Elements of Design: COLOR

Color occurs when light in different wavelengths strikes our eyes. Objects have no color of their own, only the ability to reflect a certain wavelength of light back to our eyes. As you know, color can vary in differing circumstances. For example, grass can appear gray in the morning or evening or bright green at noon. Colors appear different depending on whether you view them under incandescent, florescent or natural sunlight. Colors also change according to their surroundings. You can see this by looking at the color squares below - the reddish outline box is the same color in all the examples.

Properties of Color

Hue

Hue refers to the color itself. Each different hue is a different reflected wavelength of light. White light broken in a prism has seven hues: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. White light occurs when all the wavelengths are reflected back to your eye, and black light occurs when no light is reflected to your eye. This is the physics of light.

When it comes to using color in art, things get quite messy. Looking at the color wheel above, when using color pigments, the three primary colors used are yellow, blue and red. These three colors are blended together to produce other colors, called secondary colors, such as green, orange and purple. Mix enough colors together, and you get black. Pretty strange, eh?

Intensity

Intensity, also called chroma or saturation, refers to the brightness of a color. A color is at full intensity when not mixed with black or white - a pure hue. You can change the intensity of a color, making it duller or more neutral by adding gray to the color. You can also change the intensity of a color by adding its complement (this is the color found directly opposite on the traditional color wheel). When changing colors this way, the color produced is called a tone.

When you mix complementary colors together, you produce a dull tone. However, when you put complementary colors side by side, you increase their intensity. This effect is called simultaneous contrast - each color simultaneously intensifies the visual brightness of the other color.

Below are some examples of how this works, using a program called Metacreations painter. As you can see, you choose a hue from the outer ring. Inside the triangle, you can vary the saturation of the hue (amount of color), the tint or the shade.

Color and Space

Certain colors have an advancing or receding quality, based on how our eye has to adjust to see them. Warm colors such as red, orange or yellow seem to come forward while cool colors such as blue and green seem to recede slightly. In the atmosphere, distant objects appear bluish and the further away an object appears, the less colorful and distinct it becomes. Artists use this to give an illusion of depth, by using more neutral and grayish colors in the background.

While monochromatic, analogous, complementary or triadic color schemes are considered to be harmonious, there are some color schemes considered dissonant. Discordant colors are visually disturbing - we say they clash. Colors that are widely separated on the color wheel (but not complementary or triadic) are considered to be discordant. Discordant colors can be eye-catching and are often used for attention-getting devices in advertising.