‘When Colour Works: Choosing Colour With Confidence’

‘When Colour Works: Choosing Colour With Confidence’, with Petronella van Leusden

Day 1 was a deep dive into one powerful idea, i.e., that, if the value is right, the colour will work. Starting with simple black and white Notan designs, participants learned to strip images back to their essentials, to see structure before detail. Through a series of guided exercises, participants explored how value – not colour – is the key to making a work believable. Using tools such as value charts, squinting, and digital apps’, participants were able to train their eyes to recognise tonal relationships more accurately. This foundation was then carried into colour, where the focus shifted to selecting pastel sticks by value first and colour second – a concept that proved both challenging and transformative, and led to some genuine breakthroughs. In the afternoon, participants applied these principles to their own work, either building colour over a tonal under-drawing or working directly from reference and still life. Emphasis remained on simplifying, grouping values, and resisting the urge to overwork.

Day 2 invited an even deeper exploration into the expressive power of complementary colour in pastels. The morning’s focus was use of complementary colour as a tool and, through more structured exercises, participants explored how opposites can neutralise, energise, and unify, while matching tonal values to maintain clarity. Colour scales and layering techniques were deployed to highlight the richness of optical mixing, encouraging restraint and sensitivity in application. The afternoon session was given over the applying these ideas to small studies and a final still life. Using complementary under-painting, participants built light and form without black, guided by observation and thoughtful decisions. The day concluded with a group review, revealing a wide range of expressive outcomes, both bold and quietly restrained.

The workshop proved a rewarding foray into observation, experimentation, and discovery, the key message for which was that ‘tone bakes the cake’ (although this author prefers not to think about her questionable cooking skills!).