Thanks for watching! I want everyone to know that both Morgan Weistling and Joseph Zbukvic are excellent teachers, and I highly recommend looking into their art instruction. All right, see ya in the new year!
Love the video! Right now i am reading the book Color and Light a Guide for Realist Painting of James Gurney :). You basically resume a lot of his explanations in your video. I'm happy to have found these lessons :D
Yeah, that was a great way of understanding the 'relative' element to colour, because it always depends on the other colours around it (which is why blue against a blue background looks less blue than it really is). Our brains view cones differently and process colour differently, depending on the background/nearby colours. In this case, it seems that the not-blue-grey looks very blue relative to the oranges, but if you compared to the blues, then the not-blue-grey would clearly not be blue at all (and, in 'reality', it's not blue to any notable degree, of course -- but that's relative). That is when the video really made perfect sense.
I have seen countless colour theory videos and none of them have made it click in my head like you do. The shouting and talking conversation, and using the ship to visually show that you need to bring them closer together to have them TALK. Is fantastic. Sub earned!!
YOU!!!! You are the one who does those fantastic monster paintings on Deviantart! I love those and have always adored your colors! Thank you for this explanation. I always have trouble with colors and have watched a million videos on it. But this is actually the most comprehensive I have seen.
I'm sure it will! Your way of explaining it helps me to think in color. Your little squares and how they fit into the picture really hit me. Thanks for taking the time to make this video. Heh. Now gonna go watch the rest of them! Ugh....my color world is flat.
Thanks a lot! Actually, I have written a book! It's a look at the psychology and nurturing of creativity, and how that feeds into your art. You can check out the hardcopy and audiobook versions here: bit.ly/2EwIMY9 All the best with your work.
Hello, I just wanted to say that I'm a freelance digital artist and lately, I've been feeling really down about my entire process, and wondering what in the world I'm doing wrong. I suddenly stumbled on this and not only did your presentation and humor cheer me up, but also gave me a much wider perspective on how I perceive the entire process. I strongly look forward to stalking your channel and learning more from you. So thank you so much for what you do and all the hard work you put into not only your channel but also your guidance through such a tough industry.
8:35 I really appreciate the "starting from color method" here. I see a lot of youtubers just turning greyscale pictures into colored ones with some clicks of the mouse, and it misses something. Toggling a grayscale view mode is way more powerful for keeping your value skills in check
This was soooo helpful!! Thank you!! You explained it in a totally new way and the color falcon wheel was a great metaphor. Moving and making all those color squares must have taken you so long !
katyillustrates hahaha YES those colour blocks were an absolute logistics nightmare to animate in Camtasia! lol. That’s why you only see them move a few times :)
This was the best video on color that I've seen as an intermediate beginner (??) in art. I've seen videos all over about color theory, listing off complementary/triadic etc color schemes, but none of them really explained what you did so eloquently about why those relationships worked on a deeper level. Your demo really helps as well. Watching the rest of the series to let it marinate while I work on simpler concepts and subscribing. I don't see many videos like this, so thanks! Reminds me of a really engaging classroom lecture. You're a great teacher.
This is fantastic! I teach art students, and we've looked at your work for inspiration. I found your channel and practically yelled at them to go watch and learn. Thanks so much for putting this together!
This is by far the best demonstration on color harmony I've ever seen. I've been struggling with understanding color theory for a while and this really helps tie it all together.
After two years looking for reasons why my teachers and my classmates tell me why you should do colors like this, I finally now know it. They're terrible at explaining this particular section... Thank you, stranger!
Well this explains why I like doing grey underpaintings to paint sunsets at sea and then gradually build up saturation. Not only does it help you to place colours, it also helps one to use complementary colours together in a non jarring way. This is something I had to really struggle with. This info has help me understand how to really achieve the effects i need. awesome even for paintings i would have never thought of using them in (with disappointing results, of course)
The idea of regarding color as a “conversation” makes everything so much clearer! The fact that a part of a painting can look green just by being greener than it’s surrounding area is incredible and thank you so much for SHOWING us how to implement these lessons as well!
So beautifully explained!! By saying colors are having conversation with one another makes it easy to understand on an emotion level versus intellectual.
As always, you have a knack for finding something interesting to say even on well-trodden ground and communicate it in a way that stands out and is memorable! Thanks so much!
Marco, You are the best teacher. You are not profit-driven and/or afraid of other artists acquiring skills. Like a Jedi. I am learning so much from these instruction videos. There was another dude, Dunn, who used to have good lessons but he disappeared. However, I have listened to many youtube artists, and they have been saying the same thing that you say but you brought it home. Loud and clear. May the force be with you Bro.
That was a lot of info crammed in 10 min! like an entire class on steroids, correction, probably 5 classes in one 10 min tutorial. will have to re watch this a few times for sure :)
This Video is the one that finally got through my thick skull! I have been struggling with color for quite a while now, but this makes such perfect sense to me! Thank you so much for putting this together. I can not tell you how invaluable this will be to me :)
All the seminars I’ve gone to at university on colour theory... None of it really went in my head at all, but somehow this video just made everything come together! Literally like a mini mind explosion, colour is amazing!
