Learn color theory in a fun new way

I recently debuted my newest class, Discover Your Intuitive Colors, at Two Hands Paperie in Boulder, Colorado. The goal of this workshop is to help participants trust their intuition in their use of color, learn to pay attention to their inner sense of color + be open to possibility.

This is the class for anyone curious about color–regardless of skill level or art medium preference. There were weavers, watercolorists + encaustic creators. One student signed up because she wanted to decorate her home in a way that felt warm + cozy.

After continually hearing, “I don’t know what to do with color,” I developed this workshop with the desire to give creators of all levels confidence + joy in color choices.

Color makes life more interesting + brings so much joy, there is no reason to fear it.

Since we are no longer educated about color, people often feel lost when it comes to understanding + using color. People have developed chromophobia, a fear of color. This fear of color, combined with the fear of making a choice + having to live with it, creates a gap between the colors that bring us joy + the colors that surround us.

This class aims to end chromophobia by helping participants cultivate their color intuition with experimentation + increase their confidence by creating their own color theory resources.

As an artist + graphic designer, known for my colorful designs, I think the best way to understand color is through observation + hands-on exploration. So I designed a class devoted completely to color with lots of hands-on exercises to teach the basic theory without the need to mix paint or worry about exactness.

The unique twist to this class is that students used their favorite colors–in the form of paper scraps–to create personal color theory booklets + assemble color maps of favorite colors.

Even without training, on some level we all know what color combinations + patterns delight us. So using the paper inspiration that our Creative Selves have tucked away seemed like the perfect source material for this class.

The pre-class work involved going through their personal paper scrap collections + pulling out the scraps students loved most. Papers were then sorted + organized by color theme before arriving to class. These were the raw materials for tapping into their intuitive sense of color.

During class, we analyzed the color characteristics–hue, shade, tint, tone, complementary, analogous, triad, neutral, cool, warm–and how the scraps relate to the color wheel. Scraps were then glued into a booklet I custom designed for this class. The results were unique + personal color theory booklets for students to use in future creative projects.

Our final project was to use the paper scraps to create a personal color map–a custom diagram, based on the color wheel, showing the spatial relationship of beloved colors. As a visual representation of favorite colors, the color map is a resource students can hang up for inspiration or as a reminder of the joy of color.

Creating with color is one of the easiest ways to share joy with the world, because it can offer a bright spot in a dull landscape. With the vocabulary + knowledge to understand why color combinations “look good,” my hope is that students left class ready to indulge in all their color fantasies.