Color in the Wild: Fast Color Strategies for Plein Air Painters w Helen Dannelly
Learn how to quickly assess hue, value and saturation to apply during your plein air painting! Mendocino Art Center
Time & Location
Sep 04, 2026, 10:00 AM – Sep 06, 2026, 4:00 PM
Mendocino Art Center, 45200 Little Lake St, Mendocino, CA 95460, USA
Description
Date: September 4th, 5th, 6th
Times: 10am - 4pm w/ 1hr lunch
Level: All
Membership Price: $310 (Members can use code MEMBERS10 upon checkout to receive 10% off)
Random: $20 materials fee to be paid to the instructor at class. Fee covers some paper, acrylic medium and additional colors.
Workshop Description:
Through presentations, live demonstrations, and practical exercises, learn how to make fast, accurate color decisions in the field (or the studio.) The extensive, eye-opening color mixing exercises will help you more clearly see subtle variations in hue, value, and saturation - including Prismatic, muted hues, and chromatic grays - thereby improving your skill and confidence in your plein air work.
Students will leave having completed 3 - 9 split complement color charts (or having mixed 132 - 396 colors!) over the course of a three day session. You will gain permanent clarity and understanding of color - money-back guaranteed!
About the Instructor:
An award-winning artist, educator and curator, Helen Dannelly is a painter and sculptor who studied painting and printmaking at San Francisco State, and sculpture at University of Minnesota and Diablo Valley College. Dannelly is Curator at the ForsheyGallery in downtown Chicago where she curates four-five exhibitions annually. She Co-Founded Catalyst Art Lab, an online artists' membership community and art school. Workshops she offers in painting, color-theory, and mixed-media sculpture are both online and at various in-person venues such as PaintSpace NOLA in New Orleans, the Hui No‘eau Visual Art Center on Maui, Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, Asilomar Conference and Retreat Center in Pacific Grove, CA, Be-Artz in southwest France, and Ballinglen Arts Foundation in County Mayo, Ireland.
Required Materials:
Non-Paint Materials –
2 Small palette knives
Large pad of palette paper (18” x 24” is ideal but slightly smaller will suffice)
Pencil
1 or 2 empty 8oz or larger jars for water
5 sheets Strathmore 400 Series Watercolor Paper 22" x 30” 140lb
Paint Materials – Golden Heavy Body acrylic paint (recommended)
Cadmium Yellow Light or Benzimidazolone Yellow light
Cadmium Yellow (medium OR dark)
Cadmium Red Light or Pyrole Red Light
Alizarin Crimson
Ultramarine Blue
Phthalo Blue (Green shade)
Titanium White (5 oz. tube!)
***Many of the materials listed here can be found at The Nook Mendocino, located on the Mendocino Art Center’s campus. Please contact Education for a discount (education@mendocinoartcenter.org) ***
Optional Materials: Apron, Notebook
Are you looking for a color workshop that goes beyond the basics of color theory?
Join me in Monterey, California and leave your assumptions about color behind! During California Crush I, we'll dive into the relationships between colors, how they interact, and how they can be used to create specific effects.
We're going beyond the basics of color theory.
There is so much more to learn than the basic concepts of hue, value and chroma. Through engaging demonstrations and time-tested exercises, expand the way you approach painting - no matter your level of experience. If you are ready to simplify and enrich your painting practice and permanently open your eyes to being able to see and mix color, then this is the color workshop for you. Let's dive deeper to the world of color!
Topics Include:
Origins of modern color theory
Mixing exercises to put that theory into practice
Three attributes of color and how to isolate and manipulate them
Additive versus subtractive color color perception
Relativity (primary, secondary, and tertiary colors)
Complementary colors
Muted hues
Chromatic versus achromatic grays
...and much more!
Expect To:
Master the fundamentals of color
Quit getting "mud"
Understand color relationships
Learn to mix harmonious colors
Broaden your essential color vocabulary
What People Are Saying:
"...helping me grow by leaps and bounds!" -Jan M.
"...a springboard for me to create more complex and nuanced artwork." - Heather D.
"Helen is an excellent teacher!" - Mikey B.
"I learned so much in Helen's color course!" - Ingrid A.
"...right up there with college classes." - Pam H.
"...answering questions I never knew how to ask!" - Suzanne D.
“...surprised and humbled by how much I didn’t know and how much there is to know about color!" - Karen N. F.
Expect Your Painting Practice to Blossom
Since my first color theory course as an undergraduate art student over 30 years ago, I've had a deep appreciation for the difference color theory can make with your painting practice. I find that artists often hit a roadblock with their work, get stymied by color and just don’t know how to resolve it. It's exciting to see the lightbulb go off as artists do the color mixing exercises and realize all the subtleties they can achieve with various palettes. I love watching them dive in and create beyond what they thought was possible, to be surprised by how much further they can push their work. Once they understand how to achieve harmonious color palettes and combine color to achieve the look they are after, their painting practice just blossoms.
Join me at Asilomar Retreat Center - Monterey Peninsula’s “Refuge-by-the-sea” - in Pacific Grove, California and indulge your senses during this deep dive into color!
-Helen