Color Theory …AND HOW WE SEE COLOR

Daylight (white light) is made up of numerous waves or impulses each having different dimensions or wavelengths. When separated, any single wavelength will produce a specific color impression to the human eye. What we actually see as color is known as its color effect.

When an object is hit (bombarded) with light rays, the object absorbs certain waves and reflects others. This determines the color effect. For example, what we actually see when we observe a blue ball is that the ball appears blue because it reflects only blue light and absorbs all other light.

The ball does not have color in itself. The light generates the color. What we see as color is the reflection of specific wavelength of light rays off an object.

The color white: If all light waves are reflected from a surface, the surface will appear to be white. The color black: Similarly, when all light waves are absorbed by a surface the surface will appear to be black.

The energy of light waves is converted into heat when absorbed. Wearing white or light colored clothing during hot summer days will keep a person cooler because all the rays (light=heat) are being reflected. Wearing dark colored clothing will reflect very little light resulting in a feeling of warmth.

Additive Colors When you are surfing the web, enjoying a movie, or just watching TV, all the colors you see on the screen are made up of the primary additive colors of red, green and blue. To create a color, the wavelengths of the colors are added to each other. Before any colors have been added, there is only black, which is the absence of light. In contrast, adding all three primary colors in equal amounts creates white. All other colors are produced by mixing the three primary wavelengths of light in different combinations.

Subtractive Colors Subtractive colors reflect their own color, while absorbing or "subtracting" all other colors present in white light. Combined equally, the three colors produce black, while in unequal amounts they create all the other colors. To create a color image, light must be selectively subtracted until the desired color is created. The primary subtractive colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. When combined, these three colors create the largest selection of colors. The primaries can be combined to form red, green, and blue as secondary colors.

In the visual arts, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impact of specific color combinations. Although color theory principles first appear in the writings of Leone Battista (c.1435) and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490), a tradition of "color theory" begins in the 18th century, initially within a partisan controversy around Isaac Newton’s theory of color (Opticks, 1704) and the nature of so-called primary colors.

Color theory was originally formulated (early - mid 1800s) in terms of three "primary" or "primitive" colors -- red, yellow and blue (RYB) -- because these colors were believed capable of mixing all other colors. This color mixing behavior had long been known to printers, dyers and painters, but these trades preferred pure pigments to primary color mixtures, because the mixtures were too dull (unsaturated).

Subsequently, German and English scientists established in the late 1800s that color perception is best described in terms of a different set of primary colors -- red, green and blue violet (RGB).

Across the same period, industrial chemistry radically expanded the color range of lightfast synthetic pigments, allowing for substantially improved saturation in color mixtures of dyes, paints and inks. It also created the dyes and chemical processes necessary for color photography. As a result, three- color printing became aesthetically and economically feasible in mass printed media, and the artists' color theory was adapted to primary colors most effective in inks or photographic dyes: cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY). (In printing, dark colors are supplemented by a black ink, known as the (CMYK) system.

Complementary colors When it comes to the mixing of color of paint, Newton’s color wheel is often used to describe complementary colors. Complementary are colors directly across from each other on the color wheel and which cancel each other's hue to produce an achromatic (white, gray or black) mixture.

Unfortunately, the artists' primary colors are not the same as complementary colors defined by light mixtures, called visual complementary colors. Here the complement of purple is green, and the complement of yellow is blue. This discrepancy becomes important when color theory is applied across media. Digital color management uses a hue circle defined around the additive RGB primary colors, as these are the hues of the phosphors or diodes that create the pixels of a computer display, and the colors in a computer monitor are additive mixtures of light, not subtractive mixtures of paints.

Warm vs. cool colors The distinction between warm and cool colors has been important since at least the late 18th century Warm colors are often said to be hues from red through yellow, browns and tans included; cool colors are often said to be the hues from blue green through blue violet, most grays included. The determination of whether a color appears warm or cool is relative. Any color can be made to appear warm or cool by its context with other colors. Warm colors are said to advance or appear more active in a painting, while cool colors tend to recede; used in interior design or fashion, warm colors are said to arouse or stimulate the viewer, while cool colors calm and relax.

Tints and Shades It is common among some painters to darken a paint color by adding black paint—producing colors called shades—or lighten a color by adding white—producing colors called tints. Another practice when darkening a color is to use its opposite, or complementary, color (e.g. purplish-red added to yellowish- green) in order to neutralize it without a shift in hue, and darken it if the additive color is darker than the parent color. When lightening a color this hue shift can be corrected with the addition of a small amount of an adjacent color to bring the hue of the mixture back in line with the parent color (e.g. adding a small amount of orange to a mixture of red and white will correct the tendency of this mixture to shift slightly towards the blue end of the spectrum).

Some theorists and artists believe juxtapositions of complementary colors are said to produce a strong contrast or tension, because they annihilate each other when mixed; others believe the juxtapositions of complementary colors produce harmonious color interactions. Color Harmony and Color Meaning What do you think?

Colors next to each other on the color wheel are called analogous colors. They tend to produce a single-hued or a dominant color experience. A triadic color scheme adopts any three colors approximately equidistant around the hue circle. Color Schemes