Classifying Color
One hobby I enjoy doing in my free time is painting. As a beginning artist, the first thing I had to learn was to learn was color theory. Color theory is a term used to describe the collections of rules and guidelines regarding the use of color in art. There is more to painting than simply applying pretty colors to a canvas. Understanding how colors work together and how to mix colors is just as important as the technique or style of your work. Choosing the right hues (shade of color) can make a huge impact in conveying the emotion of a painting.
It’s important to learn how to mix colors when you first begin your painting practice. In doing so, your work will have rich, multifaceted hues that are truly an expression of yourself and your subject. Many of us have the urge to just use colors from the paint tube, but those hues can be oversaturated, flat, or just plain unnatural looking. Knowing how to mix your colors will produce prettier hues—plus, you’ll save a lot of money by not having to buy every single color because you will be learn how to make colors from just a few colors on hand.
Before you can be a master at mixing color however, you have got to know the basics of color theory. This post will address the three major categories that are used to describe color: primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors.
PRIMARY COLORS
When learning the basics about color theory, the place to start is with primary colors. This is a group of three colors—red, yellow, and blue—from which all other colors can be created by mixing. So if had limited availability of all colors, you definitely want to have want the primary colors because you could theoretically mix any color you were missing.
SECONDARY COLORS
Beyond the basic primary colors are what is called the secondary colors. The secondary colors are purple, green, and orange. As mentioned previously, you can mix the primary colors together to make other colors. For example, each secondary colors is made by mixing two of the primary colors together. Red mixed with blue makes purple. Yellow mixed with blue makes green. Yellow mixed with red makes orange.
TERTIARY COLORS
Maybe you can see where this is going, but as the name implies, tertiary colors are made by combining primary and secondary colors. There are six tertiary colors: red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet. These colors can have a lot of variance in them, and you can tweak them to your liking. A yellow-orange could appear more yellow and less orange, for instance.
Painting is a creative outlet for self-expression. The various colors used in a painting determine the mood of the painting and convey the feeling the artist is trying to show in their artwork. Colors are all about relationships; a single shade of a color can look drastically different when matched in various ways or when next to other colors on the painting. Knowing these things can help inform your decisions on what you paint and where. Try using these very basic classifications of color and discovering what you can learn. What happens when you mix more yellow to red for example? Does the green shade turn darker or lighter with more blue? By playing with primary, secondary, and tertiary colors you can begin to understand the basic principles of color theory.
