Color Schemes

A color scheme is the combination of colors used within a single artwork.

Learning specific color schemes helps you decide what color combination will work best for your artwork.

Color schemes are based on where the colors are located on the color wheel.



For example, a complementary color scheme is a color scheme that uses any two opposite colors - like red and green. You can use the color wheel to find other opposite pairs! Can you find a couple more complementary color pairs?


There are a lot of different color schemes, but we'll look at six of them:


MONOCHROMATIC

  • "mono" = one, "chroma" = color, so "monochrome" = one color
  • A monochrome picture uses different values of one single color.
  • Example: light blue, medium blue, and dark blue.

ANALOGOUS
  • Similar or "neighbor" colors
  • Example: red, red-orange, and orange

COMPLEMENTARY
  • Complementary = opposites
  • A complementary color scheme uses two colors that are opposites on the color wheel.
  • Example: purple and yellow

TRIAD
  • Triad ... think "triangle"
  • If you drew a triangle on top of the color wheel, these are the colors you would get.
  • Example: primary colors (red, blue, and yellow)
  • Example: secondary colors (purple, green, and orange)

SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY
  • This is a complementary color scheme with a couple extra "neighbors"
  • For example, a regular complementary color pair would be just red and green. For Split Complementary, you can include a couple of their neighbors, like red-orange or blue-green.
  • Example: orange, red-orange, blue, and blue-green.

TETRADIC
  • "Tetra" = four
  • This is also called "double complementary" because you use TWO pairs of complementary colors!
  • Example: red, green, blue, and orange

Here are some examples:

MONCHROMATIC

ANALOGOUS


COMPLEMENTARY

TRIAD


SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY

TETRADIC



Review Book Success Criteria:
  • Choose a color scheme: monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic, or tetradic (also called double complementary)
  • Draw and color a picture of your choice using that color scheme




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Project List

Image
1. Tughra   2. Geometric Shape Animal 3. Color Schemes 4. Unusual Texture Fruits/Vegetables 5. Shattered Value Scale 6. Wayne Thiebaud Oil Pastel Desserts 7. Parts of a Landscape 8. One-Point Perspective Cityscape 9. Balance Collage 10. Contrast Drawing 11. Coat of Arms 12. Surrealism 13. One-Page Comic 14. Variety Drawing 15. Art Analysis & Bio Poster 16. Rhythm & Movement Landscape 17. Animal Eyes (Pen Shading) 18. Colored Pencil Fruits & Vegetables 19. Oil Pastel Wooden Figures 20. Egyptian Portraits 21. Facial Features 22. Portrait Drawing 23. March Mammal Madness Cube 25. Self-Portrait Artist Study 26. Expressive Self-Portrait
Read more

Variety Drawing

Image
 Variety is a Principle of Design. Variety means using multiple Elements within the same drawing - multiple colors, multiple textures, multiple types of lines, etc. Start off by completing the practice worksheet to explore a variety of ways to draw a single object. Choose something simple you can draw many times, like an apple or a basketball. Next, start on your main drawing. This will only have 12 boxes, so that means you can leave out 3 techniques from the practice worksheet that you didn't like as much. Step 1: Divide your paper into 12 boxes using a ruler. If you are using 9” x 12” paper, that would be a line every 3 inches. Step 2: In pencil, sketch out an object of your choice and a background that goes all the way to the edge of your paper on all four sides, like this: Step 3: Add variety! Color/shade in each box with a different technique from the practice worksheet. Your final artwork should have all 12 sections filled in INCLUDING the background. Your backgroun...
Read more