 Welcome visitors and subscribers! Today in Monet Café we're going to be talking about unlocking the mysteries of color and today's segment on this is Analogous Color. I hope to start a little series on more about color and it's true that color is makes our world brighter and more beautiful but as artists we need to learn the rules and you can even paint the sky green when you do. So today let's talk about color and we're gonna use our handy-dandy pocket color wheel. Now this color wheel is pretty much a standard across multiple mediums for artists to use on color and color rules and using color and making your paintings harmonious with color but it's actually not the true color wheel and that's something I'll go into next lesson here's a little teaser so but anyway today we're using the pocket color wheel and on that color wheel we'd see many different descriptions of how to use color and arrange your palette and one of these is analogous color and in this tutorial I give four different examples of doing a painting with different analogous color palettes so all it is really is using your color wheel picking out colors that are next to each other in some of the examples I use two to three colors and in one I think I do almost half of the color wheel as in this case here now for this first example I'm really just using my sketch as one of the examples of analogous color I'm using new pastels which are harder pastels I got a set of 96 at a really good sale price a while ago and I love them because they're great for sketching and they work well on smooth surfaces so if you don't have any sanded paper around or whatever for what we usually use for pastel paintings new pastels actually I use them in a sketchbook just regular paper so they work well I put behind my artwork or my painting a piece of newsprint so that I can make color notes and make little sketches like I'm doing here sometimes I work out composition elements and and trying to just get things right before I commit to my sanded paper or whatever surface I'm using so you can see here I'm using various colors of new pastels but they're all in that analogous color range that I showed right before starting this now I did veer over a little bit more into some of the yellowy greens all the way over to the teal blues and purples so this is a very wide analogous color range and I am again a little limited because this is just newsprint but I got a little carried away started having fun with color which I just can't help myself so anyway enjoy this little example and then we'll get to the next analogous color palette or choices that I've made and you'll see that you can change the whole mood of your painting by what color choices you make now I got a little more into that sketch than I normally do got carried away but now moving on to the next analogous color I'm basically just flipping the color wheel over now I'm using the warmer side focusing more on the pinks oranges yellows and here's my pastel choices I pretty much have them in color families vertically according to value it makes it easy for me when I'm choosing pastels now I'm using a piece of you art paper that's just the letter you a RT it's a sanded paper and if you have never tried sanded papers as a pastel artist that was when my world changed when it came to pastel painting I had no idea and I think that's my heart and passion for making these videos to give you guys some information that that will make it easier for you as a pastel artist now I'm using the basic rules I talk about in a lot of my videos going values are typically darker in the foreground they get lighter paler and duller in the background trees of course anything vertical in a painting or in a landscape is typically darker things that are flat are typically lighter like the grass because the sunshine of them now that was just a piece of pipe foam insulation which you can get at any hardware store I've been using this little piece for a long time it's basically just a blending tool sometimes I like to soften the painting and it gives a different mood and kind of gets rid of that chunkiness you kind of just blend it all in and I notice I'm wiping it off after like using it on a dark area because I don't want to smear that dark area like on these grasses where I'm using it right now so you know I wanted to mention too that this particular color palette of analogous warm colors works great as an under painting if you've seen some of my under painting videos it's really good to do a warm under painting by the way I have a whole playlist section on our YouTube channel here if you go to the playlist you can find videos by certain categories easier in the playlist tab so you can go and find videos on color videos on under paintings learn what is an under painting and why do you do it but again this is a nice warm under painting palette to use for landscape paintings typically so I'm just rolling right along here basically just having fun these are more studies than they are paintings and more of a learning tool sorry for the light change here though but again playing around getting creative with color and I encourage playing you get too serious too quickly and you're not going to grow as an artist as much as if you just goof off some and make some mistakes and work on some cheap surfaces and and just have fun you know sometimes we we set goals to like be an artist and sell paintings and sometimes just the process is more rewarding than any profit that we could make for selling a painting so that's my two cents worth but anyway okay so this was pretty much it for the warm color analogous color palette and after this painting I'm gonna move on to a cooler color palette okay so we got to the right there the first one was more of your traditional landscape colors with the greens over to the yellows and some blues and then the warmer now we're going cooler with blues and purples after this one all right so that was fun now let's move on to using more of the blues violets and blue violets for a cooler well it's it's cool moving over to some of the warmer purples and it's gonna again this is gonna be a whole nother different mood these are my pastels I don't add a whole lot more to them than these may be a few more but again I have them kind of according to value and color family and there's a couple of neutrals that I use in the kind of purple and pink color family so and this is gonna be pretty much the same idea I don't even include