Finally! An explanation to why I can't mix purple! I kept ending up with the muddy dark purple or the red-brick purple and couldn't figure out how to get a nice one! Off to the watercolor set to experiment!
oh BLUE...!! I'm so confused haha I LOVE blue but I never thought about cool or warm blue. in this video, for me, warm blue is cool blue, cool blue is warm blue. oh my god jesus help me😂
This was a great video. It's interesting, because I'm an artist and I feel like I have always understood colours, though the colour theory has never been explained to me. A lot of this stuff has always just made sense and I have always just inherently followed it. Hopefully now I'll be more in tune with it c: Thanks a lot.
this is amazing! Thank you so much for the split color wheel- I had never thought of how the temperature of the color matters so much in mixing secondary colors! So helpful!
I totally agree with you!!! There are those with the opposite train of thought-that one should "just paint"; I likened it to playing the piano. If you learn theory, then you can do almost anything!! Thank you so much!
That was one of the best explanations of color theory I have ever seen. I am just starting to explore my artistic abilities in my forties and have never taken an art class. A lot of videos that I have seen on mixing color and color theory, I think they assume people know the basics of color. Thank you for taking the time to make this video. I will be watching it again.
Color theory is bae. Is makes picking hair colors and makeup and clothes easy. I was picking out a watercolor set and knowing to make sure it at least had the primary colors in it makes me feel good.
Thank you! You make it really clear ! I have been learning mostly by trial and error, except for the basic primary mixes! I am keen to practice more colour mixing now!!
This was a good well planned video! Instructions here will be very helpful to beginners! You took you time and were very thorough without being boring or too technical! Very good ! Well done! Congrats!
This is awesome, I tried doing a paint wash yesterday and 'muddy' is a good way to describe how I felt about the result. I was trying to paint rainbow tones hair and realise now I was mixing the wrong warm/cool paints togethor. :)
Love this video! Still learning here! :-D you're the fourth color theoryI've watched! Loving your videos learning color theory is even important in our everyday selves. Color effects us physical & mentally. Getting deep here but it works.. Thanks again!
I really love your videos. I've been searching for some great watercolor how-to videos as I get started with watercolors and your videos are a pleasure to watch (even when they are things I've seen before). You have such a great instructional voice! Thank you for making all of these videos.
I don't know why you kept worrying that we would get bored. Colour thery is a very interesting subject tho! Thank you for making this video, it's really helpful :)
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! My favorite gray comes from mixing equal parts sepia and payne's gray. But if you only want to be using the primaries I would mix a purple with a cool red and a warm blue and then add little bits of orange until it neutralizes up. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
You have helped me to understand color theory Im still working on remembering it but Im getting it now. Thank you wish you had this written down but I will take notes
you sound like Busy Phillips :D a fan! thank you for this video, SUPER helpful! I went away and did everything as you showed step by step and created my page of colour theory, - I will never stop playing with colours :D
tbh you are one of the best teachers on youtube thank you for teaching this topic in such a fun way! also i still dont get why cool red and warm blue make good purple but for example cool red and cool blue dont make good purple. same with every other version like when making orange and green.
You mentioned using a "hot press block" can you tell me more about that? Is that something a beginner could benefit from having/using as they learn? Thanks!
Hi there! A "hot press block" is basically a pad of watercolor paper that is bound on 2 or 4 sides to eliminate the need for the artist to tape down the sheets of paper. Hot press simply refers to the finish on the paper itself. There are three different finishes on watercolor paper and they all come in block form.The finishes are rough, cold press, and hot press. Rough finish is just how it sounds, lots of texture and great for landscape paintings. Cold press is most common (and in my opinion, best for beginners) and it has a bit a texture, but nothing major. Hot press is the smoothest and not easy for beginners. It will fight you if you don't know what you're doing. I use it primarily for practice and for portraits (I'm using a small hot press block in the video.) Blocks are a bit more expensive than just normal pads of watercolor paper but they are super convenient, so if you can splurge a little they will make your painting adventures a bit easier. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi! Great video, I'm VERY new and this was really helpful! I do have a question about when you were mixing colors to get the "clean" color. How do I know when to mix a warm with a warm to get the "clean" color, or warm with a cool, or cool with a cool? For instance, in your pie chart, to get the "clean" orange you mixed warm red and warm yellow.. but to get the "clean" purple you mixed cool red with warm blue. I hope I'm making sense!
Hi there! So sorry for the delay in my response! Awesome question. This is really just a trial and error thing. If you are anything like me, you will spend a lot of time mixing colors to see which ones play nice together. To mix clean colors, you need to be using clean base colors. Or rather, the more transparent the colors you are mixing are, the more transparent the end result will be. So for example, if you mixed yellow ochre (a semi-opaque color) and ultramarine blue (a transparent color) you would get a muddier green. But if you mixed lemon yellow (a transparent color) and ultramarine blue, the green you would get would be much cleaner. Try not to think of the warm and the cool influencing it too much. I would suggest becoming as familiar as possible with your paints. That's how I've come to really know what's going to happen when I introduce two colors to each other. Hope that helps and thank you so very much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
In your video you took Ultramarine Blue as warm color, but is it not a cool color? Anyway, I wanted to say that I like your video much and can not wait until I come home and start with mixing the colors. :) Thank you for your work!
