're done, just click the Green Publish button. Once it's published, you can go below the videos and see your project on the right hand side. When you click on it, you can see that all your images have uploaded. On the right is where people can comment and like your project. I comment on every project, so I can't wait to see you in this space. You can also find upload instructions on the Projects and Resources page under the class videos. When you upload your project, you can win a Skillshare badge, which is kind of fun. 3. Tools & Materials: As always, I'll be keeping my tools and materials simple. I'll be using my favorite Viva colors, watercolors because not only are these colors super concentrated for vivid color, but they're made with natural non toxic dyes from the Earth, and all their sets are made with vegan and 100% biodegradable materials. If you'd like to learn more about Viviva colors, watercolors, I have a link in the projects and resources tab and in the workbook where you can get more info. The medium round brush is the most versatile overall. Even I get that feeling that I'm going to mess up or it's just going to not be what I expected. So I have this little sketch pad. It's 3.5 " by 5 ". It's regular sketch paper, so not fit for watercolor at all. And I purposefully got a sketchpad instead of a watercolor sketch pad this size because I wanted to feel like I could just mess it up and it wouldn't matter. I have done so much strategizing on colors and paint strokes, and I strategized an entire collection on this spread here. It was so much fun, and I could just make little notes and just cross things off and I wouldn't feel about intimidation that I'm going to mess anything up at all. So I keep this right on the side so that I can grab it anytime I feel a little unclear or unsure about what I'm going to be doing. And so today since I'm just kind of discovering colors, I'm keeping it over here just handy in case I need to just drop some paint on it before hitting my actual paper. Now, this is a Strathmore, 5.5 by 8.5 inch little pad of paper. And I call these my practice papers. And it's 140 pound watercolor paper. You can see it's nice and thick. It's got the nice cold press texture on it, which I love. And I can do all kinds of really fun things with this. I can cut it up. I can put it, you know, sideways or do a more deeper practice version then on here because this is actual watercolor paper before hitting cans and paper or my arches paper or whatever paper I'm using for my final projects. Because I'm trying to strategize color, I cut one of these sheaths up into some little rectangles like this. I drew squares in them. So you can see it. I have five little sheaths with rectangles in them. I can paint my colors inside these and turn them into color swatches. I can have my colors handy when I need them and just maybe have them out at a glance. But you can also use mixed media paper, which is also heavy enough to absorb some water. I have a couple of jars of water to rinse my brushes and some paper towels to clean my brushes with in any messes I might make along the way. I'll also be using a tube pencil and a polymer eraser that doesn't leave black marks on my paper, but you can even use a mechanical pestle and a gum eraser, which is also safe to use on your good papers. And I also have this small house painting brush I grabbed from my garage just to brush off any eraser or dust so I don't use my hands and get my oils on my project paper. You'll find a full list of the tools and materials I'm used in the workbook tools and materials section. Now it's time to work on colors. 4. No Fail Color Palette Formula: Share what I call the no fail color palette formula. It's a combination of two cool colors, a neutral, and two warm colors. If you don't know what that means, let's break it down. Cool colors are blues, greens, and violets, and warm colors are reds, oranges and yellows. These are the colors that make up this basic color wheel. Neutrals are non color colors like brown and gray. They help ground any color palette, give the eye a place to rest, so the colors don't get too busy, but that doesn't mean you have to use a neutral in every single color palette. However, while you're learning, this will help you keep your color palette balanced. So blue will be my cool color. My warm colors are going to be this terracotta, which is brown, mixed with a bit of orange, light peach, which is a water down orange and yellow ochre, which is yellow mixed with brown. My neutral will be this medium gray, which will act as a balance to the blue gray I'm using. You may have noticed I've already broken the rules of this formula by only using one cool color and three warm colors, but it's still balanced, and this is a color palette that I love. It works well, and as an artist, you can break rules. Once you understand them a bit better, you'll start to see how to use your artistic license to come up with your own beautiful color palette. 5. Pantone Colors: Not familiar with Pantone. They are an international color institute that informs industries like fashion, home decor, wedding, auto design, and so much more. On what colors are relevant to use for their products? The color text work really hard to define what times we live in and match colors that define or complement that era. For example, during 2020, the color of the year was classic blue, which was a soothing and comforting color at a time of international chaos and confusion. Every color they select for each year tells the story of what's going on at that time. It's a pretty interesting resource and a very fascinating science to learn about. You can learn more about them at pantone.com and see what kind of color tools they offer to help designers and artists all over the world. They have been a trusted resource for color palettes and single colors alike since the 1960s. As a surface designer, I can use Pantone to match my colors. So any companies I happen to be working with, I will be guessing what colors I'm using. Pantone acts as an international color language translator in a way, taking the confusion and guesswork out of big projects where color is so important. They also have a really fun Instagram account where they match colors with objects that creates so much inspiration. And that leads me to color psychology. 