Doing Art in college was a waste of time. I'm now 32 and learning more thanks to these TH-cam videos than I ever did then. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Yes, a video about color. I have been waiting for this. This is the first time I hear a professional color artist said no worry about the black and white sketches.I LOVE IT! In fact, I prefer jump into color without a super detailed structure, and the happy accidents happened that way also. I like happy accident. I never success in mixing the correct color in the beginning, but the color in my art is the one people love the most. Thank you for using wonderful 10 minutes to teach us about color.
I'm returning years later after watching a thousand color theory tutorials to say this one was the most memorable. I came back looking for it to send it to a friend. I remember this tutorial every time :)
Another fantastic installment Marco :) - I took your Color & Light course last Summer and it taught me a ton on how to improve my process. Thanks for all the awesome.
What a fantastic teacher. Breaking it down fast and in a way that one can understand the concepts. Been painting for years now I know how I can improve color harmony. Thank you!!!!!
Hi Marco! This tut is so helpful! Now I understand a little bit more about how colors play between each other in a composition. I'll try some exercises in regard what I've learnt today! :) Thanks for sharing! Blessings!!
This video crack my head open in ten minutes and push an information over load in to it .. now i think i can paint everything in more harmonious way than before because of the knowledge he just shared
The sky is blue, the grass is green. Wrong! When you look at cartoons like Pink Panther, the sky is often some weird hot color. But it works! No one ever complained. :) Great lesson Marco. Can't wait next one.... and because of the "flath-earter", every day I am closer to believe that the earth is in cylindrical, falusoid shape. :P
Maaaan!!! The color theory used to be such a pain... And you are the first one who put it into relevant environment and NOW, FINALLY!!!! I understand the RELATIONSHIP! You can not imagine how do I feel right now =) enlightenment... Thank you, man! Subscribed! Worship! Love you, man!
I feel like I'm getting lectured by a kindergarten teacher. And I'm soooo enjoying it. Not only did you explain everything in a way that stood out to us, but we could relate to everything you were saying. THANK YOU!!!!
I loved the joke at the end. Does color harmony also depend upon location on the canvas? By that, I mean if we were to use a saturated green, for example, must it move through yellow before there would be a conversation with red? (Or another way to think of it, if we had a red light in a green forest, would the light have a yellow halo around it?) Must colors be in close proximity to talk? Or can they be on opposite sides of the canvas?
Sam Reeves I think that in the first part of the video we totally see that we can harmonise colours even if they're distant in the colour wheel, i think what we wanna do is play with saturation of both colours or just one to make it more fitting in the scene(I don't know if these is correct, it's what I got from the video)
I watched the video again, and saw that during the Zbukvic painting, the colors do not have to be in close proximity. I guess my question, then, is do we have to create a stepping stone trail of color from one to the other?
But-what if you cannot determine whether a color is warmer or cooler relative to the other colors around it when painting from life? This is what I struggle with when painting portraits from life-probably due to my slight red/ green color blindness, so the closer those get to middle value it becomes impossible for me to distinguish. E.g. I don't see cool blue/ green in skin tones. I kind of see they're there AFTER someone points them out to me, but on my own? Nope, don't see 'em.
scott Hey Scott - While I’m not sure if I can totally help there, as I lack the experience you have with the slight colour blindness, what I *can* say (echoing Part 3 of this video) is that shapes and value and edge matter more. I’ve had students in the past who struggled with subtle temperature shifts due to colour blindness, and we found that simply focusing on those more important fundamentals almost freed them to use whatever colour they wanted. In fact, it’s almost always true that if you get those right, you can paint whatever-the-heck colour you want, and it will still work. I am saving that particular lesson for a future video, actually. There are some great illustrators who are mildly colour blind, and who are still very innovative with colour. Peter de Seve comes to mind. So while I can’t quite help you train this, I hope I can direct your focus elsewhere, where it really matters.
Excellent. Grouping the colours like that really helps to visualize the conversation. It was a super clear explanation and I want to emphasize that. This is the least ambiguous lesson on colour I've heard yet. Really enjoy your lessons.
Hey Marco, very nice episode. I've actually been waiting for you to get to this topic. Here is a question for you: But let me go back a bit first. I think I really started to understand what a color harmony is this year through Richard Schmids book Alla Prima 2. He breaks color harmony mostly down to the main light in a scene. If - for example - you have blue-ish light as your main light source, the scene will most likely go into a blue-ish color harmony with mostly supressed oranges and yellows. Blue light on orange makes the orange go grey. Now you didn't really mention the effects of light on local color in your video. You seem to stay at a level of color itself, but not going into detail why you or your artists of choice picked those colors in the first place. So my question is - Do you really leave the light (color) out of your way of thinking when it comes to color harmony? You talk about cool and warm sides in the beginning with one of your artist examples. Isn't that an integral part of light and then a working color harmony later?
