Week 3.5 ~ More Colour Theory - o.m.g ...

A little follow-up to last week's post about colour theory. I've taken a little mandala I drew at the HW/ ABC Fitness Open House on September 7th, and painted it in a variety of colour schemes so you can see the difference. First, here's the mandala as I drew it in black and white:

Now I'll work my way through a variety of colour schemes. As I said last week, the further apart colours are on the colour wheel, the MORE contrast they'll have. Likewise, the closer they are together, they LESS contrast they'll have. Here we go:

 

I wanted to say a word about the way I coloured these. My preferred art materials for pretty much any adventure in colour is Caran d'Ache Neocolor II Water Soluble Crayons. Yes, I know they're relatively expensive, but so worth it. The pigment quality and versatility is what makes them my favourite, especially for "colouring". You can colour straight onto the page like a regular wax crayon (which is what they look like) but with a wet brush, or better yet, a water brush, you can "watercolour" paint your coloured areas quite easily, and the colours blend fabulously . Or you can "scribble" two colours onto a plastic paint palette and mix there as well. The other method I use when I want pure pigment is to hold the crayon in my hand and pick up the colour directly from the crayon using the waterbrush, sort of a "vertical" paint well.

The only downside to these crayons is that they're a wax/oil mix, so you can't write over them, so that limits their application in some art journaling situations.