Wednesday, January 20, 2016

The Basic Principles Of Advanced Color Theory

By Ronald Howard


Classic painters did more than splash colors on canvases. They had a deeper perceptions that enabled them to produce more realistic work of very high quality. The idea that was guiding their work and that should guide painters and users of colors even today is the advanced color theory. It helps you to appreciate and thus take advantage of elements of coloring that are beyond the primary and secondary categorization.

Green and magenta enable a painter or mixer to experience a new dimension in all colors. The idea is that colors have inner feelings that lighten them up and make them to appear lovelier. By appreciating this dimension, one is able to fully interact with images and objects and in a way figure them out.

The original understanding of colors was limited to the perceptions of ones eyes. This denied painters and other color users the advantage of appreciating the essence of individual colors as opposed to human perceptions. These perceptions have changed to accommodate lightness, hue, saturation and the characteristics of light that make it possible to perceive these colors.

Individual colors have distinct characteristics that differentiate them from others. Hue is this element or characteristic that makes blue different from yellow or red. The difference arises from dormant wavelengths that are emitted by the surface or reflected as light falls from another source. Addition of white or black on any color will result in a tonal family that is a product of more or less hue, saturation and lightness.

Saturation is how bright a color is in respect to its own value or lightness. It can be simplified as the difference in brightness relative to gray. Colors that are near gray are less saturated while those further away from middle gray are more saturated. Simply put, saturation is the freedom from interference or dilution by gray.

The use of any color on a surface is guided by the basic elements of this theory. A significant element is the holes and jumping out of colors on a surface. Jumping out is where a distant object appears closer to the foreground because similar color intensity was used as that of objects on the foreground. A hole is where an object is painted using saturated colors yet it is in the background. Such errors will affect the aesthetics of your work.

Shadows are an important element of any coloring work. Your painting must show appreciation of the direction of light and remain consistent to this aspect. Consciousness of the shadow effect and the nature of surface such a shadow falls on enable color users to produce more realistic work. Even in instances where you rely on memory, the appreciation of this effect must be evident.

Optical illusions are part of this theory. They are used to create a feeling of correctness on objects and surfaces that appear to play tricks on eyes. It is important for an artist to capture the illusions and master their use so that your work appears as realistic as possible. A perfect example is where strips running bottom up make an object or person to appear taller than those running horizontally. Such illusions should be appreciated to avoid imbalance.




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