Simon Kopp Hey Simon, This is an excellent question. You are correct in noting that this colour harmony lesson does not consider the effect of the light source. And I understand how this can seem a little … confounding, perhaps … given that light is what’s responsible for the colours we see and paint in the first place. Light is indeed a consideration you may want to make *before* deciding on colour harmony. In fact, when I was writing this lesson, I did initially plan and structure it that way. Light source temperature -> guiding your colour choices -> producing a natural colour harmony. As you said, this is the process Richard Schmid talks about in Alla Prima. A cool, blueish light (eg. overcast day) will indeed gray down/cool down the oranges/reds/yellows in the scene, while also preserving - or sometimes even adding saturation to - the blues/purples, etc. The opposite would be true in warm light, usually. So by using that as a basis of knowledge in your work, you can actually arrive at a harmonious painting almost “automatically” (I believe that’s Schmid’s word for it, too). With a knowledge of light, you can pre-determine, or anticipate, some of the colours in both light and shadow that you can begin with. “Begin with”. That’s just it. Light can allow you to begin a colour harmony, or even arrive at one kind of by default (and yes, you *can* finish a painting just with that alone. For example, if I am painting quickly, like in my sketchbook - see my painting sketchbook video - sometimes it’s totally fine to only observe the basic properties of the light ... and spend most of your time on composition/shapes/values/edges, since they are far more integral to a good picture.) But in this video, I wanted to demonstrate how colour harmony can be a broader consideration, rather than something that is a slave to the light. Colour harmony can be its own art form (consider abstract painters, who ignore form and light completely. Or areas of Richard Schmid’s paintings that are completely abstract.) For instance, the carrying of that turquoise colour (in my painting) through from the sky->monster->bridge->grass, using it in various degrees of gray. That isn’t a lighting-based decision. It’s finding a grander statement for the colours. Colour for colour’s sake. Same with the Zbukvic and Weistling examples. If you look closely at the girl’s dress in the Weistling piece, there are notes of greyish/blue that sizzle against the more saturated reds. Why are those there? They probably don’t need to be. Weistling could’ve probably just mixed up a cool red and applied that to the whole dress and it would have looked like light. Part of his motivation for those subtle, cool colour notes was certainly that the light is cool, which leads to a cooling down of red (and often when you cool down red you’ll find yourself in the gray purples and even blues), but I think the main reason for all the colour notes in the dress is that they harmonize the two motifs in the painting - the girl’s dress, and the quilt she lays against. Look closely and you’ll find subtle greens and purples in the dress and quilt too. They all bind and harmonize the colours throughout the piece. IMO, this done for the sake of colour alone - the feel of the picture - rather than an adherence to what the light is doing. It’s a departure, or caricature of reality, done for emotional impact. Also consider the bright violet flowers in front of the girl. Those are like the saturated colours on the boats in the Zbukvic painting. They take the a common colour in the painting (red/violet) and take it to its maximum saturation. In that way, this painting carries the colour red through from very gray to fully saturated, giving the painting an overall ‘red’ motif. A red harmony. Again, this is a decision separate from the light; this scene in real life was most likely far less red. Richard Schmid does this too. In his DVD “June” - the one where he paints his red barn against the backdrop of trees - he starts the painting by rubbing a light wash of warm green on the canvas, establishing what he calls a “green harmony”. Schmid here is planning ahead to ensure that one single colour (the green) shows up throughout the painting as a way of harmonizing or unifying (harmony and unity often mean the same thing) the colours. This is a different way of achieving harmony, I did not examine this method in this video! As Schmid paints the barn scene, the underpainting of green starts showing through the gaps between the brushstrokes, and becomes part of each mixture, to various degrees. Green becomes part of everything. Even his bright red barn has green in it. This is especially effective in meshing the saturated green trees with the saturated red barn. Because red and green are complimentary colours, and because both of those colours will show up quite saturated in the finished painting, there’s a risk of things looking too ‘colouring book’. So, having that green subtly ‘infiltrating’ the reds, Schmid achieves a simple yet effective way of harmonizing the reds and the greens, tying together his painting in a way that looking at the light alone would not have accomplished. I remember Nathan Fowkes telling a similar story - about an oil painter who wanted a “yellow ochre” harmony. So he mixed some yellow ochre into each mixture to make sure that the colours all “bent” towards the yellow ochre. Other painters - like Anders Zorn - famously limit their palette (Zorn used only 4 colours), to purposely disallow themselves from being able to mix every colour. That way, every colour you mix, by necessity, all share properties of each other (I highly recommend looking into the Zorn palette for further study.) He could not paint everything the light was doing. He had to interpret it. Limited palettes are great for that kind of learning. A modern painter who does this is Scott Christensen, also a great teacher very worthy of study! In conclusion, remember that in painting we have the ability to take our understanding of nature’s properties (eg. how light works), and push it, heighten it, caricature it. The reason to do this is to capture an emotion. Nature is the raw material, the basis on top of which for us to overlay feeling. That, in a nutshell, is what my lesson intends to get at. Thanks again for the great question!
Very interesting! Thank you for the long and clear answer! I had more thoughts on the topic and I thought in similar directions. Thank you for the clarification!
This video doesn't feel like it's only ten minutes long, I came out of it feeling like I'd just completed a three-week course on colour theory ... this was super helpful, thank you!
You have a gift, not only for art but also to convey knowledge about this, I believe that color and its harmonies are on our radar and they are so because we perceive them naturally, that is, we know when something does not match "this color with this other ", in the past I was afraid to face color, it intimidates me, but it is in us because it is like going to swim or ride a bike, something difficult the first time, but once you understand how to start it becomes natural, inato, and almost you do not even realize how you do it, but you do; Marco great video like all that I've seen yours, is frankly a pleasure that becomes practically an epiphany JAJAJA, thank you and please do not ever leave us. A greeting!
