Words & Illustrations | Samantha Hughes

Colour not only looks cool, you can use it as a tool to create emotions and moods in your work. It’s like being an evil genius and using colours to make the people who are looking at your work feel strong emotions! You could use a sky blue to make them feel calm or a cold dark blue to make them feel sad lonely feelings.

The Colour Wheel

The colour wheel looks like a super delicious donut – but it is actually a very useful tool to have in your art kit. It can help you to understand how colours mix together and the relationship between different colours.

Primary Colours – Red, Yellow and Blue

Secondary Colours – Mix together your primary colours to make Orange, Green and Purple.

Tertiary Colours – Mix together your secondary colours to create more colours!

Colour Psychology

People feel different emotions when looking at colours. Some of these meanings come from nature – like bright yellow for attention or blue for calm. Some come from how colours are used in our everyday lives – like red for danger. Whether a colour is warm or cool, muted or vibrant affects which mood you will create. Here are just some of the hidden meanings of colours…

Combining Colours

How you combine your colours also creates a story – are the colours you are putting next to each other calm and friendly with each other? Or are they wild and shouty? You can use a Colour Wheel to help put together your colour story. Here are four easy ways to build colour palettes and stories.

Colour Wheeeeee!

Let’s test out our new colour knowledge with this cat illustration I found in an ancient library.

Monochrome

Choosing one colour is hard! I wanted to make a warm and cosy cat story. Which colour do you think works best?

Colour Wheel Knowledge UNLOCKED!

This is so fun! I want to make a story about a cheeky cat next. Which palette do you think makes the cat look cheekiest?

Colour Level Up!

How amazing that changing colours changes the story so much. Clever, Spooky, Magic and Alien cats! Good luck on your colour quest my fellow adventurers. I can’t wait to see what treasure we discover next time. 

x Artie