Why study color?
Color is the most powerful design element available to the artist
Color affects our emotions beyond thought
Key color: choosing appropriate dominant color heightens psychological impact
Color accents: subordinate colors may add energy and help unify composition
Color trends: influenced by demands of the marketplace, fashion, culture
Best way to learn color theory is to mix it yourself (HSV model)
Artists research color theory by carefully observing how colors work together
To investigate, study color themes used in artwork, scan work to capture color theme
Adobe Photoshop can capture theme in color table (File->Save for Web…)
Psychology of Color
- Compared to tonal variation, color has a stronger affinity to the emotions
- Color can be used to reinforce visual information
- Color has many meanings, offers enormous, highly useful vocabulary in visual literacy
- Associate meaning (i.e. we all see that grass is green, sky is blue)
- Symbolic meaning (i.e. bull responds to motion of red cape, not color, red symbolizes anger – for us)
- Personal, subjective, individual color preferences and responses
- Perception of color is the single most strongly emotional part of the visual process
Color and Emotion
We relate to associated meanings of color
- Red, orange, and yellow is fire and sunlight – warm colors
- Blue and green is sky and water, grass and plants – cool colors
Color has powerful psychological effects
- Warm colors stimulate (example: fast food restaurants use orange and reds to get people out as soon as possible)
- Cool colors have a calming influence (example: blue painted office, workers complained of a chill and actually getting colds; problem solved with warm tones of brown, not turning up thermostats)
Color has powerful culture-specific associations
- Purple is associated with luxury products
- Blue suggests financial stability
- Gray is favored for conservative audiences
- White suggest purity
- Black is associated with death
Color and Design Principles
Color and Unity
- Using limited color palettes will help unify a design
- Repeating specific hues will also help unify a design
Color as emphasis
- Color can commands viewer’s attention to explore deeper
- Color often used to provide focused area of interest (allows viewer to enter the design)
- Color as emphasis requires contrast between two or more colors
- Contrast can be achieved by juxtaposing complementary hues, high/low saturation, high/low value
Color and balance
- Color can be used to achieve sense of visual balance
- Saturated colors carry more visual "weight"
- High contrast between foreground and background color carry more visual "weight"
- "Busy" areas with many color carry more visual "weight"
- Color can be used to deliberately create imbalanced designs
Color and depth
- Direct relationship between color and a visual impression of depth
- Colors have innate advancing or receding quality
- Intense, warm colors (red, orange, yellow) seem to advance and come forward
- Cool colors (blue, green) seem to recede and go back
- Can be used to “pop” some visual elements forward
- Similar to atmospheric nature of making distant objects appear dull
- Depth can be enhanced with cool lights in background, warmer lights in foreground
Color and reality
- Common mistake in CG is too use fully saturated color in materials and lights
- Fully saturated colors are rare in real life
- Slightly diluted (saturated) colors have a more convincing, realistic effect
Color Schemes (applied color theory)
The goal of color theory is to create pleasing color harmonies
Common to work with a limited color scheme, not random selections
Common colors or schemes of colors can associate or bind elements together
Colors also change relative to other juxtaposed colors
Harmonies can be achieved logically (beginners) or intuitively (seasoned artists)
Logical harmonies are organized around a color wheel
- monochromatic harmonies (one single hue with variations in saturation and/or value)
- analogues harmonies (hues very close to each other on the color wheel)
- complementary harmonies (hues opposite each other on the color wheel)
- triadic harmonies (hues equal distant from each other on the color wheel)
- warm or cool harmonies (hues on one side of the color wheel)
- warm/cool contrast (using equal amount of warm and cool hues)
- symbolic harmonies (culture-specific)
Color discord can be just as effectively for communicating disturbing subject matter
Hint: solve the composition in black & white, then apply colors
Further reading
Launching the Imagination by Mary Stewart
Color: A Workshop Approach by David Hornung