For the first time in my life i understand color thanks to you! Literally I have traversed all kinds of sources that told me all about the famous color wheel but never one that actually helped my painting. Your videos may have contributed more to that than anything else I have tried kudos from all my heart!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS! Most videos and classes I've seen about color usually only talk about complimentary colors, etc. But knowing that reds and greens can go together only gets you so far. They never go deeper than that, and because of it I've struggled so much in figuring out how to achieve color harmony. One day I was doing a digital painting and realized that putting a straight grey in a warm, orange painting made it look like a warm blue without even without having a blue hue. It stuck with me, and when I watched this video and saw that the key to harmony was conversating within grey tones, my mind was blown. "That's it! Thats the grey thing I noticed! Its true!" Anyhow, thank you so so much for this. I can vouche for other students when I say that I learned more from this than I did in a semester of Color Theory.
I think you are the best art teacher i have seen, at least for sharing the most valuable knowledge in the easiest manner and the shortest amount of time.
As someone who is color blind which gives me even more trouble with color (especially when working digitally where there is no concrete formula for creating the colors I want by mixing pigments), I find this video really helpful for me! Especially with the live demo showing with the updating color wheel! It's always been a struggle for me to work with colors digitally without having to grab a color palette from a photo or something else. I think that with the information from this video I'll be able to feel a little more comfortable with it though! Thank you so much for this lesson, the way you edited this video was also fantastic as it made it much easier to digest! Great work!
Thank you so much for helping home taught art pursuers like myself. Wonderfully taught and broken down in a way a child like mind like my own can understand
All of your videos make comeback from really bad mood. I really have a problem with my color. I love my sketch but when it come to painting I started to hate my work. Your video really help me to finish my project and other works. Thank you so much :)
They never really explained that subjective grey association thing well enough in art school... it left me completely clueless how to understand or control that until now! Phenomenal!!!
I just love how you broke it down so simply and how you used metaphors to explain the color harmony. It becomes easier to absorb. Thank you for this video
the Millennium Color Picker was very helpful in showing where the colors were in relationship to each other, thanks for taking the time to edit that! this video was like a super-condensed version of what I learned after hours and hours of tutorial-browsing and hands-on experience playing around with color throughout the years. I'll definitely throw this video at friends who haven't started thinking about color harmony yet, since it'll give them new perspective and help level up their art. it's a very solid video, thank you!
Thanks for watching! I want everyone to know that both Morgan Weistling and Joseph Zbukvic are excellent teachers, and I highly recommend looking into their art instruction. All right, see ya in the new year!
thank you for made it :D
OMG this is so funny and yet so educational! WELL DONE! THIS IS JUST AWESOME!
I definitely cracked up on that last part of the video hahahahaha nice.
Love the video! Right now i am reading the book Color and Light a Guide for Realist Painting of James Gurney :). You basically resume a lot of his explanations in your video. I'm happy to have found these lessons :D
:)
This video is a masterpiece. Editing and content are so on point. #teachergoals
love you man no homo
Super flattering, and hey I’ve looked at your vids more than once for my own #teachergoals!
Sinix Design so true!
You both are awesome! Very high quality content, love your videos!!
Heyyy,,,, sinix here ^^,
that awkward moment when you learn more in a ten minute video than a whole semester of color theory
Jordan Tai yeep watched so many useless videos and went to many many useless art classes
i only took 4 months of color theory and it was awful as hell
Awwwkward...
You have to go to the right art school. Unfortunately there arent many of them
That awkward moment when you feel like you've learned something but you doesn't do anything
"Well, he started with an orange-ish colour and probably used The Force to bring it in to about...here."
10/10 teaching skills haha
haha, thanks :)
Man, this video is like a nuclear blast in my brain.
Couldn’t have said it better myself
Brilliant! Must share.
Haha hilarious bit at the end regarding the color wheel being flat - you Flat Earther!!
Sensei !!!
Sensei !!! [2]
Both Ahmed and Sinix on a Marco vid... Man, get proko over here and you have all my fave. Teachers in one place
sensei !
"The bluest part of that conversation" is when it really clicked for me!
Yeah, that was a great way of understanding the 'relative' element to colour, because it always depends on the other colours around it (which is why blue against a blue background looks less blue than it really is). Our brains view cones differently and process colour differently, depending on the background/nearby colours.
In this case, it seems that the not-blue-grey looks very blue relative to the oranges, but if you compared to the blues, then the not-blue-grey would clearly not be blue at all (and, in 'reality', it's not blue to any notable degree, of course -- but that's relative).
That is when the video really made perfect sense.
I have seen countless colour theory videos and none of them have made it click in my head like you do. The shouting and talking conversation, and using the ship to visually show that you need to bring them closer together to have them TALK. Is fantastic. Sub earned!!
Thanks!
YOU!!!! You are the one who does those fantastic monster paintings on Deviantart! I love those and have always adored your colors! Thank you for this explanation. I always have trouble with colors and have watched a million videos on it. But this is actually the most comprehensive I have seen.
Haha, glad you found me. And thanks - I hope the video will help with your work!
I'm sure it will! Your way of explaining it helps me to think in color. Your little squares and how they fit into the picture really hit me. Thanks for taking the time to make this video. Heh. Now gonna go watch the rest of them!
Ugh....my color world is flat.
Please write a book. I would not only buy it, but would pre-order it to make sure I got a copy. You are an amazing instructor.
Thanks a lot! Actually, I have written a book! It's a look at the psychology and nurturing of creativity, and how that feeds into your art. You can check out the hardcopy and audiobook versions here: bit.ly/2EwIMY9
All the best with your work.
