Understanding colour

Before choosing your palette, it’s important to develop a basic understanding of colour theory and how colours relate to one another. This will aid you in choosing appropriate colour palettes for your paintings, to evoke a mood or emphasise a concept. This is also essential in choosing the tubes you mix new colours with. Colour temperature, hue and purity are all characteristics to consider when developing your painting.

A colour’s hue is simply the name of the colour in its most basic form and describe its location on the colour wheel: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. The temperature of a colour is the suggestion of warmth or coolness. Warm hues are...