Warm Colors

Warm Colors

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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The colors we know can be divided into two groups - warm colors and co0l colors. We can place a dividing line on the color wheel between yellow and violet to identify these two groups.

We generally associate red, orange and yellow hues with the sun or fire, and call them warm colors. We also associate blue, blue-green, green, and violet hues with water, sky and atmospheric conditions, and call them cool colors. However, the perceived qualities of warmth or coolness in a color can be influenced by other colors near it.

In this drawing, I used twelve separate pencil colors, six highly-saturated colors from the color wheel, two browns and four paler tones of yellows and pinks.
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The Color Wheel

The Color Wheel
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Colored pencil on paper 7.5" x 7.5"
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Studying color relationships has been part of an artist's education for centuries, and the color wheel is a visual aid for exploring and organizing the use of colors.

A color wheel takes the spectrum of hues, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, in the order that they appear in when white light is split by a prism, and wraps them around into a circle. Seeing color relationships becomes easy using this chart.

Complementary color pairs (red/green, blue/orange, yellow/violet) appear on opposite sides of the color wheel. The intervals of triads of colors, such as primary colors (red, yellow, blue) or secondary colors (orange, green, violet), create triangles within the color wheel. And using a color wheel, an artist can easily identify analogous colors which sit next to each other, or warm and cool colors which fall on one side or the other of the color wheel.

Using color relationships in a painting or a drawing lets an artist select colors that will best communicate the intended meaning of the artwork, and the color wheel is an efficient visual aid for identifying those relationships.
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Complementary Blends 3 - Yellow and Violet

Complementary Blends 3 - Yellow and Violet

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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When colors are chosen and organized in particular ways, they can give a three-dimensional sense to a picture. Colors that are complementary to their background tend to "pop out" or to occupy a space in front of the background.

Yellow is a high-value warm color and at its most saturated, it appears to "advance" or be closer to the viewer. Violet is a cool color and at low intensity it tends to "recede." In this drawing, the triangle of bright yellow appears to be floating in front of its background. The background of the various greyish-browns resulting from mixing the single spectrum-yellow and spectrum-violet seems to fall back behind that central rectangle.

Knowing how colors behave in combination with other colors is vital when an artist wants to emphasize an area of an image, or wants to develop a composition that leads the viewer's eye through the picture.

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Complementary Blends 2 - Blue and Orange

Complementary Blends 2 - Blue and Orange

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Hue, saturation and value are different ways of looking at colors. With complementary pairs, there are only two hues, just two colors, in this case orange and blue.
Saturation, or color intensity, is a way of noticing how brilliant or dull a color looks. As complementary color blends approach a neutral tone, they become lower and lower in intensity.
Value is a way of describing how light or dark a color appears.

The two hues in this drawing are blue and orange. I used a single blue pencil as close in pigment to a spectrum blue as I could find in my 120-pencil universe, and a single orange pencil, also as close in pigment to a spectrum orange as possible.

The colors in this complementary pair are at their highest saturation. They are as intense as the pigment will allow. When I blended the orange and blue to make different tones of browns, the saturation got less and less as the color got closer to a pure brown and away from the bluish tones or the orangey tones.

The value, or the lightness, of the orange is higher than the value of the blue. In other words, the blue is darker than the orange. As the blue and orange are blended, the value of the resulting brown also blended. The orangey-browns are higher in value than the bluish-browns.

Knowing how to use the intensity of the color to create contrast or emphasis in a drawing, and knowing how to manipulate the lightness and darkness for atmospheric or emotional effect are useful tools for artists.
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Complementary Blends 1 - Red and Green

Complementary Blends 1 - Red and Green
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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Many artists are interested in exploring the effects of colors, for example Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella. They have followed the path of scientists like Sir Issac Newton and J. W. Goethe in making charts and designs that demonstrate how colors interact with each other. In this series of drawings, I wanted to look at how many tones of browns I could make with just the two colors of a given complementary pair.