6. Color Psychology: Color has a different meaning and evokes different kinds of feelings. In general, here are some basic colors and their meanings. Red symbolizes passion. Orange symbolizes positivity and energy, and yellow symbolizes warmth. Green is a symbol of nature, and blue is very calming. Those meanings differ depending on what culture you're in. For example, the Western world white symbolizes purity and hope and cleanliness. And in the Eastern world, it symbolizes death. So as you use color, you might want to pay attention and do a bit of research to see how your colors will be affecting others, depending on the scope and purpose of your project. 7. Using Color Palettes In Your Work: Earned that over the years, when I make multiple pieces of art in the same color palette, I can create collections that I can use for all kinds of things like my website, my POD shop, my courses, and lots more. I teach this concept in my Skillshare class, watercolor collections, scroll stopping color thieved art, which is a snippet of this entire concept. But I also have a bigger course, which teaches my nine part process called the art style clarity formula. I go deep on this topic. The reason is that it has gotten me two brand deals already, and it's leading to more things as we speak. So I am so excited to give you snippets of this process so you can learn it and use it in your own art practice. I'm an artist and a teacher, but I'm also a surface pattern designer, and I plan to use some of my art to inspire future designs. From the art you're creating, you can make screening cards, open a POD shop with your art and products. Or you could just find your sketchbook. If you have a purpose for the art you're going to be creating, I would love to hear about it in the comments so I can cheer you on. Other artists often approach things differently than I would have thought to and it's wonderful to get a new perspective and learn from you. Once you've learned all the basics, then you can feel free to explore and still know you're going to come up with a great set of colors. But there's a lot more colors out there in the world than what you see on the color wheel. That's because we can create versions of these colors with color mixing, and that's where it gets really fun. 8. Painting Swatches: This was the first set I ever got from Viva, and it's kind of like an old friend, and I just love it so much. So I'm going to start with this set right now. Let's see here. I am going to start with a peach color. I have a brand color palette that I'm going to be painting out on these cards that I'm going to be using for my projects during this challenge. So I'm going to start with some burnt sienna. Now this is really almost gone. This is my go to color. I love it so much. I love the color of terra cotta, and that's what this reminds me of. I just I don't know what it is. I don't know if you have a color that just makes you feel like it's home. It's almost always incorporated in my projects. Like I said, it's my main color for my brand, for my website, for my marketing, for my logo. And I've used it to death, so it's just about gone. But I have just enough to paint some light peach, and I'm going to let that dry. And yeah, let's go on to the next color, which is going to be yellow ochre. So there's actually a yellow ochre here. But it's a bit light for me. For what I want, yellow ochre is essentially yellow mixed with brown. And depending on how deep and dark and rich you want it is how much brown you add to it. So you kind of want to play experiment. This is definitely a lovely lovely yellow ochre it's not pure yellow. You can see it's not super bright. It's just got that nicely muted feature to it. However, I do like a little bit more brown, and I have some on my palette here. And this burnt umber, which is a much darker brown, has a lot of red in it. And it's a little more red than I want, but I think it's going to be enough to do the job here. I'm going to add a little bit more yellow ochre, just to yellow it up more. And I think that might just do the trick. You can see me mixing my colors right on the paper. I do this a lot. I think that I just like the space of all this white to be mixing my colors on. Now, obviously, my palette is just covered in colors that I keep reusing. So if I had it available here, I think I would still use my paper. I've just gotten in the habit of that, and that's okay. You can even use, like, a practice piece of paper to do some mixing on to see what your colors are going to look like on the actual paper. So next is my rusty terra cotta. I'm going to have to. Really get this dark. So I either have to put my new color sheet on or I have to start mixing with some other colors to get it there. We'll see how much color I can get off of here. It might may or may not be enough. We'll see. And it's kind of breaking down, so I may have to do something a little different. I'm gonna add a little more water. I'm going to add some burnt umber to this. There we go. Now we've got a little more color. Actually a lot better. And I'm probably going to add some orange to this because I want just a little more terra cotta looking a little bit more. So for me, color mixing is not an exact science. I know that many, many teachers will show you the exact colors to use to get this exact mix of colors. However, I really love to ad lib these colors. To me, this is the most beautiful chemistry project. And by the way, I was terrible at chemistry. So this is the chemistry that I love, the visual chemistry. And I think that you can do just as well with this as anyone when you just start playing and experimenting and understanding how these colors interact with each other, that's really all it is. As you practice, you just learn more and more about it, like anything else. Now, that's nicely kind of red and rich. I like that a lot. So this color is essentially red and brown, but this brown wasn't a true brown, so orange brown. I added a mix of yellow ochre, brown, orange, and my burnt sienna. Again, you'll have to play around and experiment. You'll have colors that might be completely different than what I have. And so you can just play with the colors you have and see how close you can get to the colors you want to do. Now, one of my colors in my palette is a gray, like a medium gray. So I'm going to take a little bit of my slate black, which I have on my palette already and move it on my square here. And you can see I'm not being too precious or perfect with this. This is just a swatch card, and it doesn't have to be a masterpiece. I'll make it as neat as I can. So please don't