Hi there! So sorry for the delay in my response! So this can get a little sticky, so I'll just try to keep it as clear as I can. :) Blue is technically a cool color. But every shade of every color can have a warm or cool bias. For example, compared to Cerulean Blue (the other blue I used in the video) Ultramarine blue has a warm bias. If you look at the two next to one another, you can see that the Cerulean looks like it has some green undertones in it, giving it an overall cool bias, because green is also a cool color. So Ultramarine blue is a cool color with a warm bias. Ha! Just try not to overthink it. :) Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hello, Thank you very much for your video. I am trying to teach myself how to paint and sometimes I get things that are just NOT right, but I can't put my finger on it. I think this might be the problem some of the time. I am unclear, do you make a color wheel every time you start a painting? What/how do you use it? I get it about the warm an cool colors, even tertiary colors. But now that I know about them, how do I use the color wheel. I really am a beginner, please pardon my ignorance. ; }
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! In a nutshell, no, you don't necessarily need one warm and one cool to get a clean, vibrant mixed color. Like for clean orange, we used warm red and warm yellow. And for clean green, we used cool blue and cool yellow. But for clean purple, we used cool red and warm blue. So really, just test out how your colors mix together because there are no hard and fast rules to the combos. They depend upon which paint colors you're using, which brands and what kind of color you want to mix (warm or cool.) Hope that helps a bit and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. Ah I see. Thank you for taking out the guesswork. I have been doing mixing charts but yours is still a good tip so I don't have to refer to my chart so much! =D
Are you sure red is a primary colour? I heard that magenta is the primary colour and can be mixed with another primary to mix (or make) red. I also heard that Cyan and yellow are the other two primary colours.
Hi there! Yes, actually that's a great point! I have heard of artists using both mixing methods, identifying their personal style with either magenta & cyan, or blue & red (everybody seems to be in agreement with yellow.) To get technical for a moment, printers always use magenta, cyan and yellow ink cartridges, so it stands to reason that you can absolutely mix all of the other colors, including red, from them. Artistically speaking, however, most people seem to prefer to use the traditional primaries (i.e. red and blue) as opposed to the radiant primaries (the magenta and cyan combo you mentioned.) So in answer to your question, yes I am sure red is a primary color. But I'm also sure magenta can be used as a primary color too. I would urge you to simply try both and see which you like better for yourself and your art. The warm and cool split primary system will still hold up fine, just find yourself a warm and cool version of magenta and cyan in place of red and blue. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi, I just stumbled upon your channel, and I really love all the watercolor you do!!! All the videos I've watched so far are really great! Thank you!!!!
oh maybe i got something now. the cool blue is winter sea color. winter is cold so that blue is cool.. ew... am i right? and....warm blue is something vivid blue? after watching your video, i want to study color theory more and more and more!! this is my first color theory but it's quite interesting. thank you for tutorial.😘 I like your tutorial
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! I'm not entirely sure if you mean a list of the colors from the video, or just in general, so I'll give you both! :) The colors from the video were: COOL: Cerulean Blue, Lemon Yellow, and Alizarin Crimson. WARM: Ultramarine Blue, Winsor Lemon, and Scarlet Lake. In general though, warm colors are everything in the red, yellow and orange side of the color wheel and everything cool is on the blue, purple and green side of the color wheel. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Thanks for such a useful video. By the way, how can I make cool bias of red when my set of colors has only one type of red (I guess it's the warm one)? Can't wait for your response. Thanks again.
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! I would just add some cool blue to your one warm red and that should do the trick. If you don't have a cool blue, just add any blue that you have and that should get you as close as possible. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
when you're talking about red being the closer primary colour to blue and you skip over violet, why don't you do the same with green and skip to yellow? I don't understand why we're comparing the blue to a primary and a secondary colour. Does it work the other way around? Can I equate the blue to yellow and purple, for example?
Hi there! When we're talking about green there's no need to skip over anything, it already naturally falls in-between a warm and a cool color on the color wheel. Blue, however, falls next to two cool colors and so you are forced to skip a color to have a warm and cool comparison. So yes, it could work the other way around, you could equate the blue to yellow and violet, it doesn't really matter so long as you are using both a warm and a cool comparison color. Keep in mind this is only an issue with blue and orange, all of the other colors already fall next to a warm and a cool color naturally. It does not make a difference wether your comparison colors are primary or secondary, just so long as one is warm and one is cool. One can be primary and the other secondary (as we did with the blue), or they both can be primary. Hope that helps, and thank you so very much for watching!! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Idk I think this question just might be unrelated to color theory but is there any possible way to have a color u reeeaally like then u u run out and u have to mix again is there a way to make the same color as before
Hi there! Yes, most of the time neutrals are used most in landscape paintings so that the scene feels organic and not unnatural. However I use neutrals all the time in portraits and for shadows so they usually have a place in almost every single painting. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
so interesting. wouldn't this then mean that every single color can be both warm and cool, depending on what color it's being compared to though? is warmth/coolness specific to the set of colors you're working with in a moment, then? like ... within one group of colors, cerulean blue might be cool, but within another group it might be warm?
