Teaching Color Theory

Series Summary

Recurring evidence suggests that many more people claim to be color blind than actually suffer from this disorder. In most cases, these pretenders are not seeking medical treatment or insurance benefits, they are simply attempting to excuse an appalling lack of taste. For the purpose of stereotyping such unfortunates, their affliction shall henceforth be known as color ignorance. This torment first manifests itself to the rest of the world when kids decide they want to pick out their own clothes. At this point, they may already be at a critical juncture in their development. If left unchecked, this problem could come back to haunt the parents in the form of a purple and green guest room once these wayward deficients become homeowners. Catch your kids early on and give them an understanding that will benefit them later in life, especially if they choose careers as designers or decorators. Or even if they are simply picking out an outfit or painting their house. For those of us who have already passed this point in early development, who have become adults with little understanding of color theory, there is still hope: watch this video series and find out the basics of color. In this free art education series, you will learn about color, how different colors interact as well as how to mix colors for watercolor and acrylic paints. An art instructor will discuss hue, color temperature and other theories which will be helpful when you create your next work of art.

Video Transcript

"First we need to figure out what we're going to use. I have chosen acrylic paints partly because they dry quickly and that's useful for this sort of thing and they're water-based so they're easy to clean up. And, for those reasons doing this kind of work helps. It's also better for this project to do acrylics than watercolors because watercolors are transparent and we really need to see opaque colors do to each other. Now there's just a few things that you need to know about the label. There will be something on the label that tells you if it's toxic or not and if you have children please make sure that you are buying paint that says that it's non-toxic. And then usually the paints will tell you what the vehicle is, that is, is it oil? Is it acrylic? Is it watercolor? It will tell you the pigment which means the color. Is it yellow pigment? Is it a black pigment etcetera? And then there are some extra ideas there are some extra information this label that don't necessarily appear on every label you're going to see. But, this one actually tells you the actual scientific name of the color which are usually impossible to pronounce. This one is benzimidazalone and it has some titanium dioxide in it which means it has white. So you need to look at this because you need to know if this a pure pigment or if they added white, the titanium, or black, because that will indicate it's not pure. But, that's the information you need on your label."