Hello, I just wanted to say that I'm a freelance digital artist and lately, I've been feeling really down about my entire process, and wondering what in the world I'm doing wrong. I suddenly stumbled on this and not only did your presentation and humor cheer me up, but also gave me a much wider perspective on how I perceive the entire process. I strongly look forward to stalking your channel and learning more from you. So thank you so much for what you do and all the hard work you put into not only your channel but also your guidance through such a tough industry.
I found yours content is even better than some paid stuff well organized didn't waste any second, Thanks you so much.
8:35 I really appreciate the "starting from color method" here. I see a lot of youtubers just turning greyscale pictures into colored ones with some clicks of the mouse, and it misses something. Toggling a grayscale view mode is way more powerful for keeping your value skills in check
Oh my goodness..Thank you so much... You make it so easy to understand....I love the idea of colours having a conversation.....
This was soooo helpful!! Thank you!! You explained it in a totally new way and the color falcon wheel was a great metaphor. Moving and making all those color squares must have taken you so long !
katyillustrates hahaha YES those colour blocks were an absolute logistics nightmare to animate in Camtasia! lol. That’s why you only see them move a few times :)
Awesome advice... And that ending was priceless.
Hahaha i laughed so much 😂😂😂
I love how other art TH-camrs are chiming in
shows how OP Marco Bucci is
This was the best video on color that I've seen as an intermediate beginner (??) in art. I've seen videos all over about color theory, listing off complementary/triadic etc color schemes, but none of them really explained what you did so eloquently about why those relationships worked on a deeper level. Your demo really helps as well. Watching the rest of the series to let it marinate while I work on simpler concepts and subscribing. I don't see many videos like this, so thanks! Reminds me of a really engaging classroom lecture. You're a great teacher.
This is fantastic! I teach art students, and we've looked at your work for inspiration. I found your channel and practically yelled at them to go watch and learn. Thanks so much for putting this together!
Thanks Alicia, I'm flattered that you're sharing my stuff in your class. From one teacher to another, respect :)
This is by far the best demonstration on color harmony I've ever seen. I've been struggling with understanding color theory for a while and this really helps tie it all together.
After two years looking for reasons why my teachers and my classmates tell me why you should do colors like this, I finally now know it. They're terrible at explaining this particular section... Thank you, stranger!
Well this explains why I like doing grey underpaintings to paint sunsets at sea and then gradually build up saturation. Not only does it help you to place colours, it also helps one to use complementary colours together in a non jarring way. This is something I had to really struggle with. This info has help me understand how to really achieve the effects i need. awesome even for paintings i would have never thought of using them in (with disappointing results, of course)
The idea of regarding color as a “conversation” makes everything so much clearer! The fact that a part of a painting can look green just by being greener than it’s surrounding area is incredible and thank you so much for SHOWING us how to implement these lessons as well!
So beautifully explained!! By saying colors are having conversation with one another makes it easy to understand on an emotion level versus intellectual.
As always, you have a knack for finding something interesting to say even on well-trodden ground and communicate it in a way that stands out and is memorable! Thanks so much!
Sebastian Wagner That’s a great compliment, thank you!
Marco, You are the best teacher. You are not profit-driven and/or afraid of other artists acquiring skills. Like a Jedi. I am learning so much from these instruction videos. There was another dude, Dunn, who used to have good lessons but he disappeared. However, I have listened to many youtube artists, and they have been saying the same thing that you say but you brought it home. Loud and clear. May the force be with you Bro.
That was a lot of info crammed in 10 min! like an entire class on steroids, correction, probably 5 classes in one 10 min tutorial. will have to re watch this a few times for sure :)
Danny Kundzinsh haha, good way to characterize this series.
I appreciate the clarity about the movement from grays to fully saturated colors.
This Video is the one that finally got through my thick skull! I have been struggling with color for quite a while now, but this makes such perfect sense to me! Thank you so much for putting this together. I can not tell you how invaluable this will be to me :)
Nathanael Burks great!
The conversation analogy is brilliant
Oh wow, so glad I found your channel! I loved watching this video, really helpful! I'll definately be watching the others.
after this we need to call him "Dutch golden age 2021 artist" Brilliant idea man appreciate!!
I wish I could like this several times! You are such a gold mine of information, thank you so much for doing these!
You are a very good teacher - for painting and any visual art. (I'm a photographer) Thank you Marco.
Always cool to hear from artists of adjacent mediums. Thanks!
All the seminars I’ve gone to at university on colour theory... None of it really went in my head at all, but somehow this video just made everything come together! Literally like a mini mind explosion, colour is amazing!
Thanks, I'm glad the lesson clicked!
Doing Art in college was a waste of time. I'm now 32 and learning more thanks to these TH-cam videos than I ever did then. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
😂😂😂 the ending was great. The whole ep. was great. 😊👍🏾
seeing colour as emotion and form as reality is a useful perspective to have!
Yes, a video about color. I have been waiting for this. This is the first time I hear a professional color artist said no worry about the black and white sketches.I LOVE IT! In fact, I prefer jump into color without a super detailed structure, and the happy accidents happened that way also. I like happy accident. I never success in mixing the correct color in the beginning, but the color in my art is the one people love the most. Thank you for using wonderful 10 minutes to teach us about color.
