Shadowing Practice: How Chinese Colour Theory Changed My Art Forever (the truth) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The truth is that all these things we've been taught about complementary colors
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and analogous palettes are probably harming us more than they are helping us.
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Because after meticulously studying from the Chinese YouTube,
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Billy Billy, I've discovered that Chinese artists tend to approach color theory in a completely different way.
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So just stay with me until the end of this video
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and you'll learn knowledge that I'm pretty confident you'll struggle to find elsewhere on YouTube.
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So first up, let's talk about an important art concept you've probably never heard before.
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Qi Yun, which describes the energy or vibe of colors, but not in a hippie way.
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While Western artists often obsess over perfect hue matches,
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Chinese artists tend to care more about capturing the mood and emotion of their subjects using saturation and brightness.
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But what does that actually mean in practice?
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Well, instead of trying to decide if blue and orange are complementary enough, Chinese artists ask the most important question of all.
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What feeling do I want my viewers to feel when looking at my art?
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They then pick colours accordingly, not just based on hue, contrary to what we've mostly been taught.
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Instead, they mostly base it on saturation, which matters much more to the mood of a scene than you might expect.
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For example, think about pastels.
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You've likely noticed how soft pastel colours often feel calm, comforting and serene.
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But have you ever wondered why?
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It's because lower saturation and higher brightness naturally soothe the viewer.
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Conversely, colours with high saturation and lower brightness often feel more powerful,
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more intense and often signal drama or tension.
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This makes sense to our monkey brains because we would rarely ever see such saturated colours out in nature,
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unless it was something important like ripe fruits or blood.
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Our brains would stay more alert because of that.
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And here's the part most people miss.
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Saturation doesn't just change how bright something feels, it changes how much attention it demands.
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The human eye is wired to seek out the most saturated point in any composition.
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So even if your overall scene is perfectly composed, a single overly saturated spot can hijack the viewer's focus entirely.
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That's why masters use saturation sparingly as a form of a visual hierarchy.
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They let the calm muted areas do the heavy lifting,
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then place one or two areas of a richer colour exactly where your eyes want to land.
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Meaning to apply this to your own artworks,
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you can just throw away all the concepts you've been taught about complementary colours and analogous palettes to build visual intrigue.
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So rather than strictly sticking to colour wheels, ask yourself is this scene calm or intense?
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Should it feel gentle or energetic and adjust the saturation and brightness first,
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instead of playing into the western cliché of red for danger and blue for calm?
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Then watch your work instantly level up in emotional impact.
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But let's keep going deeper, because the next layer of this concept reveals another hidden gem of Chinese colour theory,
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which is 水雷富才.
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This is a game changer because it completely ignores rigid colour theory rules in favour of storytelling and emotional authenticity.
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The direct translation doesn't do it justice, so I'll explain what it would involve.
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Imagine painting a serene river scene in a quiet countryside.
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Some western trained artists might default to complementary blues and greens, creating something technically correct.
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But Chinese artists might do things a bit differently, using whites for the river and choosing softer muted greens,
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creating a more empty and airy feeling to the painting which immerses the viewer.
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So instead of thinking of colouring objects in a simplified way of tree, okay green, water, okay blue,
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you can try thinking of what should the water feel like in this scene
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and this can often mean that you don't even choose blue as the colour for the water.
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So the general idea of of Sui Le Foucai is that colours should be assigned based on the nature of the subject, not just visual balance.
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This is why you would often see rivers painted in earthy greys rather than the textbook blue,
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or skin tones built with muted pinks and greys rather than high saturation peach.
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So next time you paint, instead of picking colours based purely on harmony, think what story or emotion am I trying to show.
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The result might surprise you.
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Because the goal isn't accuracy anymore.
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The simple trick to this is to remove colour from your reference entirely.
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Yup, we're removing the colour to paint colour.
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Let me explain.
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We'll convert it to black and white, then reimagine the colours from scratch based on emotion rather than what you see.
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Ask yourself, What temperature fits this emotion?
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What saturation level supports it?
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When you start thinking that way, you're not copying the world anymore, you're re-interpreting it.
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That's the heart of Sui Lei Fucai, using colour not as description but as expression.
