Exploring Color

Theory,

Media,

Mixing,

and Psychology

Light and Color

• Color does not exist in a material form. It is entirely a product of light.

The way our visual system perceives color:

When light moves through space and enters the inner eye, it is converted into electro-chemical energy by retinal receptors, which then transmit encoded impulses through the optic nerve. Finally, the brain processes and interprets these signals in complex ways that are still not fully understood.

The Vocabulary of Color

• Hue: simply put,

the NAME of the color.

• The “local” color of an object is its color without considering how highlights, shadows, and reflections can change that color.

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Value: How light or dark the color is.

• Different Hues have basically different values like yellow is typically a lighter value than blue. However there can be some blues that are lighter in value than some yellows.
• Squinting your eyes to see in value.
• The pink egg story, how your brain can trick you, and how to fix it.

In a typical color wheel, yellow is often placed at the top because of it’s inherent light value (A).  The palette is arranged from light  to dark (B). Notice the yellows are next to white on the light side of the color arrangement. On the dark side, a rich, saturated green and a purple are used as substitutes for black .

Intensity: How bright or dull the color is.

• A pigment will never be more intense than it is in its purest form (unmixed, or pure color wheel hues).
• The range of the dullest color possible is so dull that you cannot discern any hue at all.
• Colors can be mixed with white (tinted), or black (shaded), or their complement (neutralized) to decrease their intensity while retaining their tone.

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Color Schemes

Complementary: colors are opposite in hue and are also opposite each other on the color wheel. These colors fight for dominance and create tension when placed next to each other.

Analogous: colors are next to each other on the color wheel. Because of the colors they share, these schemes are quite harmonious.

Triadic: made up of three equidistant hues on the color wheel. Here, orange, green, and violet are show- a harmonious scheme because these secondary hues have colors in common.

Split Complementary: made up of one hue plus the hues on either side of its complement. Here green, plus red-orange and red-violet. Complementary colors tend to clash, so choosing colors near the complement lessens the clash but keeps the contrast.

Rectangular Tetradic: made up of two sets of complements, this is very tricky. They can either be a set of 2 primaries combined with two secondaries or all tertiaries.

Monochromatic: One color/ color scheme includes pencil and charcoal drawings.

Media: Drawing with color

resources

• Basic Blending Create a color wheel using col-erase pencils, view from 10 minute mark to 19 minute
• A Mulberry Tree 10 minute demo using Fabre Castel oil base pencils

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Paper: Toothy, tinted, off-white, illustration board, or prepare your own

Dry: Most like drawing. Colored pencils (wax or oil base), crayons, pastels (chalk and oil), conte.

Wet: Harder to control. Include watercolor, gouache, colored inks, felt tip markers.

Psychology and Color: Symbolism and Expressionism

• The element of color is integral to the drawing discipline because of its ability to influence us emotionally.
• Color establishes mood and personal expression going directly to the center of our feelings bypassing logic and analysis. Mus of its interpretation is based on context.
• Red: blood, fire, passion and aggression. The most violent and exhilarating.
• White: contradictory interpretations. Represents death to Asian and African cultures and innocence and purity in western cultures.
• Black: also contradictory, death and evil in the west and life and growth in Africa. Universally mystery, intrigue and sophistication
• Green: the color of balance and harmony but in a negative sense; sickness and jealousy
• Yellow: Most ambiguous color. Sunlight, happiness, intellect, enlightenment but also envy, disgrace, deceit, and greed.

Psychology of Color

• Blue: The last color in every language to receive a name. Believed that until it could be made (reproduced) it never needed a name. Symbolizes fidelity and loyalty, as well as depression and immorality.
• Orange: Very little traditional symbolic meaning. Related to a feeling of the Autumnal season preceding winter with Fall colors.
• Brown: symbolizes misery or gloominess, loss of focus.
• Purple: Closest in value to black, while its compliment yellow is the lightest in value. The contrast of these two together form sunlight and shadow, joy and sadness. Because of the expense of reproducing it, it is associated with royalty, bravery (opposite of yellow), sometimes shyness (violet).
• Pink: Femininity, light mood unlike red.
• Gray: Gloom and depression, indecision, uncertainty.

From Theory to Practice

Other principles to understand are…

• Color constancy: seeing only colors you expect to see.
• Simultaneous contrast: the effects of adjacent colors on each other.
• The unexpected effects of light and shadow on color.
• The harmonious effects of working within pre-planned color families
• Using colors within your palette to create neutrals.

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