I'm returning years later after watching a thousand color theory tutorials to say this one was the most memorable. I came back looking for it to send it to a friend. I remember this tutorial every time :)
Another fantastic installment Marco :) - I took your Color & Light course last Summer and it taught me a ton on how to improve my process. Thanks for all the awesome.
This is the best video that explains color harmony. I was able to grasp the idea just by watching this.
#flatcoulourpickersociety
kilerden lol
kilerden why tho? I want to understand :(( 😢
Are we the flat-earthers of the art world? =/c
Adobe never released a real picture of the supposed "round" color wheel, and these ones Marco Bucci is showing are all CGI. Wake up, sheeple...
What a fantastic teacher. Breaking it down fast and in a way that one can understand the concepts. Been painting for years now I know how I can improve color harmony. Thank you!!!!!
I love these videos so much! Wish the art professors I had taught like this back then.
Brillant demonstration of colour conversation with modern software on modern painters. Thank you man. Grazie mille Marco
Man, I wished I had a teacher like you back in University :( Your content is super helful, thanks!
the humor in this is what makes your videos special and really entertaining to watch.
Lio thank you!
Hi Marco!
This tut is so helpful! Now I understand a little bit more about how colors play between each other in a composition. I'll try some exercises in regard what I've learnt today! :)
Thanks for sharing!
Blessings!!
Sa very good demonstration..it has given me more food for thought..greatly appreciate this post !!
This is the greatest christmas present for an artist. thank you so much
Merry Christmas
🎅🎅🎅🎅🎄🎄🎄🎄⛄⛄
simply AMAZING
Awesome way to present such a complex concept, very entertaining and well-explained.
This video crack my head open in ten minutes and push an information over load in to it .. now i think i can paint everything in more harmonious way than before because of the knowledge he just shared
Wow man, you are really good. I'm going to have to watch this again to wrap my mind around this. Top notch info. Thanks.
Mind is blown by how insightful this lesson is
The sky is blue, the grass is green. Wrong! When you look at cartoons like Pink Panther, the sky is often some weird hot color. But it works! No one ever complained. :)
Great lesson Marco. Can't wait next one....
and because of the "flath-earter", every day I am closer to believe that the earth is in cylindrical, falusoid shape. :P
Maaaan!!! The color theory used to be such a pain... And you are the first one who put it into relevant environment and NOW, FINALLY!!!! I understand the RELATIONSHIP! You can not imagine how do I feel right now =) enlightenment... Thank you, man! Subscribed! Worship! Love you, man!
Muahaha. Still laughing 😂 Very unique and entertaining style of teaching. Great work! 👍
I feel like I'm getting lectured by a kindergarten teacher. And I'm soooo enjoying it. Not only did you explain everything in a way that stood out to us, but we could relate to everything you were saying. THANK YOU!!!!
I loved the joke at the end.
Does color harmony also depend upon location on the canvas? By that, I mean if we were to use a saturated green, for example, must it move through yellow before there would be a conversation with red? (Or another way to think of it, if we had a red light in a green forest, would the light have a yellow halo around it?)
Must colors be in close proximity to talk? Or can they be on opposite sides of the canvas?
Sam Reeves I think that in the first part of the video we totally see that we can harmonise colours even if they're distant in the colour wheel, i think what we wanna do is play with saturation of both colours or just one to make it more fitting in the scene(I don't know if these is correct, it's what I got from the video)
That's kind of what I got too, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding. Thank you.
I watched the video again, and saw that during the Zbukvic painting, the colors do not have to be in close proximity. I guess my question, then, is do we have to create a stepping stone trail of color from one to the other?
This video is totally awesome. It untied a knot in my mind that I've had about choosing the colors for a painting.
But-what if you cannot determine whether a color is warmer or cooler relative to the other colors around it when painting from life? This is what I struggle with when painting portraits from life-probably due to my slight red/ green color blindness, so the closer those get to middle value it becomes impossible for me to distinguish. E.g. I don't see cool blue/ green in skin tones. I kind of see they're there AFTER someone points them out to me, but on my own? Nope, don't see 'em.
scott Hey Scott - While I’m not sure if I can totally help there, as I lack the experience you have with the slight colour blindness, what I *can* say (echoing Part 3 of this video) is that shapes and value and edge matter more. I’ve had students in the past who struggled with subtle temperature shifts due to colour blindness, and we found that simply focusing on those more important fundamentals almost freed them to use whatever colour they wanted. In fact, it’s almost always true that if you get those right, you can paint whatever-the-heck colour you want, and it will still work. I am saving that particular lesson for a future video, actually. There are some great illustrators who are mildly colour blind, and who are still very innovative with colour. Peter de Seve comes to mind. So while I can’t quite help you train this, I hope I can direct your focus elsewhere, where it really matters.
Excellent. Grouping the colours like that really helps to visualize the conversation. It was a super clear explanation and I want to emphasize that. This is the least ambiguous lesson on colour I've heard yet. Really enjoy your lessons.
fearless ax Thanks!
Hey Marco, very nice episode. I've actually been waiting for you to get to this topic. Here is a question for you:
But let me go back a bit first. I think I really started to understand what a color harmony is this year through Richard Schmids book Alla Prima 2. He breaks color harmony mostly down to the main light in a scene. If - for example - you have blue-ish light as your main light source, the scene will most likely go into a blue-ish color harmony with mostly supressed oranges and yellows. Blue light on orange makes the orange go grey.
