Color Theory REVIEW

SYSTEMS:

  1. Additive System:

  • Uses light

  • Doesn’t work in ink or paint 

  • Called additive because the colors increase energy (brighter colors)

  • In the retina, there are rods and cones. Rods see dark and light, cones perceive color detail 

  • Anything that involves using light uses the additive system 

  • Red, Blue, Green (primaries)

    • B+G= C

    • R+B=M

    • G+R=Y

    • ALL TOGETHER CREATE WHITE

  1. Subtractive System:

  • Decrease in energy (duller colors)

  • Materials: ink, gel, dye (anything transparent uses this system of mixture)

  • Primaries: CMYK

    • M+Y=R

    • Y+B=G

    • B+M= P

    • ALL TOGETHER CREATE BLACK

    • K=black

      • Only put for economics

  1. Integrative System:

  • Integrative primary colors of the additive & subtractive system

  • You can mix over 5,000 colors without resulting in a “mud” color 

  • 6 primary colors:

    • Yellow

    • Green

    • Red

    • Cyan

    • Blue

    • Magenta

    • TOGETHER THEY MAKE GRAY

  • Masstone: color right out of the tube

    • Doesn’t tell us what the color is; we have to draw down to the undertone, which is the actual color. 

  • SHADES: made by adding black

  • TINTS: made by adding white

  • TONES: made by adding grey 

  • Neutralization: the process of lowering a color by adding the complement or gray

COLOR IDENTITY/COLOR PERCEPTION:

  • 1800s: black is not shadows

  • Photography was developed for the market by Louis Daguerre

  • Early motion pictures—> movement towards realism

    • Capturing a moment in time

  • Optical mixture (pointalism, dividualism)

    • Works on colors being next to each other 

    • Color’s havent mixed, your eye is mixing them

  • Chevreul: father of organic chemistry

    • He started to notice that different colors looked different according to the proximity of the color next to it

    • Term for this: simultaneous contrast

    • *Colors aren’t absolute

  • The invention of the collapsible tube of paint (1840s)

    • John Rand: American designer who invented the collapsible tube of paint

    • Tin tubes with metal screw tops, allowing artists to go outside 

  • Monet: painted various images at different times of the day to explore how color changes. Did this second—>minutes because of how fast sunlight varies.

    • Actual color: what the color looks like, depending on different lighting variations & what it’s next to

    • Factual color: what the color actually is

SHADOWS:

  • Chromatic shadow: the idea that shadows are the opposite of the light source (complement)

    • Quality of light: What is the color of the light source 

COLOR IDENTITY:

  • People perceive colors differently

THE COLOR ATLAS:

  • Universal color language

  • Developed by Munsell

  • The Munsell System worked with 3 dimensions of color:

    • Hue

    • Value 

    • Chroma 

  • This was based on 10 colors because he understood that if we have 10, we can use decimals

    • More colors were being invented (synthetic color)

  • HUE: the color family

    • “Emotional dimension”

      • Blue: Intelligence, Calm, etc.

      • Red: passion, anger

  • VALUE:  seeing darks & lights 

    • Value is the most important 

    • Pure black exists in black holes 

    • We don’t have pure white yet

    • Center, vertical dimension

  • CHROMA: intensity of color

    •  “appealing dimension”

    • The pure colors for Munsell were the 5’s (5R, etc.)

    • The highest chroma is 14 since those are permanent colors

    • Neons are fugitive colors

  • Munsell understood the different intrinsic properties of color:

    • Yellow tends to be associated with the lighter properties

    • Purple tends to be associated with the darker 

Swatch Colors: color systems that deal with branding, Pantone, etc. 

Color Notation: 

  • Start with the hue number & letter

  • Then, the value/chroma

    • Ex: 5G ⅞, 5R 5/10

  • Power of colors:

    • Multiply value times the chroma (7 x 8= 56, 5 x 10=50)