BUNDLE: Color Theory and Gradations Five Ways with Anabella Wewer

Learning to create with color can have it's challenges. With these two online courses you will understand how certain colors work well together, when not to use certain colors, and how to gradate them with few materials. Below is a description of each course. You will save 15% off these courses with this bundle option. All MAO Bundle courses are always 15% off.

"Gradations Five Ways"

For Anabella Wewer color gradations are a storytelling tool. They express emotion, evoke a sense of opening (or closing!), a feeling of release and exuberance or constraint, provide surprises of unexpected or emerging color, and help her capture a moment in time. A master in color mixing and color theory, her favorite gradations are so simple, none of that advanced knowledge is really needed — in this online course, exclusively at Mosaic Arts Online, she has broken it down for us so we don’t have to think about it!

In this course you will learn:
• Gradations in reflectivity
• Importance of density of color and size of tesserae
• Successful gradations with a handful of colors
• How to source material
• Simple techniques for making gradations without wasting material or time

Though Anabella’s work is largely abstract, gradations are the key to capturing the beauty of a sunset, the gentle coloring of a flower, the folding of fabric, or the subtle sun-kissed blush in a portrait. Most of those are what she calls straight-up color gradations, from light to dark(er) and back again, in a perfect scale of values. But how many of those values do you need? Can you make it work with just a few? Most likely yes!, and Anabella shows you how and when to use more or less material to achieve the right effect.

But there are other ways to get a good gradation using just two colors. It’s all about proportions and how you mix them (or reveal them!), and in this course Anabella shows you four other ways to create beautiful gradations (with the help of a friend).

Gradations in reflectivity can be part of the story in mosaic, and Anabella shares all of those details with us. She shares practical, simple ways to figure out how density of color and the size of your tesserae affect the visual color mixing needed for smooth gradations in both representational or abstract works, and does so using both andamento and pointillist-style setting, which can be applied to crazy paving, stained glass techniques, and much more.

You will learn how to source material and simple techniques to practice and understand how to make gradations without wasting precious material (or time!). She invites you to really understand the materials available to you, look at them from all angles (and inside!), and leave no stone unturned (literally!) to find just the right piece for the right spot. Or not. Just pick a material or a color and handle it in such a way that you get a gradated effect. Your design sensibilities will dictate your path, but with this course you will have the know-how to make those decisions confidently.

"Color Theory"

A graphic designer by profession, Anabella has been immersed in color studies, practice and application since childhood. She has applied all that knowledge to her award-winning mosaic works, creating subtle monochromatic works (gradations), and expertly mixed color compositions. Mosaic Arts Online is thrilled to have Anabella delve into color theory, from Isaac Newton to the work of the post-impressionists, pointillists and beyond, and bring it all around to our mosaic practice.

In this online course Anabella breaks down the intricacies of those parts of color theory that apply directly to mosaic work. Using what appear to be unconventional materials (paper, yarn, watercolors, etc.), Anabella provides us with quick and economical ways to understand how colors interact and affect each other, and shows how it all relates to the art of mosaic. You will learn how to effectively use color, and how color interactions are affected by interstices and background/grout color. She explains how to mix colors successfully while explaining in detail how our eyes perceive and mix color to produce more vibrant works, the importance of understanding value and the relationships of each color to grayscale, and talks about the proportions that are necessary when mixing colors to keep the work from looking muddy or flat.

After all of the why's and how's are explored, Anabella explains how to use color wheels to easily decide on harmonious color palettes, and goes on to provide insights into studying the works of art produced in the period immediately after the color treatises came to be for clues on how to mix color for better results.

Once you complete this course, you will have the knowledge and skills to troubleshoot your own work, make better decisions when selecting material, selecting adhesive and grout colors, and use color theory to achieve vibrant effects in your mosaics.