Hello, my friend! Welcome to class.

In this class, we are going to take a deep dive into the world of color and color mixing. I want to share my love of color and get you excited about mixing custom colors and using interesting color palettes in your artwork.

I started really focusing on color seriously in college - I have a fine arts degree in interior design - where we learned that you never want to paint red in a dining room... unless you want lots of fights at the dining table. Orange is the color that says inexpensive and fast... so that's why when you go into a Home Depot - you feel like you are getting good value for your money. Blue is the color for executives... so if you want your kid to grow up to be the CEO of his own company - you might start by painting their room blue.... etc...

Later I focused on color as it relates to my photography. It is a bit more subjective when working with color in photos as we aren't mixing our own colors and we have a bit less control, but you can still pull together interesting color palettes and make the color a focus for more dynamic photos.

Now I'm going back to basics and playing with color in my art. In this class, we'll learn how to mix our own colors from just a few basics... we'll learn how to get different shades, tints, and tones from the colors we choose to mix together. I encourage you to really dig deep into this and make yourself color cards you can refer to over and over again for years. We are going to take that one step further and make a color chart of our paints and how the colors we have all mix. This is such a valuable tool that I have hung up in my art room and pull down over and over again to refer to. You'll love having this reference!

Then we are going to jump into different color palettes that have been proven over the years to be interesting and dynamic - such as complementary color palettes, split complementary, single color, triad, tetrad, and more... We'll create some art using each color palette to really get a good sense of how they work together and if they are palettes we love or not. Doing these will really teach you some stuff about yourself and your preferences. Projects like this help you define your style by helping you narrow down your likes and dislikes. I did every single project in this class alongside you and had many a-ha moments and doubts as I was painting. This is so valuable. This is the way we grow as artists! You may choose to do little abstracts as I did - or focus on your own art to do the projects - either way - you will learn a ton going through these!

This class is for you if:

You love learning new techniques for your art
You are interested in understanding color
You love experimenting with art supplies
You love watching how others approach their painting practice

Supplies: I am using inexpensive acrylic Arteza paints in this class. You can use any of the art supplies you choose to focus on. You can do this with watercolors, acrylic paints, gouache, oil colors, etc... this is an invaluable class on color no matter your preferred medium to work in.

I am using 140lb cold press watercolor paper since that is what I have on hand and like to work with. You can experiment with your paper choices.

I have a variety of color wheels and books I show you in class that I love referring to. A basic color wheel is very handy.

Laurie Morse

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