put yourself under pressure for these kinds of things. Just enjoy yourself, have fun, relax. And it doesn't matter if you make squares or circles. Sometimes I do circles, sometimes I do squares. Sometimes I do blobs. It just depends. Just add a little bit more gray. Now, the more water you add to your mixture, the lighter it's going to dry. So I have to really watch my mix of water and paint. I can't say pigment because this is actually dye. Vi viva used as natural dyes from the Earth for all of these colors, and traditional watercolors are made with pigments. So this is technically an ink, but they call them watercolors because you put water on them and you can paint with them. And my last one is my blue. So this is my second favorite color because it's just gorgeous. And it's a color I love to mix every single time. It's just my favorite thing to mix. And I'm going to have to use this palette because it has white, and I need a little bit of white for this. So let's do it. Now I need my color card. I'm going to use some of this deep blue. I start with the darkest blue. Now, shadow blue is probably the truest blue, according to the color wheel. But I'm going to be making this sort of a gray blue, and I want to start with a little bit darker color. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm actually going to use my palette for this because I don't already have it anywhere where I can just grab it. This paint goes a long, long way. These colors are so concentrated. That's why they last so long. A color sheet set can last me, 2.5, three years. One of these can last me longer, so, yeah, it's pretty cool. I'm just going to add a little bit of white. Now, white is not traditionally used in watercolors, right? If you've been painting with watercolors for you don't see watercolor teachers really using white. But I love white, and I'll tell you why. It gives me a uniqueness that you might not see anywhere else, and that's the whole point. White makes your colors creamy. If you want to make a pastel, that's how you make it. Now, you might argue that it won't be watercolors. It's more gouache looking, and that might be true, but they're still gonna be translucent. And it gives you such a beautiful look. I just think it's fun. And like I said, I'm not technically correct on some of these. I just playing. And that's why anyone can really pick this up. You should give yourself permission to do that. If you're not doing that, you're kind of missing out. Hats. You don't have to show anybody anything. You don't have to tell them you're doing it. Just enjoy yourself and see what comes out of it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just laying down this color. So now you can see it's not a true blue. I can kind of see the white a little bit. I made it a little pastel looking. Uh oh. Got a little bit of green or yellow on here. So I'm just gonna lift that spot. C, there's a spot right there. That got on my brush. I'll mix more if I have to. But that's a good start. I do want this blue light, but I think it's almost too light, so I'm going to mix just a little bit more. Like I said, I'm going easy with this because it's concentrated. And I might just even just put this blue on top just to give it a little bit more color. It's not exact, but it's so close. And again, I think striving for that perfection for me really holds me back on a lot of my projects, and letting myself go and give myself permission to not have the perfect color, but very close or not have the perfect shape but very close I think has really opened things up for me, and I hope that you'll consider that in your own art practice. Okay, so there we have it. These are my five colors that I'll be using. This color here is a little darker than normal, but it's a little closer to the new Pantone color, which is peach fuzz. Another way to get to this color, I think this is dry. I can do something on the back with you here really quick, just to take you through this exercise. I normally get light peach by just taking a little orange, and I'm just going to pretend I have a square already and just not getting it too dark, make sure that I have plenty of water and not a whole lot of paint. So orange becomes peach just by regulating how much pigment and water I'm using. That's a little too light, but I can get it a little darker. See that? It's quite nice. So you can create different colors with your watercolor paints just by, again, the chemistry between the water and how much paint you have, and you can experiment with this and just see what kind of colors you can come up with. Now, if you look at this color and this color, this one's quite a bit more concentrated than this color. This is truer to what I use on my website. But if you look at the Pantone website, this is a little truer to the new color of the called peach fuzz. I encourage you to go on the Pantone website and check it out and learn more about how they picked this color for the year and the other colors of the year as well. There's all the colors. I'll be kind of coming in and out with some other ones, which is why I cut some extra squares to see if I want to incorporate an extra color here or there, but these are going to me my go to colors. I cannot wait to see what you have chosen for your go to colors. And I hope you've had fun with. 9. Thanks for watching!: This class, we discussed the no fill color palette formula, color psychology, pantone.com, and you can see that color is a vast topic, and it deserves way more time that at least this gives you a sample and hopefully ignites you to discover it more. Don't forget to download the class workbook, so you can stay on track as you watch the lessons, and I can't wait to see your project in the project gallery. I never grew so much as when I started sharing my work, so I can't wait for you to do the same. If you'd like to stay in touch, I would love for you to join my free watercolor group. We do challenges, I share tutorials, and I do regular live painting sessions. In the community, you can share your work, get feedback, guidance, and meet other beautiful creatives just like you. Can't wait to see what colors you choose for your projects. Will you be using multiple color palettes throughout the year or sticking to a single set of colors? I'd love to hear about it in the discussions tab where you can ask your questions and we can have ongoing conversations. Thanks again for being here, and I'll see you in the next class. Bye for now.