the reference one here because you kind of get the idea but also too I like to mention that I recently started adding the reference photos that I use as long as they're my own reference photos and not one that I got from like paint my photo website or whatever I'm trying to use all of my own reference photos now but when they're my own reference photos I'm going to include them for your use however you want to use them on my website Susan Jenkins fine art calm the very first tab on Susan Jenkins fine art calm is a tab that says as seen in Monet cafe and when you click on that it's going to show you a little thumbnail of the video and a little icon where you can click to download the reference photo that I use so if you want to try to paint along with my painting and you can't see it too good in the video when I have it like it on the side of my painting there that way you can use it I've had people ask if they can use it for do a painting and then sell their painting and yes if I put it there you can use it for whatever you want to use it for so anyway you can see here I'm using a combination of the cooler blues some of the warmer purples just for a neat cool moody feeling this would be I would say more of a peaceful feeling something about cooler colors make us feel more peaceful and warm red colors are more dramatic and I went in a restaurant the where was I was with my husband and we went somewhere where everything was red and it really just kind of made you feel a little anxious and wanted to get out of there so I actually heard a long time ago that a lot of fast food restaurants like here in the States Burger King McDonald's all that they don't do it anymore but they used to always have warm colors for the decor like reds and oranges and and the the idea or what I had heard anyway it makes sense was to get people in and out real quick you don't want to hang out where everything's all bold red but anyway red has its place I love reds too so alright let's finish this little one up and then we're gonna move on to a green and yellow color palette alright for painting number four I got a little bored with that a reference image so I'm using another one it's the same view out my front door but a little different composition I have more sky in this one and less grass so again these photos both of the reference photos I think I can share both on the same little thumbnail on my website Susan Jenkins fine art comm as seen on Monet cafe section you can get the reference photo now here's my greens there's the color wheel I'm using mostly just these three adjacent green and yellow green colors moving over a little into cooler greens on the right there and you can see again I have them kind of by color family and value I've got the warmer greens in the middle and the cooler ones to the right they're kind of in in in line with the color wheel okay so it makes it really easy to work when you have them already picked out and you have them kind of laid out like this alright not only if I use different color palettes of analogous color I'm using different surfaces as well all my hands are dirty this one pardon my hands and this if it doesn't match my voice I decided to do a voiceover this is art spectrum color fix primer soft umber color and I love making my own surfaces with this I used a foam brush to apply it that makes it really smooth but you can use a sometimes I use a bristly brush that gives more texture to it but I applied this simply to a piece of like mixed media paper you know kind of like a card stock type of paper but this is a great product and it's a great surface to work on alright now so I did a little sketch again because this is a different composition and I'm using my lighter values for the sky and kind of having fun with some different warmer and cooler values in the sky I'm kind of making the cooler values more like the clouds and the lighter values more like the sky this that was I think just a new pastel that I use for the green there that I brushed in a little bit and again you kind of get the idea now you've seen four of the this is the fourth one so you get the idea of the composition and kind of my method of operation but notice I use that cooler green for those background trees and it's a lighter value because it's in the background and you know I'm just gonna paint along a little bit on this one and like I said on in our Facebook group and a couple other place places I shared this yes the sky can be green I've actually seen in real life where sky had a little bit of a green tent to it which was really neat the skies are amazing in Florida and many other places in the world I love how in our Monet cafe art group on Facebook that wow what a blessing we get to see people and paintings from everywhere all over our beautiful earth so if you haven't joined that group do so it's fun you learn a lot lots of nice people nobody ever has to feel intimidated if you're brand new so come on and join the fun come on over to Monet cafe art group on Facebook all right we're gonna finish this little painting up and then see all of them together and I apologize if I've sounded a little punchier different in this video this is literally my fourth time trying to upload this video I'm working on a pretty antiquated MacBook Pro I bought it used and you know you know how life goes sometimes you just can't afford those big purchases and that's a lot not only do I have to buy the the computer I have to buy all of the software like Photoshop and the movie editing software so so just say a prayer for me I just applied for an artist grant in my county that if I get the grant it'll help me some and and I'll be able to continue these videos but anyway this was fun here we go let's look at the final four paintings I'm about to finish this little thing up and I am so grateful for each and every one of you and this really does feel like a family we have here so here we go here's the four final analogous color well actually the three including the Mr. Color wheel there my other sketch one was on the board but that was the Sennelier Lecart board this is the you art paper that this one was done on and the final one is the one that was done using the color fix primer art spectrum color fix primer so they all have their different benefits to them I hope you learned a lot this was a pretty all-inclusive video stay tuned for the one that's coming up with more unlocking the mysteries of color thanks so much guys happy painting