Color theory is one of the most important topics to learn if you are working on anything which would have colors as an important factor in it. Are you an artist or a designer or just want to do some personal home decoration or wardrobe upgrade, understanding colors will help you for a long run.
WHY LEARN COLOR THEORY?
Almost everyone has used photoshop or any photo editing tools for basic editing or used digital art tools such as windows paint at least in childhood. But have ever wondered what those terms such as saturation or temperature meant? what were those colors bars in color selection tab? Yes, we all have used them without even knowing actual meaning of them. We human understand colors but it is important to know the psychology of colors if you want to make your art work or designs to be better and get the right attention.
Not only for art works, knowing color theory is really important if you are a fashion designer or stylist. It is important to know how colors and different shade of them work together. If the colors don’t match together well, your designs will not be as successful as they should be or even worse, could fail. Nobody would want to wear a bad combination of colors and get bad attention or get embarrassed in public. Even you are styling your own outfits, you would always want to wear good colors. And you know what, knowing about colors would help you buy right clothes and save you a lot of money you unnecessarily spend on wrong piece of clothes and end up never wearing them.
As for a paintings and art decors, an artist can create magic with their art if he/she uses a good combination of colors as colors give a certain emotion. Which is why and how, artists try to spread their message or emotions through their art works.
Even in movies and digital world, colors are so important. If not put together correctly, audience may not get connected to the message a filmmaker is trying to portray and the movie wouldn’t be able to impress the audience.
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So, I hope you understand now why understanding colors is important. Now let’s get some knowledge on colors and the popular terms used for colors. And for a bonus, I will tell you the different emotions every color is connected to.
CREATING VARIATIONS OF COLORS AND THE TERMS
You must have come across the terms such Saturation, Temperature while using any photo editing app in your mobile but you never knew what are they, you just used them and they create really good results in your pictures. So let me tell you what they actually mean.
Hue
Hue represents the different colors. Shifting from one hue to the next is literally shifting from one color to next color. As you can see in the above picture, you change the color when you change hue.
Saturation
Saturation represents the intensity, purity and brightness of the color. More the saturation is, more the intensity and purity of the color will be. Saturation as a word means the amount of the main substance in a mix or combination.
Hence, more saturation of a color means the more amount of color in a solution. As you can see in the above picture, as the saturation is increasing, the amount and intensity of color is increasing from white to blue, red, green and so on.
If the color looks dull or lighter, it means the saturation is less.
Value
Value of a color represents the lightness and darkness. More the value is, more the darkness of a color will be. Here the saturation will be same throughout the change but the lightness and darkness will change from the darkest shade to lightest.
Darker side of a color is called shades while the lighter side of a color is called tint. As you can see in the above picture, as the value is increasing, the shades are becoming darker.
Temperature
Every color has its own properties. And one of them is called temperature. The coolest color of all is blue and the hottest color of all is orange. So the temperature if the color is determined by the content of blue and orange in that color.
When you edit and picture, the picture becomes orange when you maximize the temperature in it and blue when you minimize it.
Hot Colors – Red, Orange, and yellow.
Cool Colors – Green, Blue, and Purple.
Also Read: Finding your own art style.
COLOR GROUPS OR HARMONIES
Color groups are set of particular colors which work together to create different mood. These sets or groups works really well if used together. You can create amazing designs or art works if you know about color groups well and how to use them.
1. Monochromatic
This color group is consisted of a single color but different values of them. Using monochromatic colors give a very simple look. These type of color combinations gives atmospheric feel and can be used for more real and easy on eyes looking art pieces.
Even for clothing, monochromatic color combination gives a very classic and subtle look.
Below is an example of monochrome painting which is made by different shades of red.
2. Analogous
Analogous is group of colors which are adjacent in the color chart. This type of combination is more seen in nature and is very easy on eyes. It creates a peaceful and comfortable mood.
The number of colors could be anything from two to five. The lesser the number, more the real and natural look it will create. It completely depends on what you need in your picture or design.
Make sure you don’t use each colors in same quantity. Try to use the less bright shades more than the brighter ones. Save bright colors for grabbing the attention to a particular area or an object.
3. Complementary
Complementary color group is made of the two opposite colors in the color wheel. This type of color combination is most popular and looks good if one color is predominantly used than the other color.
For example, If you are using red and green which are opposite to each other on the color wheel, use shades of green in most area of your work and use red where you want to grab the most attention. If you will use both the colors equally, it will not create the pleasing and natural look as they should.
4. Split Complementary
Split complementary is similar to the complementary but the one end is split into two colors next to it, as shown in the figure.
This type of color combinations give more freedom to be creative and give more lively and happy feeling to the combination, while still complementing each other.
5. Double Complementary
Double complementary is a combination of two complementary groups in one design. These type of combination can be used for creating variations in background and foreground of a design or painting.
As mentioned before, it is best to not use all the colors in equal quantity. Better use one or two colors lighter colors for most of the areas while use other brighter shades for smaller areas.
These type of color combination is good for grabbing attention but still being easy on eyes.
6. Traidic
Traidic is a group of colors which are in equal distance from each other in the color wheel. As this combination is made of completely different colors, they are mostly used for creating surreal designs such as cartoon or any unrealistic piece of art.
These type of combination is really hard to pull off because most of us think and see realistic scenarios most of the times which doesn’t contain this type of colors combinations.
Also Read: Female Fashion illustration figure drawing – Guide.
Colors and Their Meaning
As a bonus, I would like to mention the basic emotions each colors portrays.
Primary Colors: Red, Green and Blue. These set of colors are called primary colors because these can be used to create various types of other colors.
Red: Passion and Danger
Green: Nature and healing
Blue: Calm and Wisdom
Orange: Energy and creativeness
Purple: Wealth and Ambition
Yellow: Happy and Active
White: Purity and Peace
Black: Death and Power
Conclusion
So here were the basic of color theory. I hope these informations helped you. If you want to add something, feel free to leave your comments below.
Great article you have here and thank you for sharing such an informative article. I do believe color add value and texture to most of the things we do, such as painting a building or a portrait or even designing. Am curious, like what colors do you have to mix to come up with the perfect taupe color?
Thankyou for giving a read to my article and giving your valuable feedback. Yes, choosing the right colors are very important for anything you are going where colors are one of the main factors. As for me, I like to experiment with different colors depending on my mood but tend to stick to lighter shades or tints most of the times. It is completely upto a person’s choice.