Hi there! I'm so sorry for the delay in my response! That's a great question, like is it all relative? Really awesome point to bring up. :) The answer, in my opinion, would be that no, warmth/coolness is not specific to the set of colors you're working with in the moment. Let's take the ultramarine blue shown in the video; if we isolate it to determine its temperature we should think to ourselves is this closer to pure green or pure red? "Pure" is the operative word here. All of the primary & secondary colors can have warm versions, cool versions & pure or neutral versions. Pure colors do not visibly lean warm or cool. They are the truest versions of a color, and very uncommon in nature. So, I shouldn't base my comparison on what colors I happen to be using for reference. For example, I shouldn't ask myself if the blue is closer to say, alizarin crimson (a cool red) or closer to sap green (a warm green) just because those are the versions of those colors I happen to own. :) Hope that is clear and helps a bit, once again, great question! :) Thanks so much for watching and I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
I just wanted to know, i've been lately really confused between the rgb color wheel and the cmyk. I've seen people use both and not just for printing so i'm really confused
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! Yes, the different primary systems can be kind of confusing, so I'll just share my personal opinion/experience and hopefully that'll clear it up a bit for you. :) I use the RGB color wheel for all of my painting; watercolor or otherwise. There are a couple reasons for this; personal comfort, aesthetic preference, etc. But one of the biggest reasons is that artist quality paints are made in a very specific set of colors, classic colors that have been in production (in many instances) for over a century. In fact many brands/manufacturers share a great many of them. Like, for example, you can buy a tube of alizarin crimson from every artist grade watercolor paint manufacturer that is in business. So, you can find a much higher concentration of variety and consistency if you're purchasing reds, yellows, and blues than if you had to look for cyans and magentas; which often do not track the same across different companies. So if you're using cmyk, you might actually find yourself in a situation where there are fewer colors you can make instead of more. I use CMYK if I'm working digitally or of course when I'm commercially printing. An important thing to understand is that printers and computers are not people; they do not read colors the same way our eyes do and they cannot detect nearly as many of them as our pupils can. So trying to apply the color wheel that works best for them to our manual way of color mixing and painting would be like you wearing sunglasses while trying to use judgment on mixing your colors; it's just inevitably going to be a little off from reality. There are artists that insist cmyk is the true color wheel, for all things, so there is definitely some variance in the general accepted opinion. If you're having trouble, I would just try using both color systems and seeing which one you like better. After all, they're your paintings and it's your personal preference so just go with what feels right! :) Phew, sorry for the super long reply, ha! Hope this helps and thank you so much for watching! :) Best, Meredith
+Nichole Bruno Hi there! I don't think there's a real rule on that. That's always where I mix my complimentary colors when I make a wheel, because it helps me remember which combinations make which shades of neutrals. So, I guess my answer would be both; it utilizes space and I find it is an additional helper in understanding color theory in watercolors. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi there! Actually the water ratio won't help a warm primary to become a cool primary. A primary color will either be warm or it will be cool. Watering either down will only produce a paler shade of the same warm or cool primary color. If you are shopping around for a cool primary watercolor, my favorites are Cerulean blue or Phthalo blue. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
I had color theory classes last semester on college and i got really confused cause my teacher said the primary colors are cyan, magenta and yellow, but she would always use examples with red, blue and yellow as primaries. Is any of them right? or does it depend on the media os something? We used gouache though
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response. The way I've come to look at it is that there are two sets of primaries; The Traditional Primaries (red, blue, and yellow) and The Radiant Primaries (cyan, magenta and yellow.) For most digital design and printing purposes, The Radiant Primaries are used. Some artists however, feel that their personal style aligns more with The Radiant Primaries and so, that's what they use to mix colors. The Traditional Primaries however, are the classic base building blocks of art which is why I chose to teach them instead of The Radiants. Many artists still feel that they are the true primaries and so, that is what they use. Technically, you can use either set of primaries with the split primary mixing system showed in the video and it will work. You can mix magenta and cyan with The Traditional Primaries and you can mix red and blue with The Radiant Primaries. I know because I checked by mixing them all myself. It does not depend on the media. Using gouache should not change what colors do when they come together. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. Thank you so much for the answer, it made everything clearer for me and now I get how mixing colors work. It really helped me. Have a good day :D
+Kawaii Pony Hi there! I used this Winsor & Newton compact pan set: www.dickblick.com/items/00319-0009/ But here is a more economical version, if you're in the market for a more budget friendly set: www.dickblick.com/items/00325-1029/ Hope that helps, and thank you so much for watching! :) Best, Meredith
Hi there! Using a water brush is totally fine for watercolors. Normal watercolor brushes will generally hold more water and be made of fine hair (or synthetic versions of fine hair) while water brushes are usually made of nylon bristles. But there is nothing wrong with using either! Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response and thanks for your question! So, to break the answer down, red is not inherently closer to blue than yellow. Different versions of the color red lean one way or another towards other colors in the color wheel. For example, think of fire engine red compared to rose red. On the fire engine, you will probably see a much warmer red (i.e. one that's closer to yellow) where as on the rose, you will usually see a much cooler red (i.e. one that's closer to blue.) Some common examples of red watercolors that lean towards blue are alizarin crimson, deep red rose, and cadmium red deep. There are also reds that do not lean towards blue or yellow, and these are called neutral, or pure reds. Every color on the color wheel can have both warm and cool versions, and also pure versions. Hope that clarifies a bit and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi there! Omg, I'm so sorry for how incredibly delayed my response is! Sometimes comments get lost in the shuffle and I didn't see yours until just now! :) Egg on face. Anyway, mixing the tertiary colors is as simple as mixing together neighboring primary & secondary colors. So, for example, if you wanted to mix the tertiary color red-orange, you would combine one primary ( red ) and the secondary that sits next to it (orange ) to get the tertiary red-orange. If you mixed orange with its other primary color neighbor ( yellow ) you'd get the tertiary color yellow-orange. Simply put, mix two primaries and you'll get a secondary. Mix a primary and a secondary and you'll get a tertiary. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! :) Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi there! There are so many good ones, but my absolute favorites would be Winsor & Newton, Daniel Smith and M. Graham. However, if you are looking for a more affordable set, I highly recommend the Winsor & Newton Cotman line of watercolors and the Yarka watercolors (although the Yarkas are kind of hard to find.) Here is a link to my favorite Cotman student set: www.dickblick.com/items/00325-1029/ Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi there! So complimentary colors are very simply the opposites of colors on the color wheel. Like red and green are complimentary because if you look at a color wheel, they are directly opposite each other. Some other examples are yellow and purple, and blue and orange. When using complimentary colors, you want to remember that they always look particularly good when they are near each other, but if they actually touch and mix, they will pretty much always make a very muddy color. This is called neutralizing. You can mix complimentary colors on purpose to get earth tones. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day. :) Best, Meredith
TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. Thank u so much for explaining :) love ur vids cuz it helps me as im a 13 years old self taught artist;) thanks❤️️❤️️have a lovely day too:)
I'm confused about how to identify Blue or Orange as warm or cool. In your example you use Blue, and say that Red is the closest Primary, but Red and Yellow are both as close as each other, so why look for Green vs Red? (not Purple vs Yellow) How would this work with Orange? The rest of the video has been so great I am just confused on this one little bit, if anyone could help and explain this bit for me that would be amazing, I'm probably missing something that should be really obvious so I'm sorry!! xx
Hi there! Thank you so much for your comment, sorry it's taken me so long to reply! :) This is a great question, and definitely one of the stickiest elements to identifying temperature, so I'll try to make my wording as clear as possible! :) Basically it breaks down like this; you compare blue to red vs green because those are the warm vs cool bias colors that are most applicable to the color blue. Yes, there are definitely some purple-ly blues out in the world, but there aren't really any yellow-y ones. In contrast, there are quite a few warm blues that lean towards a red, and many more cool ones that lean towards a green. Any blue that had enough yellow in it to be compared to yellow for temperature would not be a blue. It would just be a green. You can't add yellow to blue without it becoming green. The same is not true of red, green, or purple. They can be added to blue and it will still be blue, just a different shade and temperature of blue. Let's talk about orange. If you were trying to identify the temperature of a shade of orange, you would want to compare it to yellow and purple. This is because there are warm oranges that lean towards yellow (and sometimes red) and cool oranges that lean towards purple, but no orange can lean towards green. If you added green to orange, you'd get mud. Whereas a great deal of deeper, richer oranges get their depth from their cool bias towards purple. The bottom line is that the proximity of your main color to your comparing colors is not how you determine what they should be. Blue should be compared to red and green. Orange should be compared to yellow and purple. Just try not to overthink it too much! :) Phew, sorry for the super long response! Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi there! The across the board, easiest way to mix pink in watercolors is to just thin down a cool red with water. You could also thin down a warm red, but personally I find that warmer reds just look like lighter reds when thinned down, not like pink. You could also thin down a nice orange if you wanted a more peachy pink color, or as a last resort, you could always buy a tube pink. My favorites are opera rose, and quinacridone rose. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi there! Yes, mixing red and white in other mediums such as acrylic paints, oil paints or even gouache would definitely make you pink. However, for a piece to be a true transparent watercolor, you can't be using white watercolor. Although it rears its head in many a beginner set, in general white watercolor is next to useless as it is neither transparent like a watercolor nor opaque enough to be considered gouache. So if you mix with it, you end up with a cloudy, occasionally chalky paint that is just opaque enough to cause trouble. You could certainly try it with your watercolors, since every artist has different preferences, but at least for me, I prefer to use the method I previously mentioned since I like a clear, transparent pink whenever I can get it. Hope that helps to clarify a bit. Thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Finally! An explanation to why I can't mix purple! I kept ending up with the muddy dark purple or the red-brick purple and couldn't figure out how to get a nice one! Off to the watercolor set to experiment!
Tbh, Color theory is one of my favourite things EVER :D
ikr. it's so fun to play around with colors and create beautiful combinations and random color palette. somehow reminds me of math.
i sound like an edgy artist mom
oh BLUE...!! I'm so confused haha I LOVE blue but I never thought about cool or warm blue. in this video, for me, warm blue is cool blue, cool blue is warm blue. oh my god jesus help me😂
This was a great video. It's interesting, because I'm an artist and I feel like I have always understood colours, though the colour theory has never been explained to me. A lot of this stuff has always just made sense and I have always just inherently followed it. Hopefully now I'll be more in tune with it c: Thanks a lot.
Love the way you described this. The way you've explained cool and warm is a lightbulb moment for me!!! :)
this is amazing! Thank you so much for the split color wheel- I had never thought of how the temperature of the color matters so much in mixing secondary colors! So helpful!
I totally agree with you!!! There are those with the opposite train of thought-that one should "just paint"; I likened it to playing the piano. If you learn theory, then you can do almost anything!! Thank you so much!
That was one of the best explanations of color theory I have ever seen. I am just starting to explore my artistic abilities in my forties and have never taken an art class. A lot of videos that I have seen on mixing color and color theory, I think they assume people know the basics of color. Thank you for taking the time to make this video. I will be watching it again.
Color theory is bae. Is makes picking hair colors and makeup and clothes easy. I was picking out a watercolor set and knowing to make sure it at least had the primary colors in it makes me feel good.
Thank you! You make it really clear ! I have been learning mostly by trial and error, except for the basic primary mixes! I am keen to practice more colour mixing now!!
This was a good well planned video! Instructions here will be very helpful to beginners! You took you time and were very thorough without being boring or too technical! Very good ! Well done! Congrats!
This is one of the best videos I have seen on color theory ! You explained it so simply .. loved it !
This really simplified things. Thank you. Visual examples are always most helpful for me.
Thanks. Your videos are indispensable for anyone trying to be self taught. Also enjoy the changes in fingernail finishes, from vid to vid.
You have made me very happy! This has been a block to me for painting and you have made it so clear. Love your videos.
This is awesome, I tried doing a paint wash yesterday and 'muddy' is a good way to describe how I felt about the result. I was trying to paint rainbow tones hair and realise now I was mixing the wrong warm/cool paints togethor. :)
Love this video! Still learning here! :-D you're the fourth color theoryI've watched! Loving your videos learning color theory is even important in our everyday selves. Color effects us physical & mentally. Getting deep here but it works.. Thanks again!
