Gift Cards
Gift card for art students to use on anything in the Proko store
About instructors
Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
I Teach Creatives
LESSON NOTES
Stan and Marshall break down how to learn color by combining theory and practice without getting stuck in rules. They explain hue, value, and saturation, share stories about their own color frustrations, and outline exercises like using limited palettes, plein air painting, and master studies. You’ll learn why repetition, observation, and balancing intuition with knowledge are key to developing your color sense over time.
Show Links (some contain affiliate links):
Building a Dream Art Studio
How to Learn Anatomy
How to Learn Perspective
How to Learn Composition
Pinocchio (1940)
Warm-Cool Primaries
Bob Mankoff - Convocation Speech
James Gurney - Color and Light
Richard Schmid - Alla Prima II
The Art of The Incredibles
Johannes Itten - The Elements of Color
Marco Bucci
Jeremy Vickery
Ahmed Aldoori
James Gurney - PLEIN AIR GEAR for Controlling Light on Your Painting
Referenced Artists:
Justin Sweet
Vance Kovacs
Value
Hue/saturation
Munsell Color System
Nixson Borah
Color Schemes (Matthew Wilson)
Bill Perkins
Marshall’s master studies
Stan’s plein air
Edgar Degas
Palettes
J.C. Leyendecker
Simultaneous Contrast - Edward H. Adelson
Drew Struzan
Marshall palette charts and palette kits
(DC) Delectable Mountain Palette
Winsor McCay Palette
Warm Palette
Cool Palette
Winsor McCay
Winslow Homer (oil)
Winslow Homer (watercolor)
John Singer Sargent (oil)
John Singer Sargent (watercolor)
John Cotman
Marlo Lodrigueza
COMMENTS![]()
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Stan and Marshall break down how to learn color by combining theory and practice without getting stuck in rules. They explain hue, value, and saturation, share stories about their own color frustrations, and outline exercises like using limited palettes, plein air painting, and master studies. You’ll learn why repetition, observation, and balancing intuition with knowledge are key to developing your color sense over time.
This episode was a lot of fun! Love color - huge fan of James Gurney's book. Those little palettes @Marshall Vandruff brought look like great fun! Awesome idea! Great tip about using a touchstone Master painting when trying to do a color portrait from a BW reference for us newbies, Stan! I used that idea when I did this portrait of my mother from a very old, soft, sepia photo last summer. It's done in Talens Cobra Artist quality Water-Mixable oils, CMYK+White palette. I LOVE these paints! and their tech advisors are rock stars!
Really love the episode! Thank you :)
I have a question about the beautiful painting behind Marshall: who is the artist? I would love to see it fully and research the artist; I feel the wind blowing and the waves crashing when I look at it.
"Swallowing colors of the sounds I hear. Am I just a crazy guy? You bet"
Ozzy Osborne, Flying High Again.
RIP Ozzy
This works so I am beginner and I realized I was good with black and white in acrylics and wanted to shift to colours and directly shifted to actual colours which was so overwhelming and confusing. I usually used cadmium red, cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue with white but that makes everything so much confusing that bright yellow never worked with anything. But after listening to your advise I shifted my palette to only one colour with black and white so I think purpose of whole exercise was to work with only one colour saturation, and how to blend colours with value so I used burnt seinna with cadmium red (a little) and white, black and grey. It drastically improved my self potrait I did few weeks ago. So thanks, I will not ask for critique or anything considering you guies only posted this podcast to help learn colours but I will just put a reference how good of a change it was. (One with mixed background is done after and one with all done background was done prior) thanks guies.
I’m baffled by how skilled Stan is . Respect.
I’m also thankful this platform exist so we can learn from different parts of the globe
ummmm... you guies said something i understood barely anything, guesss time to watch again....
This was a wonderful episode, great content and advice on how to learn color. I needed this!
This is very good. This morning I tried painting en plein air with only black and white paint. I always get a bit overwhelmed when painting with oil, and limiting the palette is a great route to improve my painting skills in an organised and consistent way.
Thanks for the Draftsmen on Colour.
What do you think about the book by Michael Wilcox:
Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green
(Or How to Mix The Colour You Really Want - Every Time) ?
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5mo
It's got good teaching in it, and I first learned about the two-primary system from that book.
My biggest criticism is the title, which I assume is meant to shock us into involvement. It probably would not have sold as well if it were more accurately titled: Blue and Yellow Make Green (but not always).
Perhaps we'll apply this wisdom to our coming Perspective Lesson titles:
Straight Lines Do Not Exist!
Stop Looking and Just Draw!
Stop Drawing and Just Look!
Everything You Perceive is Wrong!
Your Eyes Do Not See Green, Yellow, Blue, or anything else — It's All in Your Brain!
Maybe...
But yes, informative book.
