In the leaf above, I used flat washes of sap green and perylene green watercolour over most of the leaf. Local Colour based illustration Horse Chestnut Leaf Illustration – Using Sap Green and Perylene Green only, yielding a flat “coloured in” style Despite not containing any true blue, green or even yellow, artists use the Zorn palette to realistically paint cool-toned scenes. It is inspired by the palette used by the portrait artist Anders Zorn. The “Zorn Palette” is a limited palette consisting of only a black, a white, a red and a a yellow ochre.

Some artists take the concept of relative colour even further. Colour is used to convey cast shadows and reflected light from surrounding objects. We use darker and cooler colours in shadow areas.

To create depth and realism in our art, most artists choose to include some aspects of relative colour in our art. Some artists deliberately focus on local colour, drawing attention to other aspects of their subject. A banana becomes a flat yellow crescent shape. When we create our first art pieces, most of us colour our subjects in a single local colour. These choices can be conscious or unconscious. Colour choicesĪrtists make choices about how to represent colour and light. We can combine our knowledge of local and relative colour to create more effective illustrations. They process the combination of relative colours our eyes sense, and allow us to interpret objects as their local colour. These are the relative colours of the banana. These influenced by the light hitting the banana, the reflected colour of surrounding objects and surfaces, and more. Instead, your eyes see a bunch of different colours. When you look at a banana, your eyes do not see the the local colour yellow. The colour you are picturing when you think of a yellow banana is the local colour of a banana. I’m sure that like mine, your mind jumps to “yellow”.

James gurney color theory