I haven't even made it through the entire video yet, but based on your amazing answers to questions asked, I'm subscribing asap!!
I love the way you explain all the details. Cute manicure, can't help but focus on them, it feels like I'm getting hypnotized. :-)
I really love your videos. I've been searching for some great watercolor how-to videos as I get started with watercolors and your videos are a pleasure to watch (even when they are things I've seen before). You have such a great instructional voice! Thank you for making all of these videos.
Great video on mixing water colours. Clear concise information
i like your mixing demystified and so colorful
I don't know why you kept worrying that we would get bored. Colour thery is a very interesting subject tho!
Thank you for making this video, it's really helpful :)
Interesting and Clear love the way you explain.. keep it up 👌🏻
This was a great help for me as beginner in water color. Thanks
Thank you for simplifying the method to identify warm/cold colors. What colors would you recommend to make gray with?
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! My favorite gray comes from mixing equal parts sepia and payne's gray. But if you only want to be using the primaries I would mix a purple with a cool red and a warm blue and then add little bits of orange until it neutralizes up. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Thank you! Please do more watercolor vids. You explain things clearly.
You have helped me to understand color theory Im still working on remembering it but Im getting it now. Thank you wish you had this written down but I will take notes
the best video i have ever found .....!
thanks a ton...
now i can paint like a pro....!
A very clear and useful explanation! Thank you!!
excellent lesson, excellent teaching format
love the way you explained things...
im new to painting , finding this very enjoyable to watch and to try thank you ever so much
great explanation of warm vs cool. I finally understand. Thanks😀
This was amazing. Thank you for making it so easy to understand
this is an awesome video...just stumbled upon your channel..and I LOVE it...I enjoy your very clear way of explaining things! THANK YOU!! :)
OMG! Thank you so so much for this video! I've been interested in learning color theory for a while and now I have!
you sound like Busy Phillips :D a fan!
thank you for this video, SUPER helpful! I went away and did everything as you showed step by step and created my page of colour theory, - I will never stop playing with colours :D
wow this helps a lot as i have to make the most out of the colors i have. Thanks a lot for sharing this
Eternally grateful for this video, useful and comprehensive. UA-cam is the closest thing to democracy we have left.
Wow, you really made this topic clear...thanks!
tbh you are one of the best teachers on youtube thank you for teaching this topic in such a fun way! also i still dont get why cool red and warm blue make good purple but for example cool red and cool blue dont make good purple. same with every other version like when making orange and green.
thank you so much 😊 now i finally understand about the colors - greetings from denmark
You mentioned using a "hot press block" can you tell me more about that? Is that something a beginner could benefit from having/using as they learn? Thanks!
Hi there! A "hot press block" is basically a pad of watercolor paper that is bound on 2 or 4 sides to eliminate the need for the artist to tape down the sheets of paper. Hot press simply refers to the finish on the paper itself. There are three different finishes on watercolor paper and they all come in block form.The finishes are rough, cold press, and hot press. Rough finish is just how it sounds, lots of texture and great for landscape paintings. Cold press is most common (and in my opinion, best for beginners) and it has a bit a texture, but nothing major. Hot press is the smoothest and not easy for beginners. It will fight you if you don't know what you're doing. I use it primarily for practice and for portraits (I'm using a small hot press block in the video.) Blocks are a bit more expensive than just normal pads of watercolor paper but they are super convenient, so if you can splurge a little they will make your painting adventures a bit easier. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Great tutorial on color mixing.
Hi! Great video, I'm VERY new and this was really helpful! I do have a question about when you were mixing colors to get the "clean" color. How do I know when to mix a warm with a warm to get the "clean" color, or warm with a cool, or cool with a cool? For instance, in your pie chart, to get the "clean" orange you mixed warm red and warm yellow.. but to get the "clean" purple you mixed cool red with warm blue. I hope I'm making sense!
Hi there! So sorry for the delay in my response! Awesome question. This is really just a trial and error thing. If you are anything like me, you will spend a lot of time mixing colors to see which ones play nice together. To mix clean colors, you need to be using clean base colors. Or rather, the more transparent the colors you are mixing are, the more transparent the end result will be.
So for example, if you mixed yellow ochre (a semi-opaque color) and ultramarine blue (a transparent color) you would get a muddier green. But if you mixed lemon yellow (a transparent color) and ultramarine blue, the green you would get would be much cleaner. Try not to think of the warm and the cool influencing it too much. I would suggest becoming as familiar as possible with your paints. That's how I've come to really know what's going to happen when I introduce two colors to each other. Hope that helps and thank you so very much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
I already try that out, and it was fun. Thanks for the vid :)
Thank you! This will help me since I am just beginning to learn how to watercolour and art. :)
Interesting that you use the peace sign system for the colour wheel. It works really well, doesn't it?
it was awesome .. now m not gonna have any confusions... thanks
Ah that's really helpful. Thanks!
Nice! Thank you for covering a daunting topic so deftly :)
Thank you so much! Very clear explanation!
thanks for this video, very good explanation!
great instructional video.thanks!
In your video you took Ultramarine Blue as warm color, but is it not a cool color?
Anyway, I wanted to say that I like your video much and can not wait until I come home and start with mixing the colors. :) Thank you for your work!
