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Color Style #5: Spot Coloring Book

Lesson 9 from: Color Techniques for Drawing

Cleo Papanikolas

Color Style #5: Spot Coloring Book

Lesson 9 from: Color Techniques for Drawing

Cleo Papanikolas

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Lesson Info

9. Color Style #5: Spot Coloring Book

Lesson Info

Color Style #5: Spot Coloring Book

I started with water color paper. And I just did a little sketch on it. This time, I'm using coded paper. And this one is fun because you just look at it, and put the color you see, whatever it is. There's my orange candy and I look at it and I say, okay! It's got some orange, it's got some red. So here is where you need to go in and just find... ...use all those beautiful colors that you see on all the color charts and pick the best ones you like and use them. So, getting my paint a little bit. I add some water to it first, to get it moistened up. I'm gonna spray mine. Mine are getting a little dried out. After you've been using them for a while, they do tend to dry out. So, don't get a crust on them and this will help. Just a light spray on the top will soften that crust off. Okay, so I've got some orange. And, I've got some orange on my paper. But that's okay, you why? 'Cause I used coded paper. (chuckles) Would you mind putting that (mumbles) just alongside it? So we can see a li...

ttle bit better. There you go. There we go. Yes, I'm gonna get rid of this one 'cause I'm not using it. It's confusing. What a mess! Okay. So, I coded this paper... ...and I actually had a mistake on it, so I'm gonna wipe it off. This is one of the reasons why I use this paper (chuckles). Okay. Just gonna start with the orange. And save the highlights out. I could go back in with white and paint the highlights if I wanted to 'cause I'm using gouache, but I think I'll save them out for now . And, I would say that you can probably add some white to this if you want. As we were talking before, I probably wouldn't add any black for the shadows, probably remix another color. Okay, and the orange goes up a little here more. And I drew a little line there to save my highlight, so I'm gonna try not to paint that in. Okay. Orange. Then I've got some green leaves. I've got some green paint. Here you can choose, if you wanna use, you know... ...what I would do probably, if I was gonna go buy paint specifically for this, I will lay out little chips of them like this and see if they all go together. Oopsies. Not that one. Okay. Like that. Just lay out a whole bunch of chips next to each other, and see if I like all of the colors together. Since I've already got them all laid out on my palate. I'm gonna just, I know they kinda already match 'cause I chose them together. Okay. Okay, so, I painted my leaves as one big glob and I know it's gonna have a darker line in the middle, so I think I'm gonna use brown for that. And here, you can just paint right over it 'cause it's gouache. Then I'm gonna paint these. This stuff also, it goes on a lot thicker and kind of pastier, so it's less likely to run when you paint one section right up to other section. (taps paintbrush against waterglass) When you're creating a palate and you're doing your little hash marks next to one another to kinda create that grouping that goes together, what are some things you take into consideration, when you're choosing your colors? I usually like to maybe have one that's kind of the brighter stand-out color. I don't want all of them to be like full intensity, straight out of the tube. Now, the fun about these gouache colors is that they do come in premixed colors. For example, this one says aqua-blue. Aqua-blue is probably not a real pigment. It would probably be something like cobalt mixed with phthalo and white, would create this color, aqua. But you can buy it premixed straight out the tube. Same thing with luminesce orange (laughs). That's like these bright neon colors. So if I'm gonna use spot colors, that's the brilliant thing, is you could just pick the color, on the color chart that you like, and use it straight ahead. Okay. So, I'm doing all my green. I'll get a little bit more into when we do our final drawing coming up. I'm gonna show you how I adjust my palate, a little bit. I'll paint out some more of these swatches... ...in the next lesson. Okay, so, basically I'm painting all these in and I end up with something like this. You can see what I did. I just painted all the orange. I painted the red where it goes. I painted the green. Now, I decided this one's gonna have a shadow. So here I mixed. I got my white and I just want barely a little shadow. I got my white and I got just a little bit of my purple. And just painted it right up to the edge. You know, shadows can be super dark shadows or super light shadows, but here, I just wanted a tiny bit of a suggestion of a shadow. Okay and you can see that if I kept going and putting all the colors on the spots, I would end up with something like that. And here is my orange candy and it's pretty true to form. And I love the spot coloring book one because it is actually like one of the most relaxing, you don't have to like plan out any big artistic grand schemes, do any styles. This is kind of why the Paint by Numbers was so popular, 'cause you just look at it and you just do it. And it comes out really nice and graphicy with these gouache colors.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Color Tools and Materials List
Candy Drawing
Daisy Drawing
Sharks Drawing

Ratings and Reviews

marcelle gray
 

I love this class!!! Cleo is such a natural, enthusiastic and funny teacher. She shares her ideas very freely and makes learning so much fun. She likes to explore her materials by experimenting and also making charts. In art school I always thought this was a little boring, but Cleo makes it fun. It is a good way to warm up and prepare to draw and then begin paint. I have learned to enjoy this process so much by taking this class. I would recommend this class to both beginners and experienced artists.

user 43495d
 

Cleo does start quite nervous, and not very clear in her explanations. Thanks to the guy asking the questions throughout the class…I guess he was as confused as us in the beginning. BUT…the class does get better!! She gets more confident and does give good examples to take your simple drawing to a colorful piece of art you can sell on products or share on social media. I really enjoyed later lessons. And I always say-if I can get a least ONE good advice or trick – then it was not a waste of my $20.

Student Work

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