This is a one-on-one art tutoring class to share tips and tricks to improve your understanding of color theory. We’ll use colored pencils on white or gray paper to learn how colors layer and enliven your palette. This is a great step to take if your learner is comfortable with graphite drawing but hasn’t begun painting yet. 

Before class, let’s chat in the classroom about where we should start.  Everybody starts somewhere and everybody learns at their own pace, so I’ll meet you wherever you are as an artist. Here’s how I plan to break down learner progress and milestones, but you might stay on one level for a few weeks, or zip through a few levels in one lesson, or we might do them in a different order. Who knows? 

- Level 1: Tricked you! No color. We start with black and white values, and go from there. I’ll introduce a 1-10 and 1-5 value scale, we'll practice making smooth gradients of value, and we’ll use that in a practice drawing of a still life in white and black pencil on gray paper.  
- Level 2: The Color Wheel: Every color has an opposite, or complement. We’ll practice ways to visualize this, and practice neutralizing a color with its opposite on white paper, starting with an orangeish red and a green shade of blue. I’ll introduce concepts of Hue and Saturation. We’ll look at some art with complementary palettes, and practice swatching colors to match reference. 
- Level 3: Still life practice. We’ll organize our colored pencils by color and complement, and use them on gray paper to draw some fruits and vegetables. We’ll practice softly layering colors with their complements to develop depth without the flattening effect of black pigments. We’ll continue referencing the 1-5 Value Scale and the Color Wheel as we choose how to develop the piece. 
- Level 4: Landscape practice and atmospheric perspective on toned paper: Working from a reference image, we’ll explore how colors lose saturation, chroma, and value and shift toward cool colors as they recede into the distance.
- Level 5: Midtone practice: drawing faces from reference photos, and noticing where warm colors concentrate pigment under different skin tones. 
- Level 6: Light and Shadow in Architecture: Noticing the direction of a light source and cast shadows, and interplay of warm and cool tones. 
- Level 7: Sunrise/Sunset transitions: Can we notice time of day, weather, and mood by the color of the light? Looking at reference images and drawing from them to explore how the color of light affects the subject. Intro to reflected light, too. 

There are many more things to learn about color theory with colored pencil, paint, or digital media. I’ll add to this list over time! 

For this class, we’ll work on white and/or gray paper with colored pencils. You may need a few more items, depending on the lesson, but we’ll talk about it ahead of time. See supply section below for a better overview. 

Please plan to have a camera aimed down at your drawing on a tabletop, and I’ll do the same. You can shop for phone stands that are marketed to artists to film their art processes. They are really useful for this, if you have one, or just prop the phone on a box under your chin. I can show you how.