Hi there! So sorry for the delay in my response! So this can get a little sticky, so I'll just try to keep it as clear as I can. :) Blue is technically a cool color. But every shade of every color can have a warm or cool bias. For example, compared to Cerulean Blue (the other blue I used in the video) Ultramarine blue has a warm bias. If you look at the two next to one another, you can see that the Cerulean looks like it has some green undertones in it, giving it an overall cool bias, because green is also a cool color. So Ultramarine blue is a cool color with a warm bias. Ha! Just try not to overthink it. :) Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
thank you! i love your videos :)
can you make a video for brushes, please
Hello, Thank you very much for your video. I am trying to teach myself how to paint and sometimes I get things that are just NOT right, but I can't put my finger on it. I think this might be the problem some of the time. I am unclear, do you make a color wheel every time you start a painting? What/how do you use it? I get it about the warm an cool colors, even tertiary colors. But now that I know about them, how do I use the color wheel. I really am a beginner, please pardon my ignorance. ; }
Hi. So, are you saying that if I want a bright full on shade if the mixed colour, I have to be use one warm and one cool?
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! In a nutshell, no, you don't necessarily need one warm and one cool to get a clean, vibrant mixed color. Like for clean orange, we used warm red and warm yellow. And for clean green, we used cool blue and cool yellow. But for clean purple, we used cool red and warm blue. So really, just test out how your colors mix together because there are no hard and fast rules to the combos. They depend upon which paint colors you're using, which brands and what kind of color you want to mix (warm or cool.) Hope that helps a bit and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. Ah I see. Thank you for taking out the guesswork. I have been doing mixing charts but yours is still a good tip so I don't have to refer to my chart so much! =D
Are you sure red is a primary colour?
I heard that magenta is the primary colour and can be mixed with another primary to mix (or make) red.
I also heard that Cyan and yellow are the other two primary colours.
Hi there! Yes, actually that's a great point! I have heard of artists using both mixing methods, identifying their personal style with either magenta & cyan, or blue & red (everybody seems to be in agreement with yellow.) To get technical for a moment, printers always use magenta, cyan and yellow ink cartridges, so it stands to reason that you can absolutely mix all of the other colors, including red, from them.
Artistically speaking, however, most people seem to prefer to use the traditional primaries (i.e. red and blue) as opposed to the radiant primaries (the magenta and cyan combo you mentioned.) So in answer to your question, yes I am sure red is a primary color. But I'm also sure magenta can be used as a primary color too.
I would urge you to simply try both and see which you like better for yourself and your art. The warm and cool split primary system will still hold up fine, just find yourself a warm and cool version of magenta and cyan in place of red and blue. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
I love your video! Very informative ❤️
Soooooo interesting!
Cheers from Brazil
Hi, I just stumbled upon your channel, and I really love all the watercolor you do!!! All the videos I've watched so far are really great! Thank you!!!!
oh maybe i got something now.
the cool blue is winter sea color. winter is cold so that blue is cool.. ew... am i right?
and....warm blue is something vivid blue? after watching your video, i want to study color theory more and more and more!! this is my first color theory but it's quite interesting. thank you for tutorial.😘
I like your tutorial
Very helpful for a beginner.
Hi, excellent video...do you have a list of names for both cool and worm colors if we wanted to buy a set of oil or acrylic tubes?
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! I'm not entirely sure if you mean a list of the colors from the video, or just in general, so I'll give you both! :) The colors from the video were: COOL: Cerulean Blue, Lemon Yellow, and Alizarin Crimson. WARM: Ultramarine Blue, Winsor Lemon, and Scarlet Lake. In general though, warm colors are everything in the red, yellow and orange side of the color wheel and everything cool is on the blue, purple and green side of the color wheel. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Thank you very much, I really like your video.
Thank you so much, this is a great help.
thank u for making this video, it all make sense to me know
So helpful!
Thanks for such a useful video. By the way, how can I make cool bias of red when my set of colors has only one type of red (I guess it's the warm one)? Can't wait for your response. Thanks again.
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! I would just add some cool blue to your one warm red and that should do the trick. If you don't have a cool blue, just add any blue that you have and that should get you as close as possible. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Your nails distracts me...
I LOVE your videos! :3
when you're talking about red being the closer primary colour to blue and you skip over violet, why don't you do the same with green and skip to yellow? I don't understand why we're comparing the blue to a primary and a secondary colour. Does it work the other way around? Can I equate the blue to yellow and purple, for example?
Hi there! When we're talking about green there's no need to skip over anything, it already naturally falls in-between a warm and a cool color on the color wheel. Blue, however, falls next to two cool colors and so you are forced to skip a color to have a warm and cool comparison. So yes, it could work the other way around, you could equate the blue to yellow and violet, it doesn't really matter so long as you are using both a warm and a cool comparison color. Keep in mind this is only an issue with blue and orange, all of the other colors already fall next to a warm and a cool color naturally. It does not make a difference wether your comparison colors are primary or secondary, just so long as one is warm and one is cool. One can be primary and the other secondary (as we did with the blue), or they both can be primary. Hope that helps, and thank you so very much for watching!! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
+TheWittyGrittyPaperCo.
Makes perfect sense, thank you very much for replying. Have a good day, too
thank you for this excelent video!!
Thank you for sharing!
Idk I think this question just might be unrelated to color theory but is there any possible way to have a color u reeeaally like then u u run out and u have to mix again is there a way to make the same color as before
hi nicely explained, are there times when you use neutrals in landscape paintings generally?
Hi there! Yes, most of the time neutrals are used most in landscape paintings so that the scene feels organic and not unnatural. However I use neutrals all the time in portraits and for shadows so they usually have a place in almost every single painting. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
so interesting. wouldn't this then mean that every single color can be both warm and cool, depending on what color it's being compared to though? is warmth/coolness specific to the set of colors you're working with in a moment, then? like ... within one group of colors, cerulean blue might be cool, but within another group it might be warm?
