Jessica Crabtree

My series on the color spectrum is complete! Click on the links to view each post.

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Purple

This clever little Flash interactive profiles each of the colors of the spectrum and their functions in art and symbolism. Not much science, but features a fully-interactive color lab (see screenshot below). Very cute and enjoyable for young artists (or the young at heart). Also available in a Spanish version.

Color in Motion: Flash Presentation

(Click screenshots for larger view)

Screenshot

This website is an amazing tool for developing color schemes using a color wheel and the basic patterns of color harmony. Select any dominant color and adjust its chroma, shade, etc. and it will create a perfectly-designed palette. It comes with presets for varying tonal levels and will even generate a sample web template as an illustration. I give it five stars!

Color Scheme Designer

COLOR THEORY: A Brief Tutorial

This page has a very good rundown of the terms associated with the color wheel and the concept of color harmony. Very useful!

Color Harmony

Because of its wave properties, light shares some interesting features with sound. For instance, colors complement one another based on their wavelengths exactly the same way as musical notes harmonize based on their sound frequencies. These groups fall into several different categories:

Complementary - colors that lie opposite one another on the color wheel complement one another by contrast; e.g., a very warm red contrasted by a cool green (we all see this scheme in Christmas decorations).

Analogous - these are colors that lie next to one another; they blend well because the have much in common. Think of a color scheme that combines blues and greens – there is little contrast and the cool color range creates a pleasing and soothing effect.

Split complementary – this color scheme combines both complementary and adjacent color schemes. It forms a narrow triangle on the color wheel. By blending a main color with two adjacent colors from the opposite end, you can achieve color harmony with high visual interest.

Triad - a group of three colors that lie equally distanced from one another on the color wheel. Draw an imaginary triangle and pivot it around to see what color combinations this creates. None of these colors will belong to the same group – but the harmony lies in the fact that there is a pattern to the choice of colors. If they were completely random, the resulting visual chaos would not be pleasing to the eye.

Interestingly, these color patterns are best illustrated by examples in nature. Think of a beautiful Southwestern desert scene with a turquoise sky, golden sand, and reddish-brown rock formations. This is a classic split complementary scheme. For analogous harmony, picture a tranquil seascape painted in tones of blue and purple. Flowers often illustrate color harmony, such as the viola with contrasting yellow and violet, as do color patterns in the fur of many animals.

Compare the color schemes in the following photos:

Photo credits: Public domain

Read more about patterns of color harmony and the color wheel:

http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-theory-intro.htm#Color_Wheel

“Color My World”

Red, yellow, and blue are considered the primary colors. They are equally spaced from each other in the spectrum – and hence in the color wheel. They combine to form white light (which represents all colors). And they can blend together in various combinations to form every other possible hue. The first three levels of color combinations fall into the following groups:

Primary Colors – Red, Yellow, Blue, that combine to form all the other colors
Secondary Colors – Orange (Red + Yellow), Green (Yellow + Blue), Violet (Blue + Red)
Tertiary Colors – Combinations of secondary colors – such as blue-green or red-orange

An example of how primary colors combine to form white light

If an artist was restricted to using only hues, however, his paintings would probably look more like something done with a first-grader’s crayon set. This is because the colors or light signatures in the spectrum can’t represent realism without the variation of light. Remember, artists don’t paint so much with color as they do with light – because the appearance of the things they portray with pigments is based entirely on the interaction of light with a given surface. This is why we have shades, tones, and tints (see my last post about Birren’s triangle).

Color wheel showing primary and secondary colors

Making Waves

It turns out the secret of color is all in the waves – light waves, that is. Light, like matter, is made up of tiny particles – but unlike matter these are not atoms or molecules but tiny packets of energy called photons. Oddly, light has a dual nature that makes it behave both like matter (because it is made of particles) and like wave energy, such as vibration or sound. All of the properties of light most familiar to us – including color – come from this wave aspect. All of the colors we see are produced by the varying height and depth of light wavelengths and the speed at which they happen to be traveling.

Human beings have a limited range of perception, so we can only see a narrow range of light energy to interpret as “color.” This range is known as visible light. These colors are arranged in a band known as a spectrum, with each color – just like an FM radio station – sorted by its wavelength and frequency.

Newton and the Prism

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