The Art of Color Mixing with Summer Lydick

The Art of Mixing Color is an introduction to the fundamentals of color mixing, inspired by the color principles and perceptual approach.
About this Event

How do artists look at a color and know how to mix it?

Why does your green turn muddy? How do you make a color softer without simply making it lighter? What's the difference between a tint, tone, and shade? And how can you mix dozens of beautiful colors from just a handful of paints?

The Art of Mixing Color is a hands-on introduction to the fundamentals of color mixing, inspired by the color principles and perceptual approach.

Rather than memorizing dozens of paint formulas, you'll learn to see color more accurately and understand how hue, value, intensity, temperature, and complementary colors work together.

We'll mix. A LOT.

You'll create secondary and tertiary colors from primary colors, lighten and darken hues, neutralize brilliant colors, create rich chromatic grays and browns, and discover just how enormous a color world can emerge from a very limited palette.

Along the way, you'll paint your own color experiments and assemble them into a custom color fan deck you can keep and use as a reference for future painting, decorating, crafting, and creative projects.

What We'll Learn

The Language of ColorWe'll learn the essential vocabulary that makes color easier to understand: hue, value, intensity, temperature, tint, tone, shade, complementary colors, primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors.

Building the Color WheelStarting with primary colors, you'll mix your own secondary and tertiary colors and begin seeing the relationships that organize the color wheel.

HueYou'll explore the identity of a color and learn that "blue," "red," and "yellow" aren't nearly as simple as they sound.

ValueHow light or dark is the color you're actually looking at? You'll create a value progression and practice seeing value independently from hue.

TintYou'll add white to a hue and watch it move through increasingly lighter variations.

ShadeYou'll explore what happens when a color is progressively darkened—and why darkening isn't always as simple as reaching for black.

ToneYou'll create softer, quieter, more nuanced versions of brilliant colors and discover the enormous world that exists between pure color and gray.

IntensityYou'll explore saturation and learn how to take a color from brilliant and vivid to subtle and neutral.

The Magic of Complementary ColorsYou'll pair opposites on the color wheel and use them to neutralize one another, creating sophisticated earth tones, chromatic grays, and browns.

Learning to See the Color You NeedInstead of asking, "What paint color is that?" we'll practice asking better questions:

Is it warmer or cooler?Lighter or darker?Brighter or duller? Which direction does it need to move?

This is the beginning of learning to mix color intentionally rather than guessing.