Hi there! I'm so sorry for the delay in my response! That's a great question, like is it all relative? Really awesome point to bring up. :) The answer, in my opinion, would be that no, warmth/coolness is not specific to the set of colors you're working with in the moment. Let's take the ultramarine blue shown in the video; if we isolate it to determine its temperature we should think to ourselves is this closer to pure green or pure red? "Pure" is the operative word here. All of the primary & secondary colors can have warm versions, cool versions & pure or neutral versions. Pure colors do not visibly lean warm or cool. They are the truest versions of a color, and very uncommon in nature. So, I shouldn't base my comparison on what colors I happen to be using for reference. For example, I shouldn't ask myself if the blue is closer to say, alizarin crimson (a cool red) or closer to sap green (a warm green) just because those are the versions of those colors I happen to own. :) Hope that is clear and helps a bit, once again, great question! :) Thanks so much for watching and I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
thank you for this fabulous response! i so appreciate it! this really helps me understand!!!
I start at 15 too! Painting water color
Omg im 15 and i thought i was the only one so i thought i'd have a really hard time using watercolor 😊
I just wanted to know, i've been lately really confused between the rgb color wheel and the cmyk. I've seen people use both and not just for printing so i'm really confused
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response! Yes, the different primary systems can be kind of confusing, so I'll just share my personal opinion/experience and hopefully that'll clear it up a bit for you. :)
I use the RGB color wheel for all of my painting; watercolor or otherwise. There are a couple reasons for this; personal comfort, aesthetic preference, etc. But one of the biggest reasons is that artist quality paints are made in a very specific set of colors, classic colors that have been in production (in many instances) for over a century. In fact many brands/manufacturers share a great many of them. Like, for example, you can buy a tube of alizarin crimson from every artist grade watercolor paint manufacturer that is in business. So, you can find a much higher concentration of variety and consistency if you're purchasing reds, yellows, and blues than if you had to look for cyans and magentas; which often do not track the same across different companies. So if you're using cmyk, you might actually find yourself in a situation where there are fewer colors you can make instead of more.
I use CMYK if I'm working digitally or of course when I'm commercially printing. An important thing to understand is that printers and computers are not people; they do not read colors the same way our eyes do and they cannot detect nearly as many of them as our pupils can. So trying to apply the color wheel that works best for them to our manual way of color mixing and painting would be like you wearing sunglasses while trying to use judgment on mixing your colors; it's just inevitably going to be a little off from reality. There are artists that insist cmyk is the true color wheel, for all things, so there is definitely some variance in the general accepted opinion. If you're having trouble, I would just try using both color systems and seeing which one you like better. After all, they're your paintings and it's your personal preference so just go with what feels right! :)
Phew, sorry for the super long reply, ha! Hope this helps and thank you so much for watching! :) Best, Meredith
very helpful! are you meant to mix complimentries in the middle of the color wheel like you did or were you just utilizing space?
+Nichole Bruno Hi there! I don't think there's a real rule on that. That's always where I mix my complimentary colors when I make a wheel, because it helps me remember which combinations make which shades of neutrals. So, I guess my answer would be both; it utilizes space and I find it is an additional helper in understanding color theory in watercolors. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
very helpful thank you!
do I have to put more water to make a primary color cool?
Hi there! Actually the water ratio won't help a warm primary to become a cool primary. A primary color will either be warm or it will be cool. Watering either down will only produce a paler shade of the same warm or cool primary color. If you are shopping around for a cool primary watercolor, my favorites are Cerulean blue or Phthalo blue. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
+TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. thank you so much. it really helped :)
I always have trouble identifying cool and warm colors and how they work and this vid really helped a lot. Thank you!
I had color theory classes last semester on college and i got really confused cause my teacher said the primary colors are cyan, magenta and yellow, but she would always use examples with red, blue and yellow as primaries. Is any of them right? or does it depend on the media os something? We used gouache though
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response. The way I've come to look at it is that there are two sets of primaries; The Traditional Primaries (red, blue, and yellow) and The Radiant Primaries (cyan, magenta and yellow.)
For most digital design and printing purposes, The Radiant Primaries are used. Some artists however, feel that their personal style aligns more with The Radiant Primaries and so, that's what they use to mix colors.
The Traditional Primaries however, are the classic base building blocks of art which is why I chose to teach them instead of The Radiants. Many artists still feel that they are the true primaries and so, that is what they use. Technically, you can use either set of primaries with the split primary mixing system showed in the video and it will work. You can mix magenta and cyan with The Traditional Primaries and you can mix red and blue with The Radiant Primaries. I know because I checked by mixing them all myself. It does not depend on the media. Using gouache should not change what colors do when they come together. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. Thank you so much for the answer, it made everything clearer for me and now I get how mixing colors work. It really helped me. Have a good day :D
This really helps!
What palette did you use?
+Kawaii Pony Hi there! I used this Winsor & Newton compact pan set: www.dickblick.com/items/00319-0009/ But here is a more economical version, if you're in the market for a more budget friendly set: www.dickblick.com/items/00325-1029/ Hope that helps, and thank you so much for watching! :) Best, Meredith
+TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. Thanks! Liked the video btw, keep doing these amazing and helpful videos!
not only useful but also get interested in!!
I know its late by I love your nails.
Is using a waterbrush okay? Or is it better to use a normal brush for watercolors?
Hi there! Using a water brush is totally fine for watercolors. Normal watercolor brushes will generally hold more water and be made of fine hair (or synthetic versions of fine hair) while water brushes are usually made of nylon bristles. But there is nothing wrong with using either! Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
how is red closer to blue then yellow?
