How to create analogous color rainbow ribbons

Welcome! This blog post features a guided tutorial of how to create a composition of rainbow ribbons. This activity helps artists to build skills in COLOR THEORY, specifically working with analogous color schemes. Additionally, the composition helps artists to improve their skills of creating blended GRADIENTS, which are gradual transitions of colors into one another. While the method to create this composition is fairly simple, it yields a really cool result with many possible creative solutions!

Working with a group of artists? Challenge everyone to collaborate to make their rainbow ribbon CONNECT into a larger composition.

This composition can be done with a range of art materials, such as colored pencils, acrylic paint, and watercolor! The examples seen here were rendered with oil pastels (for the ribbon) and black acrylic paint for the background.

WHAT IS AN ANALOGOUS COLOR SCHEME?

Analogous color schemes can be described as three or more colors NEXT to each other on the color wheel. When colors are placed in the order of the rainbow, they represent an analogous color scheme. A fun way to remember this order is with the acronym ROY G BIV!

Step 1:

On your picture plane, use a yellow colored pencil *recommended* to lightly draw a curved contour line. This line can go off the edge of the paper and loop back on. This line can overlap itself. Get creative!

Step 2:

Begin to form the rainbow ribbon by finding a starting point on the squiggly line. Begin with RED and then add ORANGE. To form the ribbon explore how to make the initial line vary in LINE WEIGHT, which is the thickness of the line. The ribbon can go from thick to thin to make the composition more eye catching.

The end goal is to have MORE color on the paper than empty BLACK space.

Step 3:

Where the RED meets the ORANGE, overlap the two colors into one another to create a blended gradient where the colors are mixing into each other.

By mixing the RED into the ORANGE, the tertiary color RED-ORANGE is created!

Step 4:

Repeat this process along the entire squiggly line to create the analogous color scheme and render the rainbow ribbon.

Explore how the ribbon can overlap and underlap.

Step 5:

Creatively finalize the background. One recommended approach is to fill it black to create CONTRAST!

Below are some examples of other ways to finalize the background. Get creative!

Step 6:

Use a black art tool to create a cast shadow on areas where the ribbon overlaps.