I drew a design that would give enough spaces to show a range of tones, and I repeated the design three times, for the red/green, blue/orange and yellow/violet pairs. The most highly saturated colors of each pair are in the center of the chart. I got them, along with the neutrals caused by blending those most-intense colors, by applying the hardest possible pressure on the pencil. Around the outside I colored a base layer of one of the pair of colors on each side of the design, with varying pressure on the pencil, from heaviest application at the bottom to lightest at the top. Then, I put a second layer of the complementary color on top of the first, with light pressure, to yield a range of tones of browns.

In this drawing, after coloring the center rectangle, I colored a base layer of red on the left, using less and less pressure in the spaces going to the top, and on the right, a similar base layer of green. Then, on the left, I colored an even layer of green over all the spaces, and on the right, an even layer of red.

The design shows a range of seven reddish-browns and seven greenish -browns, in contrast to the fully saturated red/green complementary pair from which they were made. It also demonstrates how the under-color influences the tone of brown that results from the blend, and how the most neutral of the resulting browns is achieved by a relatively even application of both colors in the pair.

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Complementary Pairs 3 - Yellow and Violet

Complementary Pairs 3 - Yellow and Violet

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Yellow and violet are the final pair of complementary colors. Like the other two complementary pairs (blue/orange and red/green), these two colors show high contrast against each other, especially since yellow is a high value or high key color and violet is a low value or low key color. Like the other complementary pairs, yellow and violet also blend together to yield a neutral tone.


To set up this drawing I sliced a lemon into quarters, revealing the pale yellow fruit inside the bright peel. Then I arranged grapes on the same plate, showing dark rich violets and paler tones of pinky maroon. I used three different colors of yellow pencils and three different colors of violets pencils to show the colors of the fruit and the neutral tones of the highlights and shading in the still life.

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Complementary Pairs 2 - Red and Green

Complementary Pairs 2 - Red and Green
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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Red and green are anoather pair of complementary colors. Like the other two complementary pairs (blue/orange and yellow/violet), these two colors show high contrast against each other, yet when blended together they yield a neutral tone.


For this drawing I found a supermarket package of watermelon, showing a lovely rich saturated red fruit and a beautiful pattern of greens in the peel. Complementary colors in one item! I used four different colors of red pencils to get the range of reds and four different colors of green pencils to show the pattern of the peel and the reflections in the packaging tray.


By blending reds and greens, I was able to get the dark brownish tones in the seeds and the stem of the watermelon, and to suggest the shadows under the fruit.
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Complementary Pairs 1 - Blue and Orange

Complementary Pairs 1 - Blue and Orange
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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Blue and orange are complementary colors. Like the other two primary and secondary complementary pairs (red/green and yellow/violet), these two colors show high contrast against each other, yet when blended together they yield a neutral tone.

For this drawing I chose a blue mug, its glaze is almost a pure ultramarine blue, and a plate of orange sections, with the sun shining through the fruit to give luminous orange tones. I used only four different colors of orange pencils and two different colors of blue pencils on white paper.

The dark brownish tones in the reflections in the mug came from darker blue and orange colors, and the shadows on the fruit and under the plate are a lighter tone from the lighter blue and orange colors they were blended with.

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Color Variations 7 - Complementaries

Color Variations 7 - Complementaries

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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A complementary is something that fills up, completes, or makes something else perfect. A "pair of contrasting colors that produce a neutral color when combined in suitable proportion" is Webster's dictionary definition of complementary colors. Red and green are complementary pairs, so are blue and orange, and so are yellow and violet.

An artist who knows that 1) these pairs of colors show a strong contrast when placed next to each other, and also that 2) they mix together to give neutral brownish-grays has two marvellous options for working with color.

