Color decisions profoundly influence visual impact across design, art, illustration, photography, and digital media. Award-winning illustrator and Rhode Island School of Design professor Mary Jane Begin teaches foundational color principles and demonstrates their application across visual disciplines. Understanding these principles equips you to make more intentional, effective color choices in any creative work.
This course covers essential color elements:
- Value, temperature, saturation, and their interactions
- Color hierarchy and how to guide the viewer's attention
- Complementary colors and their visual relationships
- Light behavior and its relationship to perceived color
- Harmony and contrast in color relationships
- The relationship between color choices and expressive intent
Through practical demonstrations, you'll develop the ability to work with color confidently and make thoughtful decisions that serve your creative vision. These foundational principles apply universally, whether you're designing graphics, painting, illustrating, or processing photographs. You'll understand not just the rules of color, but the principles underlying those rules, allowing you to work creatively within any visual medium.
