Color is a
property of light
As light changes,
color will change
Our eyes & brains
mix 'primary colors'
together to make
other colors
Colors are
subjective and
symbolic
Context changes
our perception
What is Chroma?
Chroma and Saturation both seem to deal with a range
between an intense color (or colorfulness) and gray but specifically Saturation + Brightness = Chroma
Why can't I paint the color I want to see?
- Using the primary colors from the color wheel we were taught in school doesn't work with just any blue, red and yellow... "Helpful" diagrams are depicting a theoretical perfect world, so mix the paints you have available to see what colors you can actually achieve.
- Are we talking additive or subtractive?
- The primary colors of light are red, green, and blue (opposite of red is cyan)
- Printers use cyan, magenta and yellow and black
- Lastly, a color (even gray) will look warm or cool depending its surrounding colors, perhaps the color you want is produced by two or more colors seen next to each other?
- How Pure is the pigment?
- How much pigment is in the paint?
- Does the color you want to make require mixing a warm color or cool colors?
Hue, Value, Saturation, Intensity, Chroma
Color
Trichromatic Theory,
additive/subtractive,
color wheels, Itten
How does color exist?
Color: A visual attribute of things
that result from the light
they emit or transmit or reflect...
The mystery of mirrors and magenta...
History
In 1666, Sir Isaac Newton discovered that if light from the sun passes through a prism, it separates into the colors of the rainbow. He also realized that each color has its own wavelength, so the six main colors can't be broken down further.
VOCABULARY & DIAGRAMS
Optical color mixing
How can we effectively
use color as en element of design?
Additive vs. Subtractive
The history of art/artists who figured out how to communicate to other artists how to consider using color...
Old-style TVs
All rely on your eye to optically mix color
from looking at it from a distance.
Other Experiments
"Linguistic relativism"
“And jealous now of me, you gods,
because I befriend a man,
one I saved as he straddled the keel alone,
when Zeus had blasted and shattered
his swift ship with a bright lightning bolt,
out on the wine-dark sea.”
—Homer, The Odyssey, Book V
Because Newton couldn't leave his home (due to the plague) he did many experiments.
Certain lights can be combined to form new colors, such as yellow and blue creating green. These are called metamers.
Other light combinations can revert the colors back to the original white, such as yellow and purple. They complete each other, and are called compliments.
Perception is oriented around concepts.
Wine-dark sea?
Why not blue?
Strange weather?
Air Pollution? Were these Greeks colorblind?
We may never know for sure, but one peculiar fact casts the mystery in an interesting light: there is no word for “blue” in ancient Greek.
Retinas
Optical illusions
When light hits an object, the colors reflected are the colors we see, so in an orange, the frequency of orange waves are reflected, and the rest are absorbed.
When the reflected light of the orange comes into contact with our eyes, it hits the ultra sensitive retinas in the back of the eyes. This retina is home to millions of cones, which act as the receivers of light.
The color “blue” appears not once in the New Testament, and its appearance in the Torah is questioned. Ancient Japanese used the same word for blue and green (Ao), and even modern Japanese describes, for instance, thriving trees as being “very blue,” (to describe something as “lush” or “abundant”).
This parallels the frequency of colors that can be found in nature (blue and purple are very rare, red is quite frequent, and greens and browns are everywhere)
That is like... the point of this class...
The Trichromatic Theory of vision is that we have
only 3 types of cones, blue, red and green.
Synesthesia and Emotions
Overview of Waves and Color
Colors are split into two main categories, the warm colors and the cool colors.
Warm colors include Orange, Red, and Yellow and may symbolize emotions like warmth and comfort, as well as anger. These are the "bolder" emotions people feel.
Cool colors include Blue, Green, and Purple. They may symbolize emotions such as calmness, but also sadness. These emotions can be described as the more subtle feelings.
Color and movement...
Cones
VALUE
64 percent of these cones respond strongly to red, a third respond to green, and 2 percent to blue.
As the orange reflected light hits the cones, they are stimulated to varying degrees. This is based off the color reflected from the wave . If the wave is "Red," the red cones will be the ones to react the most. The signal is then sent to the brain, which processes the information and gives the color we see.
Hans Hoffman's
The Golden Wall
Warm hues tend to come forward
Cool tones recede
High contrast advances
Low contrast recedes
High saturation comes forward
Low saturation recedes
When a red and a green are reach a saturation that are close enough they will appear to vibrate!
HUE
Color preferences
Tints: Hue+White
The tiny spectrum of visible light
We are all creatures of our own time, our realities framed not by the limits of our knowledge but by what we choose to perceive. Do we yet perceive all the colors there are?
Consider this: Which names for a type of "brown" gives you a pleasant feeling and which do not? Match each descript
Shades: Hue + Black
Chocolate
Earth tones
Natural wood
Muddy
Rust
Poopy
Human versus other Animals
In a human, the brain and eyes work together to turn light into color. Some receptors of light in the eye transmit messages to the brain. This produces the color we know. Our visible color spectrum isn't the same as all animals, as we see more colors than dogs for example, but not as much as bees, who have four types of cones, which allow them to detect ultraviolet light and helps them detect nectar in flowers.
the visible spectrum of colors
SATURATION
Although colors scientifically break down into a linear visible spectrum of single wavelengths, our minds create colors like Magenta for continuity.
This is why Magenta (Red+Violet) doesn't show up in a rainbow but it exists on the color wheel
There are many millions of colors, but they fall into 12 main sections. These sections are all present in the color wheel.
Tones: Hue+Gray
Magenta is special...
Why mixing colors badly might not entirely be your fault...
Hue: Blue-Green
Value: It's a shade of Blue-Green
Saturation: It's the full saturation of a shade of Blue-Green
This shows not only simultaneous contrast,
but the blue appears much lighter surrounded by black, and darker when surrounded by white.
This is called "Simultaneous Contrast"
YOU NEED THE RIGHT PAINTS!
First off... what medium?
The limits of knowing just concepts:
- (Although it depends heavily on the surrounding colors) Not all mixes of grays or browns will be pleasing, or saturated in the right way.
- The more you mix colors together the less saturation you will achieve.
- Trying to make your yellow look brighter? Buy a brighter yellow. Why? Even though adding some white to purple or blue heightens its perceived colorfulness adding white to any yellow paint only dulls the saturation.
- Even worse, adding black to yellow makes it turn greenish as opposed to creating a darker yellow!
- Try different kinds of warm/cool primary colors until you get the kind of purple or orange or green you like and remember which paints you needed to recreate it.