- Let me show you something about
browns and grays using watercolors.
You can make browns and grays
simply by blending complimentary colors.
Complimentary colors come from
opposite sides of the color wheel.
Here, I'm working with the complimentary pair
of blue and orange and that's it.
There are no other paints involved.
If you mix a dose of blue into orange,
you get a nice brown
and mix the two in different proportions
and you can come up with a good-looking, warm gray.
If you were to start with a puddle of blue
and then add a touch of the orange,
you could mute the blue all the way down to a cool gray.
So that, in a nutshell, is where grays and browns
can come from in the real world
from mixes of complimentary hues
and I show you this because,
even though me mostly work digitally,
I think it's important to understand
why colors behave in certain ways
within art-based programs like Illustrator and Photoshop.
In fact, let's switch to digital mode,
and yes, if you're painting in a program like Photoshop,
you can produce neutral hues
just like you would with actual paints
by blending transparent shades of complimentary colors.
But there are even easier ways to come up
with browns and grays using the computer
and one of my favorite ways is
to take advantage of certain digital aids.
Like, if you're working in Illustrator
and dealing with a bright color,
you can just double click on the color
at the top of the swatches panel,
and you'll bring up the color picker.
Once you're there, you can click anywhere
in about this region of the panel's gradated area
to find either a brown, a warm gray
or cool gray depending on what color you started out with
and if I'm working with warmer colors,
then it can also find warm, pale neutrals,
like beiges, tans, ivories, and buffs,
right in this panel.
Next, let's talk about how neutral colors like these
can be combined into palettes,
which is actually pretty simple.
You can just start with a standard,
color wheel-based palette, like a monochromatic,
analogous,
triadic,
complimentary,
or split complimentary color scheme,
and apply it to neutrals.
By the way, we'll be defining each
of the palettes in detail in the next movie,
just in case you're not too familiar with them.
So, for example, I'll start coloring this pattern
using the hues of a triadic palette.
Which is a palette made from colors
taken from three equally spaced slices of the color wheel.
We've got bright versions of red,
yellow and blue in this case.
Next, I'll go with muted versions of each color,
hues that are in the realm of grays and brown
to come up with a nice looking pattern of neutral tones,
and right now, the value differences
in this pattern are strong.
If I were to narrow down the differences in values
and shift everything towards darker hues,
this would make a nice backdrop
for a nice, bright accent color.
You can also take entire color schemes,
like the one we just started out with,
and use Photoshop's hue and saturation controls,
to desaturate all the colors at once,
and you can play with around with
the hue and the lightness sliders
while you're at it, to find different looks.
So, how about trying these things out on your own?
Turn on the computer, create a pattern,
make some good looking, color wheel-based
palettes out of ordinary colors,
and then dial down the intensity of your hues,
and make muted palettes for your pattern,
and use that color picker in
either Illustrator or Photoshop,
or the hue and saturation panel in Photoshop,
as your helpers.
If you do this, I can pretty much guarantee,
you're going to have a good time,
and you're going to learn a bunch
about grays and about browns.
You'll also experience this big boost
in your appreciation for neutral hues
and for muted color schemes.