As well as using color tonally, you can also choose to restrict yourself to a palette of mainly warm or cool colors. In turn, warm and cool colors can consist of primary or secondary colors. Cool colors, for example, are blues and greens, while warm colors are reds, yellows and oranges. Cool and warm colors sit at opposite sides of the color wheel, and it’s good to develop an understanding of the relationship of different colors to each other, whether they are analogous or complementary.
You can also choose to draw using a cool or warm palette, then highlight elements that are significant for you with small accents of a complementary color to add interest and drama. Warm colors evoke a Mediterranean climate to me: rich terra-cotta, creamy stone and colors that are vivid and intense in the heat of the day. Cool colors evoke the opposite mood. It’s interesting to note, too, that warm colors are known as “advancing” colors, while cool colors are said to be “receding”; the clue is in the effect they have on the page.
RICHARD ALOMAR
Columbia University, New York, USA
For me, this sketch (above) evokes warm, lazy summer days on a university campus. Technically green is a cool color, but the greens Richard Alomar has used are quite warm, with lots of citrus yellow and orange. Columbia’s stone Low Memorial Library has been painted in a warm orange. This is also a great example of a restrained yet complementary color palette: the rich, dark purple used for the shadows sits opposite green on the color wheel.
A simple color wheel demonstrates which colors work together tonally, and which are complementary (opposite each other on the wheel). It displays primary colors (red, yellow and blue) in relation to the intermediate colors that are created from them (secondary and tertiary colors).
DANIEL GREEN
Snowy Skyscrapers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Daniel Green has taken a very painterly approach to this snowy view in urban Minneapolis (above). The skyscrapers are painted as blocks and are almost abstract in their representation. Daniel has used a very cool color palette: slate grays, sepia and blues, plus lots of white space. As you’d expect from the view, you can almost feel the cold! The window is a clever touch, too—it effectively frames the view and allows for some interesting reflections in the sill.