Colour has three properties. The first is hue, which is the name of the colours. The primary hues are yellow, red, and blue. Secondary colours are made by mixing two primaries. Intermediate colours are mixtures of a primary and adjacent secondary colour. The second property of colour is value, which refers to the lightness or darkness of hue. The third property of colour is intensity, which refers to the purity of the hue (also called “Chroma”).
Value is defined as the relative lightness or darkness of a color. It is an important tool for the designer/artist, in the way that it defines form and creates spatial illusions. Contrast of value separates objects in space, while gradation of value suggests mass and contour of a contiguous surface. In the drawing on the right, value contrast separates the artichoke from the background, and the separate leaves from one another, while gradation suggests the curves of leave surfaces and of the whole form.
Hue also has value. When contrasting hues are made similar in value, the spatial effects are flattened out. The pair of images on the left demonstrate this. In the color image of the fashion model the coat draws our attention through contrast of hue although the skin tones blend with the background (remember the object of the image is to sell the coat, not the model). However, it also seems to be softly blending with a background that seems quite close, and is very similar to the coat in value. The face tends to blend with the background which is similar in both hue and value. In the black and white version, however, the coat virtually disappears, since only value, not hue, are available to distinguish it, and the values are quite similar. However, the strong value contrast of the eyes and hat draw our attention to the face, even though the contours of the face seem to melt into the background. Therefore, the black and white version emphasizes the model more than the garment.
To summarize: If values are close, shapes will seem to flatten out, and seem closely connected in space; none will stand out from the others. If values contrast, shapes will appear to separate in space and some will stand out from the others. This works whether the colours are just black, white and grey, or whether hues are involved.
Hue is the term for the pure spectrum colours commonly referred to by the “colour names” – red, orange, yellow, blue, green violet – which appear in the hue circle or rainbow. Theoretically all hues can be mixed from three basic hues, known as primaries. When pigment primaries are all mixed together, the theoretical result is black; Therefore pigment mixture is sometimes referred to as subtractive mixture.
The primary colors consist of three hues from which we can theoretically mix all other hues. There are two commonly used definitions of primary colors:
Painters Primaries – red, blue, yellow: This traditional definition of primaries does not in fact mix to clear greens or purples; it is based on 19th century theories.
Printers Primaries – magenta, cyan (turquoise), yellow: This definition of primaries mixes to clear colours across the entire spectrum. It is used as the basis for color printing. The computer screen probably does not give you a true turquoise–the colour should be a blue-green– because of differences between colour mixture in pigment and colour mixture in light.
In mixing colours hues can be de saturated (reduced in purity, weakened) in one of three ways: mix with white to lighten the value (tint), mix with black to darken the value (shade), or mix with grey or the complement to either lighten or darken the value ( tone).
Compliments are colours that are opposite one another on the hue circle. When complements are mixed with one another in paint, the resulting muted tones de saturate or dull the hues. Such opposite pairs can also be compared in terms of their relative warmth and coolness. Warm-cool contrast of hue can cause images to appear to advance or recede. In this 15th century painting, for example, the warm reds of the man’s doublet and his son’s cap reinforce the cues of placement to make these figures seem very close. On the other hand, the cool tones of the sea and sky suggest great distance.
Afterimage is another, more specific definition of complements consisting of a stimulus colour and its physical opposite generated in the eye by exposure to the stimulus colour. Afterimage colours tend to make each other appear more intense, and have vibrating boundaries.
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