Chromatic Value, Monochromatic Images, Primary Colors, Hue, Saturation A very quick intro to Color Physics

Isaac Newton: by refracting rays of light through a prism, hediscovered color was a function of light, and that all color is contained in sunlight.

Color: the visible spectrum is found in light, aka Spectral Hues These spectral hues are the basic colors we work with; red, orange, yellow, green, blue,& violet

HUE The color quality identified by a color’s name. This is determined by a color’s wavelength. Any of these colors fall under the general hue “red”.

Primary Colors RED BLUE Yellow These are the primary colors in the subtractive (pigment based) color system. Mixing two primary colors produces Secondary colors: Orange, Green, Purple. Primary colors cannot be mixed from other colors.

Stuart Davis

An Additive, or Light-based color system, where the three primaries create white

Primaries and Secondaries in a light-based system, where Red, Green, and Blue Make magenta, yellow, and cyan, and finally, white.

Traditional, Pigment- based color system, where the three primaries create black

Saturation The purity of a color, how ‘true’ it is. A color with no white, black, gray, etc added is said to be at Full Saturation, or Highly Saturated.

Colors that have been mixed or blended with black, white, or other colors are Low(er) in Saturation.

Vermeer A primary composition?

Chromatic and Achromatic Value Last week, we mixed Achromatic neutrals, grays that are mixes of black and white. Chromatic neutrals are neutrals mixed from colors to create grays or browns. A ‘neutral’ is a non-color, like gray or brown. Achromatic Chromatic

What is this? What kind of value is demonstrated here?

What is ‘value distribution’? Does this image depict a high key, low key,high contrast, or full range value pattern?

Colors have inherent values. In these Chromatic Value Scales the step at Full Saturation (full purity) arrives at different point in each scale. In yellow, it is step 4, red: step 7, blue: step 9. This is because pure blue is inherently darker than pure yellow. Value: the amount of light or dark in colors

To change a color’s saturation, as well as it’s value: TINTS: Color +White Shades: Color + Black Tones: Color + Gray

Brief History of Color Theories/The Color Wheel

Artists develop Color theories in order to create rules for harmonious color relationships, to understand how colors relate to one another, and to visualize how colors mix. In many cases, a circle is the convenient format for observing color relationships, as it allows us to visualize how colors relate to one another (green is between yellow and red) and visualize each color individually.

The Color Wheel Our standard color wheel includes twelve pieces, made up of three primary colors, three secondary colors, and six tertiary colors (mixtures of primary and secondary colors)

Aristotle Developed a theory of colors based on observing color in nature. He believed color was perceived through combinations of light and dark, and represented how the elements of nature behaved in the physical world. The elements of color were: Sunlight, Firelight, Air and Water

Colors were made by mixing the elements: for example, red was a mixture of sunlight and darkness. This explained why the sky turned red at sunrise and sunset—the sun was mixing with the approaching or receding night. His basic colors were red, yellow, blue, green, violet, black, white and brown

Leonardo da Vinci Developed his own palette of basic hues, each hue relating to the natural world. NIGHT AIR WATER FIRE EARTH LIGHT His palette was a spiritual manifestation of the physical world through paint.

Isaac Newton ( ) Was the first color theorist to approach color from a scientific, rather than spiritual standpoint. (Mostly. Originally, he observed seven, not six spectral hues, including indigo, possibly basing this on the seven musical tones and the seven spheres of heaven.) Newton created the first color wheel.

Newton discovered color was a function of light. He observed the spectral hues when he bent light through a prism. Because his color system was based on light, his ideas were somewhat theoretical (at the time). He was never able to reproduce all his theories through paint (for example, mixing all primaries together to create white) because the pigment system works different than the light system does.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ( ) Reacted against Newton’s theories because they didn’t translate to mixing pigments. He theorized that color phenomenon happened in the human eye, rather than in white light.

Goethe observed that under strong midday sun, shadows were black or gray, but that in other conditions, cast shadows were the complement of the hue of light.

This observation was important to the Impressionist painters.

Richard DiebenkornWayne Thiebaud And later, to Bay Area Expressionists

Goethe’s models of color relationships are the six-hue color wheel Which demonstrates primary and secondary colors (depicted as triangles) and complementary relationships (depicted as straight lines.

…and the Color Triangle In this model, primary colors (red, yellow, blue) are the points of the triangle, and secondary colors (orange, yellow, green) are on the inside edge of the triangle. For Goethe, tertiary colors are mixtures of the three colors surrounding them. They are nameless, non specific colors, mixtures of red, violet, and orange, for example.

Otto Runge Attempted a three- dimensional depiction of color, to demonstrate that color was not only a function of hue, but also value and saturation

In his sphere, the equator (center line) was made up of pure saturation colors, and they traveled as tints and shades towards the two poles, which were pure black and pure white.

Johannes Itten Was a teacher at the Bauhaus school in Germany prior to World War II. The Bauhaus teachings are the foundation for modern color theory: Color phenomenon, simultaneous contrast relationships, contrasts of hue, saturation, value.

Shortcomings of the Bauhaus model are that they tend to look at color in a vacuum, focusing on color perception without considering it’s relationship to imagery, psychology, or communication. Joseph Albers

Itten’s Model for Color Relationships: The Color Star Itten’s color star is a flattened representation of Runge’s color sphere, allowing the viewer to see all colors, values, and saturation at once. He favors hard, geometric edges to allow us to perceive the effects colors have on one another in their pure forms.

Albert Munsell Expanded on Runge’s three-dimensional color model with his COLOR TREE

In Munsell’s color tree, value is represented along the center axis and saturation is represented across the horizontal axis. The tree is not symmetrical like the rest of our color models, because colors reach full saturation at different values.

Munsell’s system began with 5 basic hues: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Violet. And create a ten-part color wheel

His complementary pairings are: Red--blue/green Yellow--Blue/violet Green—Red/orange And Blue—Orange: the only pairing we recognize from the traditional color wheel. He developed his complementary pairings from after-images, observing the ‘ghost’ image we see after staring at a highly saturated form

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Munsell’s color tree was the basis for the expanded color palettes we work from with digital and industrial colors