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The Basics of Color

Color has its own language, so if you are starting out as an artist, you need to familiarise yourself with the vocabulary of color. This will ensure you can communicate easily with other artists and understand what your are doing when mixing paint colors.

The basic characteristics of color are used in both color theory and in practice. They are:

hue - the name of a color

value - the light to dark range of a color

intensity - a measurement of how different from pure grey a color is

temperature - the warmth or coolness of a color (red-orange is warmest, blue-green is coolest)

Hue: Hue is the term for the pure spectrum colors commonly referred to by the "color names" - red, orange, yellow, blue, green, violet - which appear in the hue circle or rainbow.

In theory, all hues can be mixed from three basic hues, known as primary colors. When pigment primaries are all mixed together, the theoretical result is black.

The primary colors consist of three hues from which we can theoretically mix all other hues. These are red, blue and yellow. This traditional definition of primaries does not mix to clear greens or purples. It is based on 19th century theories.

In mixing colors hues can be desaturated (reduced in purity, weakened) in one of three ways. They can be mixed with white to lighten the value (tint), mixed with black to darken the value (shade), or mixed with gray or the complement to either lighten or darken the value ( tone).

Complements are colors that are opposite each other on the hue circle. When complements are mixed with each other in paint, the result is muted tones which desaturate or dull the hues. Opposite pairs can also be compared in terms of their relative warmth and coolness. Warm-cool contrast of hue can cause images to appear to advance or recede.

Hue also has value. When contrasting hues are made similar in value, the spatial effects are flattened out.

Value: Value means the relative lightness or darkness of a color. or the amount of light reflected from a hue. It is important for the artist, in the way that it defines form and creates spatial illusions.

Contrasting value separates objects in space, while gradation of value suggests mass and contour of a contiguous surface.

Values are used traditionally in a range from white to black, but high-key or low-key value leads to expressive color.

Intensity: A color's intensity can also be called its saturation. It is a measurement of how different from pure grey the colour is. Intensity is not really a matter of light and dark, but rather how pale or strong the colour is. It is based on the color's purity. A highly saturated hue has a vivid, intense color, while a less saturated hue appears more muted and grey. With no saturation at all, the hue becomes a shade of grey.

The purer the saturation or intensity, the better the contrast. The color wheel in the middle is the purest color.

Diagram from Jeff Hope (A Little Bit About Color)

To desaturate a color in a system such as watercolor, the artist can add white, black, grey or the hue's complement. Adding black to the color causes it to become muddied and dark, giving it a shade. Adding white causes the color to become washed out, or tinted.

The intensity of a colour is not constant, but varies depending on the surroundings and in what light the colour is seen.

Color Temperature: The concept of color temperature or warm and cool colors is important to artists yet often no well understood in the world of artists. Technically, color temperature refers to the temperature to which one would have to heat a theoretical "black body" source to produce light of the same visual color. In everyday language, this means color temperature measures the warmth or coolness of a color.

It is a simplified way to characterize the spectral properties of a light source. While in reality the color of light is determined by how much each point on the spectral curve contributes to its output, the result can still be summarized on a linear scale.

The standard unit for color temperature is Kelvin (K). Some typical color temperatures are:

1500K - Candlelight

3000K - Incandescent 200 watt light

3200K - Sunrise or sunset

3400K - 1 hour from dusk or dawn

5500K - Full sunlight around noon

7000K - Overcast sky

8000K - Average summer shade

12000K - Blue sky

Low color temperature implies warmer (more yellow/red) light, while high color temperature implies a colder (more blue) light. Daylight has a rather low color temperature near dawn, and a higher one during the day. This also in tune with human feelings towards the warm colors of light coming from candles or an open fire.

Diagram from www.handprint.com

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The Basics of Color

Hue: Hue is the term for the pure spectrum colors commonly referred to by the "color names" - red, orange, yellow, blue, green, violet - which appear in the hue circle or rainbow.

In theory, all hues can be mixed from three basic hues, known as primary colors. When pigment primaries are all mixed together, the theoretical result is black.

Value: Value means the relative lightness or darkness of a color. or the amount of light reflected from a hue. It is important for the artist, in the way that it defines form and creates spatial illusions.

Contrasting value separates objects in space, while gradation of value suggests mass and contour of a contiguous surface.

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