Peter Donahue, art educator, painter, cartoonist, and graphic designer

TikTok as Color Theory’s One-Room Schoolhouse

What misbeliefs about color persist, and why? It turns out TikTok is a perfect laboratory to explore this question. Peter will discuss what he has learned by attempting to communicate science-based color theory on the world’s fastest growing social media platform.

Bio

Peter Donahue is an art educator, painter, cartoonist, and graphic designer. He chairs the Art and Design department at a small private school in New Jersey, where he currently teaches an art foundations course, printmaking and creative writing. In his spare time, he’s done freelance graphic design work for universities, tech start-ups, and fashion brands, and published two volumes of his webcomic "Rudek and the Bear" through Kickstarter. As an artist and educator working in both traditional and digital media, Peter came face to face with the problems inherent in color theory as it is traditionally taught and practiced, and began searching for solutions. As a content creator on TikTok, Peter’s goal is to make science-based color theory accessible to a wide variety of artists and creators. The @color.nerd channel has gained over 300,000 followers, and Peter’s free color tools and graphics have been adopted by university professors, make-up artists, opticians and other professionals, hobbyists, and students around the world.

The Inter-Society Color Council advances the knowledge of color as it relates to art, science, industry and design.
Each of these fields enriches the others, furthering the general objective of color education.