Colour Theory and how to shade forms

Ms Lim Grade 10 Visual Art

How to shade a sphere

Colour Wheel

Complementary

Split Complementary

Tint, shades and tones

Monochromatic

Q: What does colour do in artwork?

• Blue is traditionally used as a background colour. Cool colours receed.

• Warm colours come forward and are traditionally used in the foreground of a painting. Red, orange, yellow, brown.

Thomas Gainsborough painted “Blue Boy” (1748-1750) to flip traditional uses of brown and blue.

• The five major composing roles of color are as follows:

• 1.To harmonize (or the opposite, to contrast)• 2.To unify a scene• 3.To set forth a visual path• 4.To produce rhythm• 5.To create emphasis

• The overall bluish tone unifies, while purplish-red accents bring harmony throughout. Repeating greens set the visual path and give rise to rhythm. Emphasis results from the highlights in the water contrasting with the surrounding blue and dark gray rocks.

• Repeated golds and warm browns harmonize the piece. That warmth receives emphasis from the contrasting cooler blues in the sky. A dominance of warms unify as the viewer’s eye is led throughout the painting with the repetition of orange-yellows.

Picasso Blue Period

Mark Rothko

Name the colour scheme

• Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Piet Mondrian

• Leonardo, Mona Lisa

Boticelli, The Birth of Venus

Rembrant Van Rijn, The Night Watch

David Milne

• 1882-1953• Canadian painter and

printmaker

David Brown MilneCobalt Trees, c. 1913

watercolour over graphite on wove paper

Vincent Van Gogh

Use complimentary colours to make his paintings dynamic.• Post-Impressionist• Rhythmic, intense colour, vibrating

line, surface tension, emotional

Starry Night, 1889

Close up