The Color Survival Guide
Lessons
This chapter will give you important models for understanding how to keep colors active and interesting, yet still reading as simple hues.
Newest
@bernhard
22d
The ref from the pears is a Laura Robb demo, the grapefruit + lemon ref is from a course with Meadow Gist. Tryed to get som vibration in there. Not happy with pear study though. But i´m pretty happy with the apple study and the lemon study.
Vy Vo
27d
I did exercise with apple painting. I forgot I had the night mode on my computer and the color turned out to be much cooler than I thought it would be. Overall, I'm happy with how vibrant they are. Any suggestions and critiques are welcome!
Giulia Pozzi
2mo
Pumpkin study! Happy wih how colors vibrate! Still usure about how to make more alive the shadows in overcast...!
•
2mo
Beautiful!
@lwel
10mo
Started with something more complicated, was too focussed on form because of that so I switched to a simple apple. I like how it turned out!
•
10mo
Nice! I especially like the purples you introduced into the reds, I think they vibrate really well as it transitions to orange. I might suggest pushing the variation on saturation more, especially more towards saturated color where the light transition starts at the yellow section. I think this could make the form and light pop more, giving it more dimensionality. The shadow is another area you can play around with, such as by placing in colors reflecting the apple or the environment, and heightening the saturation around its edges. This can give your drawing a nice unity altogether :)
![onigi *pronunce [on-ie-gee]*](https://static.proko.com/assets/images/avatars/dr-i-cube-40@2x.webp)
onigi *pronunce [on-ie-gee]*
10mo
I experimented with the method Marco recommends in the video. It was fun! However, I think I failed to make the colors cool.
Any suggestions and critiques are welcome!
@lwel
10mo
Still learning myself so keep that in mind when you take my critique... I think the coolness isn't the issue. I think its the values and saturation. The colors on the shady side should be darker and colors on the light side should be lighter and more saturated.
EDIT:
I'm not sure if the light side being more saturated is a rule, I don't think so. But I think its what I would do in this painting. You could try doing the opposite and make the shady side more saturated instead. i just think that it should have more differences in saturation than it has now.
Elmari Van Zyl
1yr
Wow, that was great! Thank you.
Yvonne Oliea
1yr
Is this for computer art? I am a traditional painter. Thank you.
@prism
1yr
He works digitally but the teaching works for any artist. I am a traditional oil painter & this course is very good. The information on cooler & warmer temperatures is worth the entire course. And I'm only half way through it!
@patruvius
1yr
Does anyone know how to apply this when the local color is black? Like black colored clothing for example.
•
1yr
Having something perfectly black, like Vantablack level of black, is rather rare as there will typically be some slight hue to it, even if it's really dark. If you've ever worn different black clothing pieces that didn't seem to match, you might've noticed this difference in their hues--one may be slightly more blue while another more brown or purple. This could be something you use and emphasize to create vibration. You can also use the surrounding environment, especially the color of the light source, to add color to it--like the boy's hair in Marco's illustration shown in the video at 3:55. It has color variations both from the blue/green of the forest and sky as well as the warmer yellow-green from the light coming in on the right.
Emanuele Lattanzi
1yr
Tried to add some color vibration on this piece, amazing lesson as always!
Ana
2yr
Awesome content! Thank you Marco!
Claire Yuan
3yr
Hi Marco. I am still focusing on adding more color variation while maintaining color harmony. I gained a deeper understanding of how color travels after rewatching this lecture. Mainly, by using the contrast of color, it does not take color to complete the full journey to the "opposite" side in order to show variation and contrast. In this painting, I sneaked in some blue and purple into the shadow of grapes. I added green and red to the pear.
I also played with soft, semi-soft, and hard edges after watching some of your YouTube videos.
Thank you for the quality lectures. I will continue to apply these concepts in more still life paintings from life (so far these are all painted from pictures). I am also ready to do some master studies as shown in the next lecture.
Sebastian Carrillo
3yr
Here are some attemps. I think I'm getting a bit more comfortable with color, I'm still trying to give more saturation to my pieces. Any suggestion will be very much appreciated!
@chortlesnail
3yr
Nice! I'm wondering, would the shadow under the apple gradually fade out as it got farther from the apple?
Nancy Yocom
3yr
Looks great!
Claire Yuan
3yr
Hi Marco, thank you for the course. You really helped me understand the temperature relationship and color harmony. Each color study I did, I tried to incorporate a new lesson learned from you into my painting. In this chapter, I tried to make the "white wall" of this garden more visually interesting using a variety of colors. Thanks again, I can't wait to see how the next chapter will inspire me. Critiques from everyone are welcome. I hope in the future I can learn how to achieve more loose but realistic texture for a variety of subjects. I kind of stumbled a little on the rocks and trees.
Nancy Yocom
3yr
The wall is my favorite part. Looks great.
Sebastian Carrillo
3yr
Beautiful work, specially about the amount of color you managed to put together armoniously in the wall. My only commentary would be that there could be few hard edges in general so it feels more atmospheric. Beautiful practice again!
ashley
3yr
Really helped me understand how colours go together. I made this painting right after watching this video, inspired by the green monster. If anyone has any critiques or advice please say.
Brian Callander
3yr
This is a cool character, but for the lesson it would be good to see it in the context of an environment, since that's where the colours get a lot of their context. In Bucci's examples, the light areas are pushed a lot warmer from the sun, shadow areas can take on colours from the environment, often colder if facing the sky, warmer if facing the ground, etc.
It looks like this guy is lit only by ambient light from the sky? Painting the surroundings would help the viewer understand.
Steffen Anzivino
4yr
Found @Marco Bucci because Stan did a quick video with him for Christmas. Started with a rendition of a Christmas song. Automatically liked him. I however had no interest in painting. After that video I thought it was something that perhaps I could do. Maybe I wasn't interested in painting because I was intimidated by it. Now, now I want to paint. I have gone through his 10-minutes to better painting. I won't ramble, but I am getting this course for fathers day. I am stoked.
If you read this comment Mr. Bucci, thank you for being passionate and fun. Am I am glad that you make an outstanding effort to teach in a way that communicates what you want to say very well. I'm not sure if I am learning well, but when I watch your videos I really FEEL like I understand well. I was beside myself to discover you were going to be on proko offering a course.
All in all, thank you.
•
3yr
Thanks a lot, Steffen - super happy to hear you're enjoying the lessons :)
@xfry
4yr
Hi, Thank you for this amazing content.
When you go to push the chapter 5?
Thank you again :D
@doppio
4yr
How often are you posting? Haven't seen any new entries in a while :( and don't see a schedule
•
3yr
Chapter 6 (the final chapter) is now almost done!
Course by Michael Hampton
Give a gift
Give a gift card for art students to use on anything in the Proko store.
Or gift this course:
About instructor
Marco Bucci began serious study of art when he was 19. He began with drawing fundamentals for 3 years before discovering a love for painting.
