I’m super excited about our current theme inside my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon… Colour temperature: Warm vs Cool.

Even though I create sketches with a mix of warm and cool colours, I rarely think consciously about temperature. I focus more on value and generally rely on my intuition when it comes to varying colour temperature. We’re only just finished the first week of November but I’ve already changed my thinking a lot!

Here are some of the things I’ve been doing so far…

1. Constantly remembering that colour temperature is always relative! 

2. Making a conscious decision about whether my sketch is going to be predominantly warm or mostly cool.

3. Starting with the darks but thinking in terms of temperature rather than value. (This is particularly fun!)

4. Varying temperature while keeping the value constant.

Here are a few of my recent sketches where I’ve been focusing on temperature…

I’m particularly looking forward to discussing my approach to the last three sketches in my next Patreon update video, as they have involved a significantly different thought process! Rather than thinking about value while I sketch and relying on my temperature intuition, I’m thinking about temperature and relying on value intuition.

And yes, I’m continuing to use The Arrtx Markers (both kinds) for the start of November, as they force me to be intentional about my colour choices. If you missed it, I reviewed both markers in this article.

It will be very interesting to see how this approach translates to watercolour.

Find out more about joining us in the Sketching Adventure Community here if you want to join the discussions (lots of great comments already this month in our community).