Now you didn't really mention the effects of light on local color in your video. You seem to stay at a level of color itself, but not going into detail why you or your artists of choice picked those colors in the first place. So my question is - Do you really leave the light (color) out of your way of thinking when it comes to color harmony?
You talk about cool and warm sides in the beginning with one of your artist examples. Isn't that an integral part of light and then a working color harmony later?
Simon Kopp Hey Simon,
This is an excellent question.
You are correct in noting that this colour harmony lesson does not consider the effect of the light source. And I understand how this can seem a little … confounding, perhaps … given that light is what’s responsible for the colours we see and paint in the first place. Light is indeed a consideration you may want to make *before* deciding on colour harmony. In fact, when I was writing this lesson, I did initially plan and structure it that way. Light source temperature -> guiding your colour choices -> producing a natural colour harmony.
As you said, this is the process Richard Schmid talks about in Alla Prima. A cool, blueish light (eg. overcast day) will indeed gray down/cool down the oranges/reds/yellows in the scene, while also preserving - or sometimes even adding saturation to - the blues/purples, etc. The opposite would be true in warm light, usually. So by using that as a basis of knowledge in your work, you can actually arrive at a harmonious painting almost “automatically” (I believe that’s Schmid’s word for it, too). With a knowledge of light, you can pre-determine, or anticipate, some of the colours in both light and shadow that you can begin with.
“Begin with”. That’s just it. Light can allow you to begin a colour harmony, or even arrive at one kind of by default (and yes, you *can* finish a painting just with that alone. For example, if I am painting quickly, like in my sketchbook - see my painting sketchbook video - sometimes it’s totally fine to only observe the basic properties of the light ... and spend most of your time on composition/shapes/values/edges, since they are far more integral to a good picture.)
But in this video, I wanted to demonstrate how colour harmony can be a broader consideration, rather than something that is a slave to the light. Colour harmony can be its own art form (consider abstract painters, who ignore form and light completely. Or areas of Richard Schmid’s paintings that are completely abstract.) For instance, the carrying of that turquoise colour (in my painting) through from the sky->monster->bridge->grass, using it in various degrees of gray. That isn’t a lighting-based decision. It’s finding a grander statement for the colours. Colour for colour’s sake. Same with the Zbukvic and Weistling examples. If you look closely at the girl’s dress in the Weistling piece, there are notes of greyish/blue that sizzle against the more saturated reds. Why are those there? They probably don’t need to be. Weistling could’ve probably just mixed up a cool red and applied that to the whole dress and it would have looked like light. Part of his motivation for those subtle, cool colour notes was certainly that the light is cool, which leads to a cooling down of red (and often when you cool down red you’ll find yourself in the gray purples and even blues), but I think the main reason for all the colour notes in the dress is that they harmonize the two motifs in the painting - the girl’s dress, and the quilt she lays against. Look closely and you’ll find subtle greens and purples in the dress and quilt too. They all bind and harmonize the colours throughout the piece. IMO, this done for the sake of colour alone - the feel of the picture - rather than an adherence to what the light is doing. It’s a departure, or caricature of reality, done for emotional impact. Also consider the bright violet flowers in front of the girl. Those are like the saturated colours on the boats in the Zbukvic painting. They take the a common colour in the painting (red/violet) and take it to its maximum saturation. In that way, this painting carries the colour red through from very gray to fully saturated, giving the painting an overall ‘red’ motif. A red harmony. Again, this is a decision separate from the light; this scene in real life was most likely far less red.
Richard Schmid does this too. In his DVD “June” - the one where he paints his red barn against the backdrop of trees - he starts the painting by rubbing a light wash of warm green on the canvas, establishing what he calls a “green harmony”. Schmid here is planning ahead to ensure that one single colour (the green) shows up throughout the painting as a way of harmonizing or unifying (harmony and unity often mean the same thing) the colours. This is a different way of achieving harmony, I did not examine this method in this video! As Schmid paints the barn scene, the underpainting of green starts showing through the gaps between the brushstrokes, and becomes part of each mixture, to various degrees. Green becomes part of everything. Even his bright red barn has green in it. This is especially effective in meshing the saturated green trees with the saturated red barn. Because red and green are complimentary colours, and because both of those colours will show up quite saturated in the finished painting, there’s a risk of things looking too ‘colouring book’. So, having that green subtly ‘infiltrating’ the reds, Schmid achieves a simple yet effective way of harmonizing the reds and the greens, tying together his painting in a way that looking at the light alone would not have accomplished.
I remember Nathan Fowkes telling a similar story - about an oil painter who wanted a “yellow ochre” harmony. So he mixed some yellow ochre into each mixture to make sure that the colours all “bent” towards the yellow ochre. Other painters - like Anders Zorn - famously limit their palette (Zorn used only 4 colours), to purposely disallow themselves from being able to mix every colour. That way, every colour you mix, by necessity, all share properties of each other (I highly recommend looking into the Zorn palette for further study.) He could not paint everything the light was doing. He had to interpret it. Limited palettes are great for that kind of learning. A modern painter who does this is Scott Christensen, also a great teacher very worthy of study!
In conclusion, remember that in painting we have the ability to take our understanding of nature’s properties (eg. how light works), and push it, heighten it, caricature it. The reason to do this is to capture an emotion. Nature is the raw material, the basis on top of which for us to overlay feeling. That, in a nutshell, is what my lesson intends to get at.
