Dec
31

Color Theory Basics

By lauren // Art, Art Tips // 1 Comment

Color is one of the basic fundamentals of art. It’s a pretty easy concept to grasp but it can help you with your art when you’re struggling. A lot of art classes will briefly go over color and some schools offer classes just for color theory. Color is a very important element in art.

There is a lot of vocabulary that goes along with color theory, so for now I”ll just cover the basics.

First off, what is color? Color, defined in Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice, is the visual response to different wavelengths of sunlight, identified as red,green, blue, and so on; having the physical properties of hue, intensity, and value.

This is your basic color wheel. A color wheel is a chart that allows you to decide on a harmonious color scheme. This particular color shows you the names of the colors and a label that says whether they are primary, secondary, or tertiary colors.

Primary colors are hues that cannot be made by mixing colors. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. You can not mix any color to get these. You can see on the color wheel that the primary colors make a triangle.

If you mix two primary colors, you get a secondary color. The secondary colors are green, orange, and purple.

Secondary Color Equations:

red + blue = purple

red + yellow = orange

blue + yellow =green

Tertiary colors are colors made by mixing a secondary color with a primary color. You can see in the color wheel above that primary colors, secondary colors, and the tertiary colors all make a triangle.

The terms analogous colors, complementary colors, and monochromatic colors are use when referring to the relationships between the colors on the color wheel.

Analogous colors are colors that have similar hues. They are the colors that are adjacent to one another on the color wheel. For example, red and red orange are adjacent to each other on the color wheel and have similar hues – therefore they are analogous colors.

Complementary colors are two colors that are directly opposite from each other on the color wheel. A primary color is complementary to a secondary color. This is helpful to know when stuck for a color in your art piece. An example of complementary colors is red and green; They are directly opposite from each other on the color wheel.

To define monochromatic colors, you first need to know what hue and value is. Hue, simply put, is color; when you say something is red, yellow, blue, ect, you are referring to it’s hue. Value refers to how dark or light a color is. So, monochromatic colors are colors of one hue on a value scale from black to white.

Here is a diagram that will help explain what monochromatic colors are.

That’s all the color theory I’ll go over for now. I highly recommend getting “Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice 11th Edition” by Otto . Ocvirk. I got it for my basic design class and it goes over everything you need to know about the basics of design and art. It’s a good reference book. =)