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Now this last concept is where the real mastery comes in.
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Because what most people think of as grey doesn't actually exist in real life.
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Every grey takes on the qualities of the light and colour around it.
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This means the same grey can appear warm in one context and cold in another.
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You've probably seen this with various famous examples, such as this one, where the background of the grey makes it look slightly orange or blue,
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even though it's actually the same grey.
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It's not just about picking the right colour, it's about letting the colour react to its environment.
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This is yet another reason why all these realistic
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and artistic portraits by Chinese artists have a distinct type of just style about them.
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The colours are simply based on a different concept and objective.
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Instead of trying to push colours into the portrait like you normally would, you know, using orange for something that's orange or blue for something that's blue,
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the masters will often utilise this concept of hui se xi to instead use greys to represent a certain colour.
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This way, you're able to have a more harmonious colour scheme since the colours are closer together.
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Think muted lavender in shadow or soft peach in skin tones.
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So how can you actually apply this to your own work?
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Start by thinking in temperature, not hue.
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When you look at a subject, don't ask, what colour is this?
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Instead ask, is this area warm or cool?
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Then pick a desaturated colour that fits that temperature.
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You'll notice that your colours start to react to each other more naturally instead of clashing.
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Next, stop using neutral grey straight from your palette.
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Mix your greys from the colours already in the scene.
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If your painting has a lot of warm tones, let some of that warmth bleed into your shadows and backgrounds.
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That shared pigment makes everything feel like it exists under the same light source.
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You can also use coloured greys to control how saturated your painting feels.
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A painting where every colour is bright and intense quickly feels chaotic, but when you surround those vivid areas with subtle coloured greys,
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your eyes finally have space to rest saturated spots suddenly feel richer and more powerful without you touching their brightness.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How Chinese Colour Theory Changed My Art Forever”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: colour, grey, saturation, blue, instead. This video has 89 sentences and 1217 words to shadow. The speech runs for 8:02. The speaker talks at a natural 151 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| colours noun | Flag denoting the nationality of a vessel, flown from the stern. | |
| saturation noun | The act of saturating or the process of being saturated. | |
| brightness noun | /ˈbɹaɪtnəs/ | The quality of being bright. |
| saturated adjective | Full; unable to hold or contain any more. | |
| complementary adjective | /ˌkɑmplɪˈmɛnt(ə)ɹi/ | Acting as a complement; making up a whole with something else. |
| mute adjective | /mjut/ | Not having the power of speech; dumb. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| palette noun | /ˈpælɪt/ | A thin board on which a painter lays and mixes colours. |
| viewer noun | /ˈvju.ɚ/ | Someone who views a spectacle; an onlooker or spectator. |
| analogous adjective | /əˈnæl.ə.ɡəs/ | Having analogy, the status of an analogue; corresponding to something else; bearing some resemblance or similar proportion (often followed by "to".) |
| pastel noun | /pæsˈtɛl/ | Any of several subdued tints of colors, usually associated with pink, peach, yellow, green, blue, and lavender. |
| serene adjective | /səˈɹin/ | Calm, peaceful, unruffled. |
| peach noun | /ˈpiːt͡ʃ/ | Any tree of species Prunus persica, native to China and now widely cultivated throughout temperate regions, having pink flowers and edible fruit. |
| react verb | /ɹiːˈækt/ | To act in response. |
| changer noun | /ˈt͡ʃeɪnd͡ʒɚ/ | Someone or something who changes things. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| throw away verb | To discard (trash, garbage, or the like), to toss out, to put in the trash. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | we've been taught · I've discovered · you've probably never heard |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | we've been taught · been taught · is wired |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 23 contractions and reduced forms, such as you've, doesn't, you'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: earthy /ˈɝθi/, soothe /suːð/, authenticity /ɑθɛnˈtɪsɪti/, warmth /wɔɹmθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, clash /ˈklæʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: complementary /ˌkɑmplɪˈmɛnt(ə)ɹi/, analogous /əˈnæl.ə.ɡəs/, desaturate /diːˈsætʃəɹeɪt/, harmonious /hɑɹˈmoʊni.əs/, authenticity /ɑθɛnˈtɪsɪti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like colours, saturation, brightness.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.