Understanding Art: Color Revealed

Color is one amongst the most powerful elements. It has got qualities that are remarkably expressive. It is quite important to understand the uses of a color.'Color' is a general term that applies to all objects-white, black, violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red and to all of its combinations.

'Hue' is the appropriate word suitable for for referring a pectrum of colors. Any notable color can be described in terms of the value and its hue. Moreover, various psychological and physical phenomena combine together affecting our perception towards a color.

Value can be defined as lightness or darkness relative of a color. Value is an important tool to the hands of a designer or an artist because of its ability to define a form and to create a spatial illusion. A value contrast leaves the objects in space. Gradation of value supports the contour and mass of a surface.

Hue is the term for the pure spectrum colors commonly referred as red, orange, yellow, blue, green violet which appear in the hue circle or rainbow. In theory all hues can be mixed from three basic hues, known as primaries. When pigment primaries are all mixed together, the speculative result is black. Therefore pigment mixture is at times referred to as subtractive mixture.

The primaries comprises of three hues from which all the other hues can be created. Primary colors have 2 commonly used definitions: Painters primaries consisting of red, yellow and blue, Printer primaries consisting of magenta, yellow and cyan and Light Primaries consisting of red, green and blue.

Complements are the color variants that contradict one another in the circle of hues. When the complements happen to mix with another in the paint, the resultant mixture dulls or de-saturates the hues. Opposite pairs, as such, can also be found based on the relative coolness and warmth. The contrast of the hue's warmth and coolness can make the image to advance or even recede in appearance. For instance, take the example of a painting belonging to the 15th century. The reds of the son's cap and that of the man's the placement of the hues so as to make the things match very close.

Few of the color effects occur in only in the brain and eye of the viewer and not the physical components of the pigments or light waves. The illusions are very dominant however and have got a tremendous impact on our reflection to the color.

Optical mixture occurs when small particles of different colors are mixed in the eye; this type of mixture differs from pigment mixture in that it is based on light primaries. However, optical mixture varies from light mixture in which the primaries will mix to white, and from pigment mixture, in which the primaries mix to black. There is an averaging of hue and value in optical mixture which results in grey.

Optical mixture is experienced when examining many textiles. It can also be perceived in natural objects, color television, and printed color pictures.

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