Color Theory - Saturated or Unsaturated

Course Description

Color Theory – Saturated or Unsaturated Thursdays, 6:00–8:00pm EST • January 29 – March 5, 2026 Live Online Classes • Recorded and Downloadable Join me to explore what color can do for you in ways you may not have realized you can control. Why choose one hue over another? Is a cool yellow the right choice — or would a warmer yellow create a different result, and why? How can you create gray with a limited palette? Understanding the warm and cool temperature of your pigments is essential, and there are simple, meaningful ways to gain confidence in how you use them. We’ll work with layering, transparent glazes, and impasto to adjust intensity, enhance depth, create atmospheric perspective, and strengthen highlights and shadows — all through the study of color theory. We’ll explore vibrant, saturated, and neutral colors while learning how to create a split-complementary still life. This course continues concepts from Color Theory: Color Matching, but it also stands on its own and reinforces what we previously learned. We will also cover Triadic, Tetratic and Split Complementary color schemes. Each class centers on a specific color-theory concept and applies it directly to an image I provide. This hands-on, visual approach helps make the lessons memorable and directly useful in your own work. This will be a fun, fulfilling, and informative series designed to build your skills and confidence as an artist as we create 5x7 and 6x6 oil-painting studies in a guided, step-by-step format. Some artists in my previous course used canvas paper and adhered the finished works in a watercolor journal keeping their Color Theory Course all in one place. Materials List: • Royal Langnickel Soft Grip Golden Taklon brush set (short handle, 5+ brushes) • Palette knife • Ruler • Gamsol • Bristol or watercolor pad, or watercolor journal • Four 5”×7” and four 6”×6” canvas boards, or a Blick Canvas Paper Pad • Palette paper pad Oil Paints: (Winsor & Newton Winton, Gamblin 1980, or comparable professional quality) • Titanium White • Lemon Yellow • Cadmium Yellow Medium • Yellow Ochre • Cadmium Orange Medium • Burnt Sienna • Cadmium Red Deep • Alizarin Crimson • Cerulean Blue • Cobalt Blue • Ultramarine Blue • Sap Green • Viridian Green • Dioxazine Purple • Magenta