In all my study of color theory and color wheels, this was the most significant discovery for me. I only discovered the information in this unit after about eight years of searching for that beautiful color harmony that I saw in the work of a very few artists. Once I discovered these concepts I became much more conscious about why certain of my paintings had a beautiful color harmony, but other paintings just did not. Armed with this knowledge, I was able to repeat my color successes more often.

As an aside, I have never found anyone who could explain these concepts to me - even some of the great artists from whom I learned. For this reason, a lot of the information here is based on my personal experience. I did however discover some interesting information written by Birren many decades ago, but it was very hard to decipher. It was only after years of struggle with color harmony that I put some of Birren's knowledge together with my own experience to come up with some of the ideas in this course unit.

This is advanced color theory material, but essential for anyone who really wants to achieve beautiful color in their paintings. I am sure there is more to learn, but in this unit you will find all the secrets I have discovered to date. When I learn more I will be sure to share them with you.

Color wheels tell only half the story of color harmonies, because of their limitations in being able to describe the other critically important characteristics of color. Saturation and value in addition to hue, contribute to color harmony. You need to understand how to differentiate between these attributes of color to create beautiful color harmonies. One technique that is very powerful is tonal influence, where you introduce one hue into all the other colors you use in the painting. There are four main ways of doing this: single color - physical mixing, single color - optical mixing, color of light and shadow, and single bias. I share all of these techniques with you in this course unit.

Here is one example. In this painting of Segovia, I used the third option. The subject is in cool light, so I added a touch of blue to all parts of the painting in the light and a color of the opposite temperature to all parts in the shadow.

In this course unit

In this course you will learn:

• how to use Birren’s color triangle to understand how saturation and value are linked to color harmony
• the Ostwald and Munsell tone scales. Two methods for creating color charts that scale from pure hues to gray
• how to create a constant value scale – possibly the most beautiful scale of all
• three full spectrum palettes that you can use to create these color harmonies

Total number of assignments: 9

Total number of pages: 24