Special Subjects: Basic Color Theory: An Introduction to Color for Beginning Artists

BASIC COLOR THEORY

Color is a universal gift of beauty. Because it requires no effort to perceive and enjoy it, we often take it for granted. However, its absence in our lives is unthinkable. Consider a world wherein brilliant sunsets, vivid flower gardens, shimmering butterflies, and tropical fish shed their multicolored hues and morphed into monochromatic shades of gray. The experiences that we love and live for would change drastically! Would we still plant flower beds? Bird-watch? Sightsee? The implications are immense; such is our love affair with color.

—Patti Mollica

CONTENTS

What Is Color?

Understanding Light

The Color Wheel

Color Properties

Color & Value

Color Temperature

Color, Light & Shadow

Color Schemes

Pigment Types

Color Mixing

Color & Mood

Final Thoughts

WHAT IS COLOR?

Artists must understand color to know how to use it properly. Although there will always be some personal influence in the way we interpret and display it, we must understand color relationships before we can organize it in our paintings.

In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) conducted and published a series of experiments involving prisms, light, and color, which form the basis of our current understanding of color. These experiments involved refracting white light through a prism—a simple triangular glass object that separates light waves into individual colors. The results revealed that light could actually be broken down into seven individual colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Until this discovery, it was assumed that a prism somehow colored the light passing through it. To prove this wrong, Newton reversed the process: He projected the colors back into the prism, which resulted in pure white light. Artists and scientists alike were amazed by this breakthrough discovery that light is the source of all color.

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As white