Drawing with Colors: Art in Spanish (Level A1)
Learn Spanish with a text about drawing: the colour names, where morado and naranja come from, and how colour adjectives agree. Level A1, with instant word translation.
Dibujar con colores
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This article is about drawing with colours. Level A1, for beginners. Twenty learning cards cover the colour words (morado, naranja, verde, azul) and how colour adjectives agree, gustar with a singular and a plural subject, hay for what exists, and the two verbs hiding behind me siento. Along the way you learn where three Spanish colour names come from: morado from la mora, naranja from the fruit and rosa from the flower; why coger is normal in Spain and best avoided in much of Latin America; and what el príncipe azul means.
Mi caja de lápices
Tengo una caja de lápices de colores. Hay lápices rojos, azules, verdes y amarillos. También hay dos lápices con nombre de fruta: uno morado y uno naranja. Me gustan mucho los colores fuertes.
El nombre de los colores
El morado viene de la mora, una fruta pequeña y oscura. El naranja viene de la naranja: primero existe la fruta y después el color. Con el rosa pasa lo mismo, porque una rosa es una flor.
El arcoíris
Hoy dibujo un arcoíris. Los colores van siempre en el mismo orden. Arriba está el rojo y abajo está el morado. En medio están el naranja, el amarillo, el verde y el azul.
Los colores hablan
En español los colores dicen cosas de las personas. Cuando alguien pasa vergüenza, se pone rojo. Un plátano verde todavía no está listo para comer. Y en los cuentos, el chico perfecto es siempre el príncipe azul.
Delante del papel
Por la tarde me siento a mi mesa. Cojo una hoja de papel blanco y empiezo a dibujar. Primero pinto el cielo de azul claro. Después hago un sol amarillo, un círculo grande. Al final dibujo flores: los pétalos son rojos y el tallo es verde.
Mi madre
Mi madre me mira dibujar. Sonríe y dice que soy una buena artista. Me siento muy feliz. A mi madre le gusta el azul, pero mi color favorito es el morado. Cuando termino, pongo el dibujo en la pared de mi habitación. Ya tengo muchos y todos son muy coloridos.
¿Y tú? ¿Cuál es tu color favorito? ¿Dibujas con lápices o con el ordenador? ¿Hay un color que no usas nunca?
About this article
What you'll learn
20 cards: the colour names and how they agree, gustar with one thing and with many, hay, and the sentarse / sentirse trap
This article is about drawing with colours. Level A1, for beginners. Twenty learning cards cover the colour words (morado, naranja, verde, azul) and how colour adjectives agree, gustar with a singular and a plural subject, hay for what exists, and the two verbs hiding behind me siento. Along the way you learn where three Spanish colour names come from: morado from la mora, naranja from the fruit and rosa from the flower; why coger is normal in Spain and best avoided in much of Latin America; and what el príncipe azul means.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
Cojo una hoja de papel blanco
newI take a sheet of white paper
Coger means to take or pick something up with your hand. The yo form swaps the g for a j: coger, cojo, coges, coge.
In Spain coger is used constantly, but in much of Latin America it is a vulgar word, so people say tomar or agarrar instead.
Es mi actividad favorita
newit is my favourite activity
Favorito changes with the noun it describes: mi actividad favorita, mi color favorito, mis libros favoritos.
Spanish puts favorito after the noun, never in front of it as English does.
Tengo una caja de lápices de colores
newI have a box of coloured pencils
One is el lápiz, several are los lápices: the z turns into c before the plural ending -es.
Every Spanish noun in -z makes its plural this way: lápiz, lápices; pez, peces; luz, luces.
me siento a mi mesa
newI sit down at my table
The verb here is sentarse, to sit down. Watch the preposition: sentarse a la mesa is to sit down at the table, while sentarse en la mesa would put you on top of it.
Me siento is also the yo form of sentirse, to feel, which turns up later in the text: me siento muy feliz. Same two words, two different verbs.
empiezo a dibujar
newI start to draw
Empezar a plus an infinitive means to start doing something, and the a is obligatory: empiezo a dibujar, never empiezo dibujar.
Empezar is not regular: the stem e becomes ie in empiezo, empiezas, empieza and empiezan, but not in empezamos.