Hi there! Sorry for the delay in my response and thanks for your question! So, to break the answer down, red is not inherently closer to blue than yellow. Different versions of the color red lean one way or another towards other colors in the color wheel. For example, think of fire engine red compared to rose red. On the fire engine, you will probably see a much warmer red (i.e. one that's closer to yellow) where as on the rose, you will usually see a much cooler red (i.e. one that's closer to blue.) Some common examples of red watercolors that lean towards blue are alizarin crimson, deep red rose, and cadmium red deep. There are also reds that do not lean towards blue or yellow, and these are called neutral, or pure reds. Every color on the color wheel can have both warm and cool versions, and also pure versions. Hope that clarifies a bit and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi Meredith, how do you mix the tertiary colours?
Hi there! Omg, I'm so sorry for how incredibly delayed my response is! Sometimes comments get lost in the shuffle and I didn't see yours until just now! :) Egg on face. Anyway, mixing the tertiary colors is as simple as mixing together neighboring primary & secondary colors. So, for example, if you wanted to mix the tertiary color red-orange, you would combine one primary ( red ) and the secondary that sits next to it (orange ) to get the tertiary red-orange. If you mixed orange with its other primary color neighbor ( yellow ) you'd get the tertiary color yellow-orange. Simply put, mix two primaries and you'll get a secondary. Mix a primary and a secondary and you'll get a tertiary. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! :) Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
What brand of watercolor paint do you recommend
Hi there! There are so many good ones, but my absolute favorites would be Winsor & Newton, Daniel Smith and M. Graham. However, if you are looking for a more affordable set, I highly recommend the Winsor & Newton Cotman line of watercolors and the Yarka watercolors (although the Yarkas are kind of hard to find.) Here is a link to my favorite Cotman student set: www.dickblick.com/items/00325-1029/ Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Hi , im a begginer :) and can i ask what is a complementary colour? I don't really understand it :/
Hi there! So complimentary colors are very simply the opposites of colors on the color wheel. Like red and green are complimentary because if you look at a color wheel, they are directly opposite each other. Some other examples are yellow and purple, and blue and orange. When using complimentary colors, you want to remember that they always look particularly good when they are near each other, but if they actually touch and mix, they will pretty much always make a very muddy color. This is called neutralizing. You can mix complimentary colors on purpose to get earth tones. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day. :) Best, Meredith
TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. Thank u so much for explaining :) love ur vids cuz it helps me as im a 13 years old self taught artist;) thanks❤️️❤️️have a lovely day too:)
I'm confused about how to identify Blue or Orange as warm or cool. In your example you use Blue, and say that Red is the closest Primary, but Red and Yellow are both as close as each other, so why look for Green vs Red? (not Purple vs Yellow) How would this work with Orange?
The rest of the video has been so great I am just confused on this one little bit, if anyone could help and explain this bit for me that would be amazing, I'm probably missing something that should be really obvious so I'm sorry!! xx
Hi there! Thank you so much for your comment, sorry it's taken me so long to reply! :) This is a great question, and definitely one of the stickiest elements to identifying temperature, so I'll try to make my wording as clear as possible! :)
Basically it breaks down like this; you compare blue to red vs green because those are the warm vs cool bias colors that are most applicable to the color blue. Yes, there are definitely some purple-ly blues out in the world, but there aren't really any yellow-y ones. In contrast, there are quite a few warm blues that lean towards a red, and many more cool ones that lean towards a green. Any blue that had enough yellow in it to be compared to yellow for temperature would not be a blue. It would just be a green. You can't add yellow to blue without it becoming green. The same is not true of red, green, or purple. They can be added to blue and it will still be blue, just a different shade and temperature of blue.
Let's talk about orange. If you were trying to identify the temperature of a shade of orange, you would want to compare it to yellow and purple. This is because there are warm oranges that lean towards yellow (and sometimes red) and cool oranges that lean towards purple, but no orange can lean towards green. If you added green to orange, you'd get mud. Whereas a great deal of deeper, richer oranges get their depth from their cool bias towards purple.
The bottom line is that the proximity of your main color to your comparing colors is not how you determine what they should be. Blue should be compared to red and green. Orange should be compared to yellow and purple. Just try not to overthink it too much! :)
Phew, sorry for the super long response! Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
TheWittyGrittyPaperCo. Thank you, you explain things so well! This might be your talent, as vibrant as talent to paint.
nice
is water colour good for colouring anime?
Candy Flakes Every material can if you know how to use them.
is this just for watercolor ?
how the brown come from?
Seskiara Viveka warm red with green
Seskiara Viveka and you can get different shades of brown .
i cant make Pink :C
Hi there! The across the board, easiest way to mix pink in watercolors is to just thin down a cool red with water. You could also thin down a warm red, but personally I find that warmer reds just look like lighter reds when thinned down, not like pink. You could also thin down a nice orange if you wanted a more peachy pink color, or as a last resort, you could always buy a tube pink. My favorites are opera rose, and quinacridone rose. Hope that helps and thank you so much for watching! Have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith
Mix red and white??
Hi there! Yes, mixing red and white in other mediums such as acrylic paints, oil paints or even gouache would definitely make you pink. However, for a piece to be a true transparent watercolor, you can't be using white watercolor. Although it rears its head in many a beginner set, in general white watercolor is next to useless as it is neither transparent like a watercolor nor opaque enough to be considered gouache. So if you mix with it, you end up with a cloudy, occasionally chalky paint that is just opaque enough to cause trouble. You could certainly try it with your watercolors, since every artist has different preferences, but at least for me, I prefer to use the method I previously mentioned since I like a clear, transparent pink whenever I can get it. Hope that helps to clarify a bit. Thank you so much for watching! I hope you have a lovely day! :) Best, Meredith