Understanding Colour: Theory and Techniques - Mansfield Central Library - Adult Learning

This course is for anyone who wants to feel more confident in understanding, mixing and combining colours, whether for painting, textiles, craft, design, interiors, or personal creative projects.

During the course, you will explore how colour works and how you can use it more confidently with confidence. We will begin with the basics, including hue, value, saturation, and temperature, and look at different types of colour wheels.

You will experiment with mixing and combining colours, creating harmonious and contrasting palettes, and using colour to suggest mood, depth, focus, and balance. We will also look at how colours behave next to each other, exploring how the same colour can appear to change depending on the colours around it as well as the surface qualities.

The course will include demonstrations, guided activities, discussion, and practical experiments. You do not need any painting skills or experience: the techniques can be applied to painting, drawing, collage, textiles, craft, design, interiors, and even gardening and hairdressing!

What will learners achieve by the end of the course?

• Identify and describe basic colour qualities, including hue, value, saturation and temperature.

• Create and use a simple colour wheel to explore primary, secondary and related colours.

• Mix or select colours to create at least two different colour schemes, such as harmonious, complementary or limited palettes.

• Experiment with contrast to see how colour can change depending on what it is placed next to.

• Apply colour choices to a small creative sample, design idea or personal project.

• Share your colour experiments with others and identify at least one colour combination or technique you would like to use again.

What you need to bring to the course:

• Some form of small sketchbook that will take wet paint

• Basic watercolour paint set (even a kids one will be fine!) and brush

• You are strongly encouraged to bring along materials, samples and examples from the art, craft or design that you do, and would like to apply colour theory too.

Funding and Fees

If you receive certain benefits, you may be able to take the course for free.
If money is stopping you from enrolling, please visit our funding page to see what help is available.

Living in England

To book and join one of our courses, you must live in England permanently and either:

• Live inside the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) area (Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire)

or

• Live outside the devolved areas listed below

You cannot enrol if you live in these devolved areas:

• Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)

• Liverpool City Region Combined Authority

• North East Combined Authority

• South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority

• Tees Valley Combined Authority

• West Midlands Combined Authority

• West of England Combined Authority

• West Yorkshire Combined Authority

• Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority

• York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority

• Hull and East Yorkshire

• Greater Lincolnshire

• Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority

• Cornwall Council

• Lancashire Combined County Authority

• Buckinghamshire Council

Residency Requirements (Additional Information)

If you live in the UK on a visa, we’ll need evidence of your visa to confirm funding. You can upload this when applying, and you’ll need to complete a short questionnaire.

Some exceptions include:

• Your visa must last until after your course ends.

• Asylum seekers must have lived in the UK for at least 6 months while their claim is being processed.

• You are supported by your local authority under Section 23C or 23CA of the Children Act 1989, or under the Care Act 2014.

Anyone who does not meet the funding criteria would need to pay full course fees.