Mi madre me mira dibujar
newmy mother watches me draw
After verbs of perception Spanish uses a bare infinitive: me mira dibujar, te oigo cantar. English needs an -ing form or a whole clause.
The me is the person being watched, not the one doing the watching.
Me siento muy feliz
newI feel very happy
Here me siento is sentirse, to feel. Sentirse is followed by an adjective: me siento feliz, me siento cansada.
Compare the earlier me siento a mi mesa, which was sentarse. What comes next tells you which verb you have.
se pone rojo
newhe goes red, he blushes
Ponerse plus a colour or an adjective is how Spanish says to turn or to go: se pone rojo, se pone triste, me pongo nerviosa.
Ponerse rojo is the everyday way of saying somebody blushed, and pasar vergüenza is the feeling behind it.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Dibujar: to draw
dibujar
to draw
A fully regular -ar verb: dibujo, dibujas, dibuja, dibujamos, dibujáis, dibujan. It means drawing with lines; putting colour on is pintar.
The noun is el dibujo, a drawing, and the person who does it is el dibujante.
El color: colour
colores
colours
El color is masculine even though it ends in -or, and its plural is los colores. The colour word comes after: el color rojo, los colores fuertes.
Do not confuse it with la flor, which ends the same way and is feminine.
El arcoíris: rainbow
arcoíris
rainbow
Two words joined into one: arco, an arch, plus iris. The accent on the í keeps the two vowels apart, so it is said ar-co-í-ris.
The plural does not change: un arcoíris, dos arcoíris.
El artista, la artista
artista
artist
Artista keeps the same -a ending for a man and for a woman. Only the words around it show the gender: un buen artista, una buena artista.
Dozens of professions work this way: pianista, dentista, periodista, taxista.
Morado: purple
morado
purple
Morado is named after la mora, the mulberry or blackberry, because of its dark juice. As an adjective it agrees: un lápiz morado, una flor morada.
The colour has its own expression too: pasarlas moradas, to go through a very hard time.
Naranja: orange
naranja
orange (the fruit and the colour)
One word for the fruit and for the colour, just as in English. La naranja is the fruit; el naranja is the colour.
Spanish took the word from Arabic, along with thousands of others that entered the language in those centuries.
Verde: green
verde
green
Verde ends in -e, so it does not change for gender: un lápiz verde, una hoja verde. Only the plural changes: verdes.
Verde also means unripe, and about a person it means somebody who is still a beginner at something.
Azul: blue
azul
blue
Azul has one form for both genders and adds -es in the plural: lápices azules, flores azules. Shades take a second word: azul claro, azul oscuro.
El príncipe azul is the Spanish Prince Charming, the perfect boy of fairy tales.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
Gustar: what pleases whom
me gusta dibujar
I like drawing
Gustar does not mean to like, it means to please, so the thing liked is the subject. One thing: me gusta el azul. Several things: me gustan los colores fuertes. The verb follows the thing, not the person.
The person is a pronoun, and can be named as well: a mi madre le gusta el azul.
Colours agree with the noun
Hay lápices rojos, azules, verdes y amarillos
there are red, blue, green and yellow pencils
Colours ending in -o have four forms: rojo, roja, rojos, rojas. Colours ending in -e or in a consonant have only two: verde and verdes, azul and azules.
That is why one short list shows both patterns: lápices rojos and amarillos, but lápices azules and verdes.
Hay: there is, there are
También hay dos lápices con nombre de fruta
there are also two pencils named after a fruit
Hay never changes: hay un lápiz, hay dos lápices. It says that something exists. To say where a known thing is, Spanish uses estar: el lápiz está en la caja.
Hay takes a number or nothing at all in front of the noun, never el or la: hay lápices, not hay los lápices.
Cuál: which one of them
¿Cuál es tu color favorito?
what is your favourite colour?
Before the verb ser Spanish asks cuál, not qué, when you have to pick one out of many: ¿Cuál es tu color favorito? ¿Cuál es tu nombre? Qué before ser asks for a definition: ¿Qué es un arcoíris?
The question opens with an upside-down ¿, and cuál carries an accent because it is a question word.
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