To become a more astute color specialist, increase your color sensitivity by paying particular attention to colors that surround you every day. Look at magazine ads. Study the sets in a television program you are viewing. Pay attention to the colors used in a store window display.
As you comfort level about color matures, your inhibitions about following the rules of combining colors will begin to disappear and you will gain a freer approach to color expressions.
Colors are visible when light passes through a prism. the technical name given to a color as it is reflected through a prism is a "hue". When a band of visible light is bent into a circle, a color wheel is created. Often, color wheels are shown with yellow at the top. As long as the colors are correctly arranged, there is no absolute top or bottom to the wheel. The true value and intensity of each hue, as seen in nature is reflected on the color wheel.
The objects in a room exhibit a particular color because of the selective nature by which their surfaces reflect and absorb light. As light strikes the colored surface, certain wave lengths are reflected to a greater extent than others. This reflected color determines what we see. White surfaces reflect all wave lengths equally and absorb little energy. Black surfaces absorb all wave lengths; therefore we see the virtual absence of color.
There are twelve hues on the color wheel divided into three categories. Remember, the primary and secondary colors and the tertiary colors follow naturally. Hue is that attribute of a color by which we distinguish red from green, blue from yellow, etc. There is a natural order of hues: red, yellow, green, blue, violet. One can mix paints of adjacent colors in this series and obtain a continuous variation from one color to the other. For example, red and yellow may be mixed in any proportion to obtain all the hues from red though orange to yellow. The same may be said of yellow and green, green and blue, blue and violet and violet and red.
Consider a color wheel with twelve equally spaced hues divided as follows:
Primary Hues: Colors from which all others are created. The primary colors are red, yellow and blue. they are equally spaced from one another on the color wheel.
Secondary Hues: Combine two primary hues and result is a secondary hue. Therefore, they are equally spaced between the primaries. yellow and blue create green. Blue and red create violet. Red and yellow create orange.
Tertiary Hues: When you combine an adjacent primary and secondary color, tertiary colors are formed They are always named with the primary color first, followed by the secondary color. Tertiary hues are yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet, red-orange, and yellow-orange.
Colors advance or recede. They are warm or cool. In a traditional color wheel (twelve hues, with yellow at the top) the colors on the left ( in the red through yellow spectrum) are advancing, warm colors. Colors on the right (in the blue, green and violet collection) are receding and cool.
Color Intensity (Chroma)
Intensity (chroma) is the degree of departure of a color from the neutral color of the same value. Colors of low intensity are sometimes called weak, while those of high intensity are said to be highly saturated, strong or vivid.
When the intensity of a color is dull, it is identified as a "tone". Burgundy is a tone of red. A bright color is identified as a "pure color". Christmas red is an example of bright, pure red. The color's intensity is affected by the addition of its complement (the color directly opposite it on the color wheel), or by the addition of the neutral gray.
Color Value
The lightness or darkness of a color is the second way we can affect it. White is the highest value and black the lowest. Mixing white with the hue,called a "tint", produces a high value of a color. Pink is a tint of red. When mixing black with the hue, it produces a low value of a color, it is called a "shade". A deep Colonial Red is a share of red.
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