Color: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors

by Betty Edwards

Overview

Millions of people have learned to draw using the methods of Dr. Betty Edwards's bestseller The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Now, much as artists progress from drawing to painting, Edwards moves from black-and-white into color. This much-awaited new guide distills the enormous existing knowledge about color theory into a practical method of working with color to produce harmonious combinations.

Using techniques tested and honed in her five-day intensive color workshops, Edwards provides a basic understanding of how to see color, how to use it, and-for those involved in art, painting, or design-how to mix and combine hues. Including more than 125 color images and exercises that move from simple to challenging, this volume explains how to:

see what is really there rather than what you "know" in your mind about colored objects

perceive how light affects color, and how colors affect one another

manipulate hue, value, and intensity of color and transform colors into their opposites

balance color in still-life, landscape, figure, and portrait painting

understand the psychology of color

harmonize color in your surroundings

While we recognize and treasure the beautiful use of color, reproducing what we see can be a challenge. Accessibly unweaving color's complexity, this must-have primer is destined to be an instant classic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781585422197
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/23/2004
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	175,633
Product dimensions:	7.51(w) x 9.03(h) x 0.63(d)
Age Range:	18 - 14 Years

About the Author

Betty Edwards is professor emeritus of art at California State University in Long Beach, California. She is the author of The New Drawing on the Right Side of the, the world's most widely used drawing instructional, which has been translated into thirteen foreign languages with U.S. sales of almost three million copies. She speaks regularly at universities, art schools, and companies, including the Walt Disney Corporation and the Apple Corporation.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction: The Importance of Color	xiii
Part I
Chapter 1
	Drawing, Color, Painting, and Brain Processes	2
	Seeing Colors as Values	3
	Why Values Are Important	4
	The Role of Language in Color and Painting	6
	The Constancies: Seeing and Believing	8
	Seeing How Light Changes Colors	10
	Seeing How Colors Affect Each Other	12
Chapter 2
	Understanding and Applying Color Theory	14
	Theories about Color	15
	Applying Color Theory in Art	17
Chapter 3
	Learning the Vocabulary of Color	20
	The Three Primary Colors	21
	The Three Secondary Colors	23
	The Six Tertiary Colors	23
	Analogous Colors	23
	Complementary Colors	25
	Naming Colors: The L-Mode Role in Mixing Colors	26
	The Three Attributes of Color: Hue, Value, and Intensity	28
	From Naming to Mixing	31
	Moving from Theory to Practice	33
Part II
Chapter 4
	Buying and Using Paints and Brushes	36
	Buying Supplies	37
	Beginning to Paint	41
	Mixing a Color	44
Exercise 1	Subjective Color	45
	Cleaning Up	47
Chapter 5
	Using the Color Wheel to Understand Hue	48
Exercise 2	Making a Color Wheel Template	49
Exercise 3	Painting the Color Wheel	51
Exercise 4	Practice in Identifying Hues	56
	Mixing Colors	57
	Creating Colors: How Four Pigments Can Become Hundreds of Colors	57
Chapter 6
	Using the Color Wheel to Understand Value	60
	Value	61
Exercise 5	Shades of Gray-Constructing a Value Wheel/Hue Scanner	61
	How to Use Your Value Wheel/Hue Scanner	63
	How to Lighten and Darken Colors	64
Exercise 6	Two Color Value Wheels-From White to a Pure Hue, From a Pure Hue to Black	65
	Other Ways of Lightening and Darkening Colors	68
	Another Way to Darken a Color	70
	Summing Up	70
Chapter 7
	Using the Color Wheel to Understand Intensity	72
Exercise 7	The Power of the Primaries to Cancel Color	73
Exercise 8	Creating an Intensity Wheel-From a Pure Hue to No Color and Back Again	77
Exercise 9	Practice in Naming Hue, Value, and Intensity	79
	Other Ways to Dull Colors	80
Part III
Chapter 8
	What Constitutes Harmony in Color?	84
	The Aesthetic Response to Harmonious Color	85
	The Phenomenon of After-images	86
	After-images and the Attributes of Color	90
	Albert Munsell's Theory of Harmony Based on Balancing Color	92
	A Definition of Balanced Color	93
Chapter 9
	Creating Harmony in Color	96
Exercise 10	Transforming Color Using Complements and the Three Attributes: Hue, Value, and Intensity	96
Chapter 10
	Seeing the Effects of Light, Color Constancy, and Simultaneous Contrast	112
	The Next Step: Seeing How Light Affects the Colors of Three-Dimensional Shapes	113
	Why It Is Difficult to See the Effects of Light	115
	How to Accurately Perceive Colors Affected by Light	116
	Three Different Methods of Scanning a Hue	116
	The Next Step: Estimating the Intensity Level	118
	The Three-Part Process of Painting	119
Exercise 11	Painting a Still Life	121
Chapter 11
	Seeing the Beauty of Color in Nature	134
	Color Harmony in Flowers	135
	Floral Painting in Art	136
	Colors in Nature Differ from Colors of Human-Made Objects	139
Exercise 12	Painting a Floral Still Life	140
	Nature as a Teacher of Color	155
Chapter 12
	The Meaning and Symbolism of Colors	156
	Attaching Names to Colors	157
	Using Colors to Express Meaning	158
Exercise 13	The Color of Human Emotions	161
	Your Preferred Colors and What They Mean	168
	Knowing Your Color Preferences and Your Color Expressions	171
	The Symbolic Meanings of Colors	172
	Practicing Your Understanding of the Meaning of Color	188
	Using Your Color Knowledge	190
	Glossary	193
	Bibliography	197
	Index	199