Reddit reviews Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition
We found 8 Reddit comments about Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
We found 8 Reddit comments about Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Artist here.
Start with a set of 6 basic prisma colored pencils- yellow, red, blue, green orange, purple. Maybe white. Art supply stores like (Utrecht, Blick, and Michael's) should sell them individually.
Start with the primaries, slowly building up color. Set up next to a window- a built-in frame- and make small shades of colors where you seem them. There's a tree? Don't outline the tree. Think about the light. Make a layer of yellow, make a lighter layer of blue over it. It's not quite green. Make another thin layer of yellow at the top, where the sun hits the leaves. Add another layer of blue in the shadow. The shadow could even have a layer of red- it lowers the intensity of the colors, makes them more muddy.
No outlines. Just make shapes of shaded color. Lightly. Build it up. Use a very loose grip on the pencil. You said you can draw normally. Use that technical skill.
Like Monet's Haystacks, it doesn't matter if you draw the same view out a window 100 times. What matters is that through practice, you learn how to see the variations of color and learn how to record them on paper with only the primaries, using layers to blend.
Take a look at the Impressionists use of color, especially Seurat^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 and Pissaro^1 ^2 ^3.
I'm not necessarily suggesting pointillism (I'm just bias)- use a technique you like, but make sure to not outline-draw color, shade a shape of color.
Now, if you really need it, add some green into your tree. Use orange and purple when you need them, add some highlights by erasing.
A fun practice would be drawing a boiled egg on a white background with a white light. It really tests your ability to see color.
For more color theory, check out Josef Albram's book, Interaction of Color.
Buy yourself this book. It's cheap and has exercises to work though. First year graphic design education (2-dimensional and color theory) is basically straight from this book.
Another good book that surveys typography and introduces lots of general concepts:
Thinking With Type
A book you may find useful for color theory - it is about the relationships between colors, and was originally a book that came with colored paper to follow along with. It helps with seeing these relationships, not what good color combinations would be (this is some more like Kuler)
Interaction of Color
Working cools vs warms is a little complicated. I recommend buying some painting books and color theory books to really know what I'm talking about. Basically decide what is going to be the structure of your painting, value or warm/cool shifts. So lets say you decide value (basically you'll find a lot if values, strong darks and lights). Warm/ cool shifts in this context could mean: most of the shadows will feel cooler than the lights (or vise versa). The way you mix that would be: shadows made of violets, greens, blues + a slight neutralizer (the opposite color) or a shade like black, or grey and the lights with bright versions or the hue shifted to things like red, yellows, oranges. (Know that context determines whether a color feels warm or cool. blue can be warm if surrounded by certain neutrals etc etc) However, instead of painting the shadow of on an arm brown, paint it violet. Warm cool shifts work best when there is little value. So if the shadow is Waaaaay darker than the highlight, don't push the violet too much. But let's say you decided to have little value in a painting and wanted space to be formed through warm/cools then make the highlights from red tints and the shadow from violet with no change or little change in value. You see this type of painting Impressionism to contemporary work and prior to Impressionism most painting is value based (due to pigments and the color theories of the time). Extreme values make an easy read for a work, while warm/cools play tricks on the eye and are visually unstable, which makes a painting visually develop over time (stand in front of some Rothko works and you'll know what I mean). It really depends on what you're going for. Also paint from life. Photos flatten things out tremendously and you'll see a lot more color and dimension from actual observation.
Color theory book I recommend: The Elements of Color:
http://amzn.com/0471289299
http://amzn.com/0300018460
http://amzn.com/0300115954
Painting technique book I also recommend:
Portrait Painting Atelier: Old Master Techniques and Contemporary Applications
http://amzn.com/082309927X
Sorry I'm on mobile and 3:30am so I am a but too exhausted to make those clickable. I look forward to seeing more of your paintings :)
A Cezanne portrait where his colors in the face do what I'm talking about (using color to make planar shifts or space) http://www.canvasreplicas.com/images/Paul%20Cezanne%20Self%20Portrait.jpg
A Degas based on warm cool shifts: http://uploads3.wikipaintings.org/images/edgar-degas/the-pink-dancers-before-the-ballet-1884.jpg
To be good at design in general, there's a few things you need to know.
Basically, there is no shortcut. You need to study the history and understand why things work or don't. A bit of psychology never hurt anyone either, even just a 101 class should be enough to get you started. Lastly, just remember this one thing, it will be the most important part in your career...CONCEPT IS KING. I cannot stress this enough, make sure everything you do has a big idea behind it. Something that lets you organize everything under it. I don't care how much UX/UI thought you have, how many ad units and SEO whatevers you did, without a great idea, its total shit and just fluff.
Extensive study that has been done on color theory. Johannes Itten is a Bauhauser and wrote about this. So did Joseph Albers. We are using both of these books in the color theory class I'm taking at Parsons school of Design this summer.
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1320103677&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/Interaction-Color-Expanded-Josef-Albers/dp/0300115954/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320104020&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Center-Composition-Visual-Anniversary/dp/0520261267/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320103713&sr=8-1 (this one can be a bit esoteric but if you stick with it, its good)
There are also roughly 6 elements to keep in mind when making compositions and you will have to read more about them and seek out examples. they vary depending on where you look but this has some: http://www.wiu.edu/art/courses/handouts/princdesign.html
This also has some good material: http://photoinf.com/General/Robert_Berdan/Composition_and_the_Elements_of_Visual_Design.htm
None of those links are perfect, and they are not quite the way I learned it either, but you should just do exercises to work on them. For example, In a 5x5 square, do compositions using just 10 dots of the same size. Make each composition represent a word such as unity, variety, movement, stillness, and others like that. Thats just a quick example.
Josef Albers's Interaction of Color [color theory]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0300115954/ref=pd_aw_sim_b_2?pi=SL500_SY115