Color Fundamentals with Mary Jane Begin

Excellent course, and exceptional presentation of color fundamentals. The demonstrations really helped to drive home the concepts! Highly recommend.

As an experienced artist, I learned so much more than I ever knew about color relationship and how/why to use it. I would hIghly recommend this course to anyone who wants to expand their color skills and attain a deeper understanding of how to use it to make dynamic art.

definitely recommend this course. Really opened my eyes on using color and value to bring a subject together. Will be returning to this one.

Wow, I thought I would get bored in this class, but Mary explains everything and every aspect so well and keeps it interesting. Understanding colour has been my biggest struggles in my art journey. After this class I finally get it! It will take me a lot of trial and error, I had no idea there were so many aspects to it, but it all makes perfect sense. I am so glad that I can go back and review this class whenever I need, because you can't possibly take it all in. Thank you for sharing your knowledge but also doing the demonstrations. Great teacher!

I have already either taken or own all of Mary Jane Begin's online classes and this is another great one. This is a rather short class, so this is only a high-level overview of color as used in illustration or painting. It's not the whole thing. I think renaming the class to reflect that might change the expectation. Maybe something like "Color Fundamentals for Painting and Illustration" would be better. Mary Jane Begin has numerous classes on LinkedIn Learning which are in depth demonstrations which some who are wanting more might benefit from, a as well as some titles here on specific painting methods.

This is a wonderful class. I really like the way MJ teaches and how much she shows you about her techniques. It is a great launching point to go explore more of your own style. Thank you so much.

Practical and well communicated.

I quite enjoy it, I do feel MJ speaks a bit fast (if one is not a native English speaker) as for the part of the demo´s it does feel a bit slow. Overall it was a great course to follow and I did learn a lot from it. Thanks

There was a lot of good info in this course about color theory! I found the first half of the class to be very informative. I was less motivated about the second half / demo videos, but overall there is plenty to learn from this course!

I’ve had foundations in many of the color instruction that was presented here so the information was a very good revisit. I also think it was explained better in this presentation than in the other training I’ve had. I enjoyed listening to the lecture, thankfully they weren’t drawn out until you want to stop listening. The demonstration was best after we moved off the charcoal drawing (although that was interesting to watch) because using the paints really brought home to me the application some of the lessons learned. I wish that part would have been more robust so that all of the elements in the lecture could have been directly called out in the demonstration. The instructor was most effective when not trying to multitask too much. Overall, I recommend this course.

I found this course to be extremely interesting and very well presented. Both the charcoal and color examples as presented really made sense to me. I hope she has more classes here!

I really love this course! I enjoyed the lessons as much as seeing MJ's drawing and painting demonstration. For someone who doesn't go to art school, this class offers as hands-on experience as an online class can do. The demonstration definitely brings my understanding of all taught concepts to the next level. Very great course to lay a foundation for understanding colours "in action". Absolutely recommended! :)

The lessons on opacity/transparency and grounds were the most useful for me. Instructor was interesting and presented the information well.

I have just started this class and am anxious to finish it! Mary Jane is an excellent teacher and extremely talented. It’s been over 30 years since I took a color theory class in art school and I found it very frustrating. I am thrilled with Mary Jane’s approach and definitely recommmend it! Mary Jo Roberts, gnarlysheep.com

This was excellent. The examples given, reminded me of the techniques I've seen from a handful of friends and acquaintances who are all successful, working professional artists and as it turns out, a few of them had MJ as a teacher from their time at RISD. Clearly she's doing something right since they're all doing well for themselves now and in a variety of mediums, not just illustration.

Excellent instruction! Most helpful to me in terms of establishing the focal point of an image through use of value, color harmony. Also helpful to understand transparency and opacity and how that relates to highlights and shadows. MJ is fun and likable.

I really liked the informal demonstrations and I also liked the way she set out her pallet with warm and cold colors. This was not only an informative class but inspiring. The casual and relaxed working style, encourage playfulness. Thank you for an awesome class.

I really enjoyed this class. I would like to highlight something, in my opinion the concept of "lessons" seems to vary very widely from one course to the next, and one course of 22 lessons could be 7 or 8 hours (or more) where this course is maybe about 3 hours. Please, site admins, could you include the total time count so people don't feel short changed. Also perhaps a succinct statement of what you learn/should be able to do at the end, would be most useful.

Fascinating and useful. Color basics overview followed by an illustration on a project of how the various aspects are used. This will help me understand my color photography and give me greater control over viewer reaction. A nice bonus is that this will inform my viewing of art work at museums.

Very informative. I like that she demonstrated how to use color fundamentals in selecting and mixing colors for a painting.

I had previously learned basic color theory, but this instructor took my knowledge beyond with layered instruction about value-contrast-complements-hierarchy, etc., and she does it in such a fun way with her own examples of work and great stories! I like her poise and confidence and think this series is a terrific value.

This class makes it easy to understand and use color in your work. I really liked the demonstration first showing value and then the second demonstration with color. MJ covers values, contrast, hierarchy, temperature, light, saturation, focal points, opacity, transparency, complements, ground, harmony, and palette. You will know much more about using color to tell your story or to make the viewer look where you want them to look after this class.

I learned a lot about color in this course. Thank you!

I had NO color training before watching this and I learned so much about color in a very short time! I definitely recommend this to anyone, regardless of medium. :-)

Makes color theory memorable