Cool vs. Warm

15-02-2024

#copic color wheel
#copic colors
#copic markers

Greetings Copic readers! In the first blog of 2024, we kicked off the year by showing how the Copic Color Swatch Cards can be extremely helpful for anyone’s Copic marker collection - especially when you’re traveling, trying to decide what colors to use, and being able to quickly see what colors you already have. Today, we’ll be utilizing the Copic Color Swatch Cards again to show how all 358 colors break down into different general color groups; specifically, which of them fall under “cool” versus “warm.” With that being said, let’s get started by taking a look at the image below.

The Copic Color Swatch Cards are displayed here by how they fall into their respective color groups - cool on the left versus warm on the right. In a blog from a few years ago (here), we shared a standard 12-color color wheel and the breakdown of the 6 standard colors that lie on either side. The cool colors are: Violet, Blue-Violet, Blue, Blue-Green, Green, and Yellow-Green. The warm colors are: Yellow, Yellow-Orange, Orange, Red-Orange, Red, and Red-Violet.

*If you would like to print the above color wheel and color it with your Copic markers, please visit the link here to our line art gallery).

However, breaking down the color wheel with Copic markers isn’t that simple. In fact, there are 145 cool colors and only 104 warm. Why is that? There are many possible reasons for this; and one of those could be how easy it is to chemically produce any given color. If, however, you think about it from the point of view of the visible light spectrum, it makes sense that there are more cool Copic marker colors than there are warm. In fact, the human eye has the easiest time seeing green of all colors. Maybe this is why there are 76 total Blue-Green, Green, and Yellow-Green Copic colors, making up nearly 1/4th of all 358.

*The above image was taken from this article on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why all this talk of cool versus warm colors in the first place? Why does this matter to me? Well, if you’re using Copic markers on a regular, or even irregular basis, it’s helpful to know how you can use your art supplies to its fullest potential. Because the cool colors outweigh the warm, you may end up using the same yellows (Y) or yellow-reds (YR) frequently, and that’s helpful to know so you can anticipate when you’ll need Copic Ink to refill them (which is shown in this blog here).

*The above image was used in a previous Copic blog here.

Another helpful reason to be aware of the cool versus warm Copic colors is how you can utilize them in creating color palettes. An example of this can be seen in a simple analogous color scheme, by using a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5 colors that lie next to each other on the color wheel. This can be applied to only cool colors, only warm colors, or a mix of the two; as seen in the video below.

If you would like to try out this Creating a Copic Color Palette exercise yourself, please visit our line art gallery to download the blank template(s) and print it as many times as you see fit (or print out all 3 options) on marker paper to experiment with analogous and/or other Copic color palettes.

And with that, we wrap up today’s blog! Stay tuned for next month, where we’ll discuss the “Other” Copic colors: earth-tones, grays, fluorescents, and achromatics!

Until then, don’t forget to follow us across our social media channels @copic_official_us, and sign up for exclusive discounts and prizes by joining the Copic Club! One last thing - use #copicwithus or tag us @copic_official_us for a chance to have your drawings featured on our Copic US social media channels and the homepage on our website!

Thank you so much for reading and enjoying Copic markers as much as we do! 😀