# Beginner Colour / Color Theory - Introduction to Colour and Harmony - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/beginner-colour-color-theory-introduction-to-colour-and-harmony/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Quick win · Rated 7 /10 # Beginner Colour / Color Theory - Introduction to Colour and Harmony Updated September 2026 JW Learning · Drawing the Body, Head and Hands Beginner · 51 min A tight 51-minute crash course that finally explains why value, hue, and saturation must be juggled together, not learned separately. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fbeginner-colour-color-theory-introduction-to-colour-and-harmony%2F2068007741) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. This course sets out to do one specific job: take a beginner who is intimidated by color and give them a working vocabulary for it in under an hour. It largely succeeds, though its brevity means depth is traded for clarity. ## Structure and content The course opens with a lecture block covering the three scales of color measurement: value (the black-to-white grayscale), hue (position on the color wheel, split into warm and cool hemispheres), and saturation (the purity or intensity of a color, and how much gray it contains). This framing is genuinely useful because it gives beginners a mental model they can return to, rather than treating color as one vague, overwhelming problem. The instructor's habit of describing these three scales as a single 3D wheel structure, with value as a vertical pole, hue as the outer ring, and saturation as the radius toward the center, is a clean visual that makes the abstract mechanics concrete. The second lecture, on harmony and complementary colors, is the conceptual heart of the course. It explains that complementary pairs like red and green or yellow and violet have nothing in common and will visually fight unless deliberately related, and it lays out three ways to reconcile them: nudging hue toward a shared temperature, matching value, or reducing saturation toward neutral gray. The distinction it draws between neutralizing a color with plain gray versus neutralizing it by mixing in its complement is a legitimately useful, non-obvious point about how those two approaches produce different results in warmth and vibrancy. ## The demonstration From there the course shifts into a single extended digital painting demonstration using a platonic solid as the subject, chosen specifically because its faceted planes make value and hue shifts easy to isolate. The instructor works through establishing a light and shadow split, breaking each side into a finer value range, then layering in hue and temperature range, then saturation range, before finally painting each plane and adjusting for reflected light and a complementary green background. This staged approach, always separating value first before touching hue or saturation, models good practice, but the demonstration relies heavily on Affinity Photo's mixer brush, and the software-specific setup takes up a full lesson on its own. Because it stays entirely digital, viewers working in traditional media get the underlying theory but not a paint-specific translation of it. The instructor even remarks partway through that value, hue, and saturation are complex enough to warrant separate future lessons, which is an honest acknowledgment that this is an overview rather than mastery. The assignment mirrors the demonstration closely: build a swatch range, then paint the same or a similar platonic shape from a provided sketch. It is a reasonable way to lock in the lesson but offers little beyond direct repetition of what was just shown. ## Verdict The course delivers exactly what its title promises: an introduction, not a deep dive. Its strength is conceptual clarity around scales and harmony. Its weakness is that beginners eager for hands-on painting practice will find only one demonstration and a single assignment, with the software setup eating into that limited time. The standout The complementary-background demonstration, which shows concretely how placing a red object against a shifted green ground changes the object's perceived vibrancy, is the clearest payoff in the course. ## What you will learn - · How to define and separate the three scales of color: value, hue, and saturation - · How to identify warm and cool temperature zones on the color wheel and apply them to a light source - · How to harmonize clashing complementary colors through hue shift, value matching, or desaturation - · How to mix a full value, temperature, and saturation range for a single object using a limited red/blue/yellow/white/black palette - · How reflected light and surrounding color (a complementary background) alter the perceived saturation of a subject - · How to set up and use digital paint-mixing brushes (in Affinity Photo) to simulate real pigment mixing rather than relying on a color picker Best for: A true beginner who already has some grasp of value and form and is ready to take the specific next step into color relationships and mixing. Skip it if: Anyone who already understands the color wheel and complementary harmony, or anyone wanting in-depth traditional paint-mixing instruction rather than a digital demo. Clarity of Instruction Organization of Lessons Helpful Examples Actionable Steps [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fbeginner-colour-color-theory-introduction-to-colour-and-harmony%2F2068007741)