Understanding Art: Color Revealed

By Domen Lombergar

Color is one of the most powerful of elements. It has remarkable expressive qualities. Understanding the uses of color is vital to effective composition in design and the fine arts. The word color is the general term which applies to the whole subject - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black and white and all likely combinations thereof.

Hue is the correct word to apply to refer to just the pure spectrum colors. Any given color can be expressed in terms of its value and hue. In addition, the various physical phenomena and psychological effects combine to affect our perceptions of a color.

Value is the relative lightness or darkness of a color. It is an essential tool for the designer or artist, in the way that it defines form and creates spatial illusions. Contrast of value isolates objects in space, while gradation of value suggests mass and contour of a contiguous surface.

Hue is the term for the pure spectrum colors commonly referred as 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 primaries. When pigment primaries are all mixed together, the speculative result is black. Therefore pigment mixture is at times referred to as subtractive mixture.

These basic colors involve three hues that can be theoretically mixed with the other hues. Yellow, blue and red constitute Painter primaries, yellow, cyan and magenta constitute Printer Primaries; and green, blue and red constitute Light primaries.

Complements are the color variants that contradict one another in the circle of hues. When the complements happen to mix with another in the paint, the resultant mixture dulls or de-saturates the hues. Opposite pairs, as such, can also be found based on the relative coolness and warmth. The contrast of the hue's warmth and coolness can make the image to advance or even recede in appearance. For instance, take the example of a painting belonging to the 15th century. The reds of the son's cap and that of the man's the placement of the hues so as to make the things match very close.

Few of the color effects occur in only in the brain and eye of the viewer and not the physical components of the pigments or light waves. The illusions are very dominant however and have got a tremendous impact on our reflection to the color.

Optical mixture occurs when small particles of different colors are mixed in the eye; this type of mixture differs from pigment mixture in that it is based on light primaries. However, optical mixture varies from light mixture in which the primaries will mix to white, and from pigment mixture, in which the primaries mix to black. There is an averaging of hue and value in optical mixture which results in grey.

Optical mixture is experienced when examining many textiles. It can also be perceived in natural objects, color television, and printed color pictures.

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