Thanks again for the great question!
Very interesting! Thank you for the long and clear answer! I had more thoughts on the topic and I thought in similar directions. Thank you for the clarification!
This video doesn't feel like it's only ten minutes long, I came out of it feeling like I'd just completed a three-week course on colour theory ... this was super helpful, thank you!
Even when Adobe agrees..... :O
Hahahahah
Great video! Wish I had seen it earlier.
Wow...I enjoyed this video MUCH more than I thought I would when I clicked on it. I am definitely gonna watch them from the beginning now.
Han Solo is not a Force user, thus everything in this tutorial is wront!!!111
the Force use Han Solo. As it uses the Jedi. The Jedi can handle it and feel it. And for the purpose of the example, it works great.
Fight this flawless logic I can not.
Hahaha
excellent episode
Colour theory comes natural to me :/
You have a gift, not only for art but also to convey knowledge about this, I believe that color and its harmonies are on our radar and they are so because we perceive them naturally, that is, we know when something does not match "this color with this other ", in the past I was afraid to face color, it intimidates me, but it is in us because it is like going to swim or ride a bike, something difficult the first time, but once you understand how to start it becomes natural, inato, and almost you do not even realize how you do it, but you do; Marco great video like all that I've seen yours, is frankly a pleasure that becomes practically an epiphany JAJAJA, thank you and please do not ever leave us. A greeting!
Thanks a lot!
I've watched many, many color theory videos, this might be the most usable one I've ever seen
For the first time in my life i understand color thanks to you! Literally I have traversed all kinds of sources that told me all about the famous color wheel but never one that actually helped my painting. Your videos may have contributed more to that than anything else I have tried kudos from all my heart!
I've never expected much from a video about color because my brain never got anything, but this video is something else. Thank you!
I remember falling in love with your stuff on DA literally 10+ years ago and this just came across my suggested on my YT feed
Today is a good day.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS! Most videos and classes I've seen about color usually only talk about complimentary colors, etc. But knowing that reds and greens can go together only gets you so far. They never go deeper than that, and because of it I've struggled so much in figuring out how to achieve color harmony. One day I was doing a digital painting and realized that putting a straight grey in a warm, orange painting made it look like a warm blue without even without having a blue hue. It stuck with me, and when I watched this video and saw that the key to harmony was conversating within grey tones, my mind was blown. "That's it! Thats the grey thing I noticed! Its true!" Anyhow, thank you so so much for this. I can vouche for other students when I say that I learned more from this than I did in a semester of Color Theory.
Great to hear, and glad the grays thing rang true! It's definitely "the secret" of color, IMO :)
WOW! That painting demo - WOW! EXCELLENT video!
What a beautiful metaphor for desaturating colors
I think you are the best art teacher i have seen, at least for sharing the most valuable knowledge in the easiest manner and the shortest amount of time.
As someone who is color blind which gives me even more trouble with color (especially when working digitally where there is no concrete formula for creating the colors I want by mixing pigments), I find this video really helpful for me! Especially with the live demo showing with the updating color wheel! It's always been a struggle for me to work with colors digitally without having to grab a color palette from a photo or something else. I think that with the information from this video I'll be able to feel a little more comfortable with it though! Thank you so much for this lesson, the way you edited this video was also fantastic as it made it much easier to digest! Great work!
This made me cry, thank you Marco
Wow, I'm flattered - thank you, and all the best with your work :)
I’m only 3 minutes in and already learned more than I ever knew about color! The way you teach is so visual fun and clear. THANK YOU!
i didnt really get colour theory until this video beyond hue shift. This really sews things together for me.
I love that this is not only highly informative but also very pleasing to watch and super entertaining! I can't believe I only found this now
I love the way this guy describe anything in this video
Thank you so much for helping home taught art pursuers like myself. Wonderfully taught and broken down in a way a child like mind like my own can understand
Sat through many color theory classes over 3 years in art school. You did it in 10 minutes and made it fun, interesting and explained it so well!!
All of your videos make comeback from really bad mood. I really have a problem with my color. I love my sketch but when it come to painting I started to hate my work. Your video really help me to finish my project and other works. Thank you so much :)
These videos are so great I almost can't believe they are free omg
I think of the color wheel being more like a loop. The bottom loops up to the top. like a donut or mobius strip.
Excellent energetic teaching of a subtle point. Very powerful work. Thanks
They never really explained that subjective grey association thing well enough in art school... it left me completely clueless how to understand or control that until now! Phenomenal!!!
holy crap hands down the most useful video ive ever found on this topic SO GLAD i watched it!
One of the most helpful videos I have ever watched, and I’ve watched a lot!
I just love how you broke it down so simply and how you used metaphors to explain the color harmony. It becomes easier to absorb. Thank you for this video
I agree, the color wheel is flat! Thanks for sharing your knowledge to us, Marco.
This is the most helpful video I have watched to explain colors/color harmony, and all in 10 mins... amazing!!
the Millennium Color Picker was very helpful in showing where the colors were in relationship to each other, thanks for taking the time to edit that!
this video was like a super-condensed version of what I learned after hours and hours of tutorial-browsing and hands-on experience playing around with color throughout the years. I'll definitely throw this video at friends who haven't started thinking about color harmony yet, since it'll give them new perspective and help level up their art. it's a very solid video, thank you!
wow. truly the best, most inventive single piece of art instruction I've ever seen.