I pressed hard on the colored pencil to give as saturated a color as possible, and in the drawing, the ribbon of red, orange and yellow shimmers with a high contrast against the corresponding green, blue and violet sections of the background.
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Color Variations 6 - Secondary Colors

Color Variations 6 - Secondary Colors

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Orange and violet and green are known as the secondary colors, because each one is mixed from two primary colors. Orange is a mixture of the primary colors yellow and red. Depending on the proportions of pigments used, the orange will have a yellow tone or a reddish tone. Green is a mixture of yellow and blue, and violet is a mixture of red and blue.

In this drawing, I used premixed secondary colors, and I blended the edges of the primary and secondary colors together as I applied them to the paper.
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Color Variations 5 - Primary Colors

Color Variations 5 -Primary Colors

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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The primary colors are called that because they are the three colors which cannot be mixed from any other colors, and from which any other colors can be mixed.

The appearance of the red and yellow and blue colors will vary in different pigments, paints or other art supplies, but if you have any red, any yellow and any blue, you will be able to mix other colors from them.

In this drawing, the red I chose appears to be more of a red-orange than a true spectrum red, and the blue is not as saturated as a true spectrum blue, but the yellow is very close to a true spectrum yellow. Remember, too, that computer monitors are not all calibrated equally and that color-matching is a pretty imprecise science. What you see is what you get!

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Color Variations 4 - Value

Color Variations 4 - Value

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. As an artist adds white to a color, it becomes paler or higher in value, and as an artist adds black to a color it becomes darker or lower in value.
Different hues have different values, for example yellows have a relatively high value and reds generally have a low value. Artists can use this knowledge to put yellows next to blacks for greatest contrast, or next to whites for less contrast. In the same way, dark blues or reds will not stand out well against black, although they do show up very well when placed next to white.

In this drawing, I placed yellow lines against a white background. Because the yellow and the white are almost the same value, the lines appear to be fading away, giving a sensation in the picture of blinding white light exploding into a dark space.
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Color Variations 3 - Saturation

Color Variations 3 - Saturation
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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Saturation, or the intensity of a color, is another way of describing a color. Saturation refers to the purity of the color, or how much the color has been dulled by the addition of any other colors. A color with high saturation is as brilliant and clear as possible. A color that is de-saturated is reduced to a tone in a gray-scale.

Adjusting the saturation of a color allows an artist to emphasize or de-emphasize certain parts of an image, to make a brilliant red flower stand out against a reddish-brown or a dull pink background. An artist can add depth to a landscape painting by reducing the saturation of colors representing areas in the distance, while reserving the most highly saturated colors for areas in the foreground.

In this drawing, I made all the colors as saturated as I could, by pressing hard with the colored pencils to cover the paper completely, so that the white of the paper would not make the pencil colors appear pale and dull.
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Color Variations 2 - Hue

Color Variations 2 - Hue

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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One way to describe a particular is to refer to its hue. The hue of a color is simply the name of the color.

The color names on the pencils from the package I have been using include red, red-orange, orange, yellow, sky blue, blue and violet. In an art supplies store, you can find other color names that refer to the chemical composition of the pigment or dye (phthalo blue), or the source of the colorant (Chinese white), or the name of a person associated with that color (Payne's Gray).

Being able to identify a color with a commonly understood name is a powerful tool for artists and for the people who appreciate their work.

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Color Variations 1

Color Variations 1

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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Color! A lot of artists base the use of color in their artworks on trial and error, or on suggestions from teachers or from other artists, or even on lucky guesses.
Although there are many scientific methods for studying color, most artists work in an intuitive way with color, using their instincts to make adjustments to color in their artworks.

Despite a Western art tradition of color being used in an emotional way, we still need an objective method of referring to the characteristics of color, we need to have a common and shared terminology.
So, we can talk about the hue of a color, or its saturation, or its value. We can discuss complementary colors, analogous colors, primary and secondary colors, tones and tints and shades.

For the next month on this blog, my focus is color, and my materials are colored pencils and paper. Check back and explore color from a different viewpoint, every day!
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