Color Theory – Color Vocabulary
A Guide to How Colors Are Created and Relate to Each Other
Aug 3, 2009
It is important for artists to understand how colors are created and relate to each other in order to make good color selections for a project. The basics of color theory are hue, pure colors and how they are created; value, their intensity as darkness and lightness are added; and the color wheel, how colors relate to each other.
Color Hue
Hue is another word for color, particularly a pure saturated color. Most artists use the red-yellow-blue system of color identification, which is based on how colors need to be mixed in order to create new colors.
- Primary colors: red, yellow, blue. These colors cannot be obtained from a mixture, but all other colors are a mixture of them.
- Secondary colors: These colors are a mixture of two primary colors. Red and blue make violet (purple), red and yellow make orange, and yellow and blue make green.
- Tertiary colors: These colors are a mixture of a primary and a secondary color: blue-violet, red-violet, yellow-green, blue-green, yellow-orange, and red-orange.
More colors can be created by mixing tertiary colors with primary and secondary colors, and those colors can be mixed with colors and so on, creating an infinite number of hues with slight color differences.
There are also the three neutrals: white, black, and grey. In theory, they have no color in them, but usually a keen eye can detect some undertone of color, particularly in a white or grey color. For example, cream is a white with a yellow undertone.
White and black are created in different ways, depending on the medium being used. Mixing all colors of light together produces white, while absence of light produces black. But mixing all colors of pigments together produces black or a dark brown.
Color Value
Color value refers to the intensity of a color, how light or dark it is.
- Saturated color: the pure color, with no white or black added.
- Tint: saturated color plus white.
- Shade: saturated color plus black.
- Tone: saturated color plus grey.
For example, different values of the saturated hue blue might be sky blue (tint), midnight blue (shade), and dove grey (tone). Various values of the same hue are called monochromatic colors.
Color Wheel—A Rainbow of Color
Hues are arranged around a color wheel in the same order they appear in the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet (often shortened to the mnemonic device of ROY G. BV). This wheel illustrates how colors relate to each other and how they can best be used together:
- Complementary color: colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, such as red and green. When placed together, they will heighten and intensify each other.
- Analogous color: colors that are next to each other on the color wheel, such as yellow, yellow-orange, and orange. They will blend together well but add a bit more contrast than a monochromatic color scheme.
- Triad: three colors that are equidistant on the color wheel, such as yellow, red, and blue. Like complementary colors, these three will have a lot of contrast.
- Split complementary: a color plus the two colors on either side of its complement. For example, red and blue-green and yellow-green. The red will visually pop while the greenish colors will be more muted.
- Rectangular tetrad: the two colors on either side of a color plus the two colors on either side of its complement. For example, for the complements red and green, the artist would choose red-orange, red-violet, blue-green, and yellow-green.
- Square tetrad: four colors that are equidistant from each other on the color wheel. A slightly bolder color combination than the rectangular tetrad because the colors are more distinct from each other.
Combinations of these relationships can be used if the artist wants to use even more colors. For example, a group of analogous colors plus their complement (for example, red, red-violet, red-orange, and green) will really make the complement color pop.
Source:
- Levin, Susan. ColorSense: Creative Color Combinations for Crafters. New York: Sixth & Spring Books, 2008.
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