I don’t know about you, but sometimes I sit down and commit something to the Lord and expect that His yes will either come immediately or not at all. I forget about the whole waiting thing, the trusting, the hoping, the not giving up part. But when we look back to scripture, there’s a whole lot of waiting, enduring, pressing on, and still trusting in God’s faithfulness.
Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, did a whole lot of waiting. Aside from his entire family waiting for God to fulfill his three fold promise to bless Abraham with a family and land and bless the nations through him, Joseph was also waiting on God to see the fulfillment of his dreams. Joseph dreamed of being a leader and helping to save many people, but he had to wait through his brother’s betrayal, being sold into slavery, betrayed again this time by his master’s wife, a friend who forgot about him in jail, and a famine before he ever saw the fulfillment of his visions. But even through his hard life, God used Joseph as a key player in the unfolding of his story to bring Israel to a land of their own and to rescue them from Egypt so that all the nations would hear of their great God. Joseph’s story is such a reminder to me to be patient in hardships and wait on God. God was faithful and used Joseph’s life in incredible ways!
I had so much fun drawing Joseph in my Bible with the new Illustrated Faith Watercolors. His colored robe gave me a chance to play with the colors and mix them around! I love how colors work and how versatile they can be with even just a few options, so I thought I would share with you a little tutorial on choosing and mixing colors!
You likely learned the color wheel in school which means you have a heard start on understanding color theory and how mixing colors works! Above is the basic color wheel with all of the primary, secondary, and intermediate colors.
The primary colors are red, yellow and blue. From those three colors, you can make any other color you can imagine! How cool is that? Secondary colors are the combination of any two primary colors. Red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, blue and red make purple. Intermediate (also known as tertiary) colors are the mix of a secondary color with one of it’s primary colors. For example, blue and purple make blue purple, red and orange make red orange, etc. It all flows together in one cohesive circle which makes it super easy to remember.
When you look at the colors directly across from each other on the color wheel, we find the complementary colors. The three basic pairs are purple and yellow, red and green, and blue and orange. You can also make complementary pairs out of the intermediate colors, for example red orange and blue green. These complementary pairs look great together, which is a helpful tip I like to remember when painting or scrapbooking with lots of colors. I love mixing up the tints and shades (the lightness or darkness of the color) of orange and blue to get a peach and turquoise combination! When two complementary colors are mixed together, they make brown. You can also get a more earthy, dull hue by added just a little bit of the complementary color.
Split complementary colors are the two colors adjacent to the first color’s complement. These combinations are helpful to see because they also look great together! They still have a lot of contrast, but flow a bit more smoothly than just the two complementary colors.
These last sets are called analogous colors. Analogous colors are made up of a primary color and a few colors to one side of it. Reds and oranges are warm colors and blues and purples are cool colors. Using Split Complementary or Analogous color schemes may be helpful for choosing colors that flow together cohesively as you are designing your pages or choosing colors to paint with!
I hope this little explanation has been helpful for you. I can’t wait to see all of the fun color combinations you use! I also created a PDF with all of these colors charts for an easy cheat sheet. Click here to download.
ESV Journaling Bible | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd Genesis Collection .35 Pen | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd .25 Pen | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd Shanna’s Favorite Watercolors
Terrific post. Thank you.