Fantasy Agates in a new lesson about color

Today I released a new lesson on Fantasy Agates, which are these lovely and soothing pictures. Let me tell you that I started to paint these pictures casually, as a way to test a new set of watercolor paints I had just then acquired. Suddenly lots of people started to ask for lessons on how to make them. My brain immediately started to think “What a great opportunity to discuss complex color palettes”.

These are two of the pictures created during the lesson:

Here are a couple of close-ups:

Way back when, I used to be completely obsessed with color theory — I even taught color theory in conferences when I was working in computer graphics, 20-plus years ago. I think using color is a little scary for most people, and it does help to know color theory. However, lately I've developed a little method of my own for selecting colors that is far easier and doesn't require extensive color theory knowledge. I'm so glad to be able to show you this method in this lesson.

The first part of the lesson discusses this method and I even go into detail analyzing other pictures that I have made — not only fantasy agates, but some spundalaz as well. It's all based on this basic chart of colors.

The second part of the lesson is more practical, I'll show you how to create the fantasy agates using watercolors. Sooooo soothing!

I'll also show you how to add all the little details using fine-liners and gel pens. Hours of blissful Zen flow!

In the final portion of the lesson, I'll throw in a bonus and show you how to incorporate a blossom tangle (this one is Gneiss, by Zentangle), and use fantasy agates as a background.

Here's a picture of the Gneiss blossom almost complete:

To learn more about the Fantasy Agate lesson, visit: