Understanding Colour

Come and enjoy a weekend workshop exploring colour relationships and our visual reactions to them.

Through a systematic study of colour relationships, we will see the reactions different colours have when placed next to each other, as well as feeling colour relatedness. We will explore the dimensions of colour - hue, value, intensity and temperature. This is a structured workshop where students are guided through in depth colour mixing exercises including primary, secondary and tertiary colours, painted within a grid pattern. Students then create their own design based on principles of design and explore harmonies and contrasts of their chosen colour scheme. This workshop gives you the opportunity to focus, structure and make sense of this broad subject. It is suitable for beginners and those who would like to understand colour and its relationships more fully.

In depth colour mixing exercise which includes warm and cool primary, secondary and tertiary colours, painted within a grid pattern. Students are guided through colour theory, with examples of colour contrasts and harmonies. Based on these, students are given choices of Complementary Colour schemes to intermix and explore the harmonies and contrasts in paint. Design principles are introduced. Using the grid pattern, students create their own design by making variations to this pattern and considering the principles of design. The harmonies and contrasts of two pairs of Complementary Colour Schemes are explored through painting them into the grid pattern.

About the teacher

Deborah Marks’s art practice includes painting, drawing, photography and collage. Deborah is inspired by her interest in psychological aspects of the human condition. Her figurative artworks reside between representation and abstraction as an exploration of the ambiguity between surface and illusion. Deborah has exhibited with Defiance Gallery, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Stanley Street Gallery and Kunstverein Murnau, Germany, and most recently exhibited with Wagner Contemporary, Sydney. In 2007 she was awarded the National Art School Onslow Storrier Studio Residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Her artwork is represented in both public and private collections. Deborah has been a finalist in the Kedumba Art Award, the Portia Geach Memorial Award, the Mosman Art Prize, the Blake Prize, the Korean/ Australian Arts Foundation Prize, the Brisbane Art Prize, the Manning Regional Art Prize, the Naked and Nude Art Prize, The Calleen Art Award, the Lethbridge Art Prize, the Hunters Hill Art Prize, The Grace Cossington Smith Art Award and the Stanthorpe Art Prize. She was awarded the 2014 Kedumba Art Award, the 2015 & 2017 Hunter’s Hill Art Prize and the 2021 Lethbridge Art Award. Deborah holds a Master of Fine Arts degree. She has lectured at the National Art School Drawing Department in Observational Drawing in the BFA Program since 1999 to the present.