We’ve spent the month talking about color theory and how it affects your art. We have an extra (fifth) Saturday in this month, so I thought I’d share a color theory drawing exercise…. just for fun.
Well, and for learning, too.
So are you ready to get started with your color theory drawing exercise?
What You Need to Complete this Color Theory Drawing Exercise
An adult coloring page (or book if you have one). If you need a page, search the internet for free adult coloring pages, and you’ll have thousands of choices. Don’t want to spend all day searching? The site I found and from which I downloaded a couple of pages is www.easypeasyandfun.com. It’s a fairly easy site to navigate and features several collections based on subject and difficulty.
Pixabay is also a great place to get printable and free coloring pages, though their selection is much more limited.
Your favorite colored pencils. Any brand will do, though the better the quality, the more likely you’ll get good results.
That’s it!
How It Works
Choose the adult coloring page you want to use. It can be as simple or complex as you like, but should ideally be on the simple side, with enough shapes for blending colors, but not so many that it takes days to fill in.
Choose the colors you want to use. My suggestion is to start with the primaries—red, yellow, and blue. But you can also do analogous colors, warm colors, or cool colors. To get the most from the exercise, use no more than a dozen colors. Don’t worry! You can do the exercise as many times as you like and with as many color combinations as you can think of.
Color your page and see what happens.
For Best Results
- Use only one color for some shapes
- Layer two colors over some shapes
- Layer three or more colors over some shapes
- Fill in some areas with layers applied with light pressure and other areas with a single layer applied heavily
This isn’t “serious art”, so don’t worry how things turn out. You’ll learn faster by experimenting than by playing it safe, so be bold. Try things with this exercise that you’d never do while creating a piece of fine art.
Need a Little Inspiration?
Here’s my finished color theory drawing exercise. The page is from www.easypeasyandfun.com and is one of the leaf coloring pages.
I included complementary color combinations, a couple of different analogous color combinations, cool colors, warm colors, and a few complementary color pairings.
Some of the leaves were shaded with one or two burnished layers, and others with multiple layers applied with lighter pressure.
I even included some leaves that show varying value ranges.
So start there, and see what else you can come up with.
Have I Whetted Your Appetite for Color Theory?
If so, read Sarah Renae Clark’s post. She goes into more detail on how color theory works, and how you can choose colors that work well together.
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