eastdaleart.files.wordpress.com … · Web viewColours that are used in winter clothes, or in...

1Colour Name:__________________________________

Colour is one of the most used tools in art to express an artist’s ideas.

Colour is considered an element of art. Elements of art are like the building blocks of art. If you are in construction you need to start with basic materials – the building blocks, such as wood and bricks, and concrete blocks. These are the components you need to make a building. If you are a child building something with Lego you start with individual blocks.

You need one or more of the elements in art to make any piece of art – these are like the ingredients for a recipe when you are cooking or the building blocks in construction.

http://ar-building-material.blogspot.ca/2012/03/concrete-block.html

The 7 elements of art are:

Colour, Line, Value, Form,Shape, Space, Texture

How to describe colours: Colour can be described by using its characteristics, or by describing its components.

(One of the characteristics of a dog is that it is an animal. It also has other characteristics such hair; and it barks and it growls; and it has a smooth tongue and cannot retract its claws.)

Colour has three characteristics:

1. HUE. This is a fancy term for the name of the colour. Blue is a hue; so is yellow-green.

of 10

2. VALUE: this is the lightness or darkness of a colour.

A baby blue has a very light value, while a navy blue has a dark value.

To make things stand out we need to place a light value against a dark value. This creates contrast and makes the difference between the object and the background more obvious.

It is the contrast between the values that creates interest and drama. If all the values are very close the art will look very calm. The lack of contrast might mean that the work looks unexciting or even uninteresting or dull.

2. INTENSITY. This word refers to how pure and clear and bright a colour is, or how grey the colours are.

Sometimes colours look very grey, and other times they look very crisp and pure.

If they are grey they are called low-intensity colours, if they are purer they are called high-intensity colours.

How you can tell the difference between a high or low intensity colour?

High intensity (bright and pure):Many fabric patterns that are sold in tropical holiday destinations, and products such as sherbet and children’s toys are usually made in pure, crisp colours. These are called high-intensity colours.

of 10

These products may be manufactured in a light or dark value of the colour but each object has a clearly identifiable colour. You will be able to refer to it as a specific colour such as blue, or red or yellow or green. These are high-intensity colours.

The sky on a beautiful summer’s day has a high intensity blue.

Low intensity (dull and grey):Colours that are used in winter clothes, or in paint colours for many living room and dining rooms, or on the outside of many homes in cold countries are often much greyer. The blue might be a very grey-blue, the greens might be hard to tell if they are grey or green. These colours are low-intensity colours.

http://thevirtualinstructor.com/watercolor-painting-tips.html

The lake on a grey, fall day often looks grey-blue or grey-green. This is a low-intensity colour, even though the colour might be quite dark.

This pear is painted in much higher intensity colours than the ones above. The colours are much purer, less grey.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/243055703/pear-original-watercolor-painting?ref=shop_home_active_20

Mixing high and low-intensity colours:Generally it does not work very well to use both low and high-intensity colours together unless there is a very specific reason to do so. Bright, pure colours used on walls will generally make furniture that is covered in greyed-down colours look dirty.

of 10

Wearing crisp fresh colours with greyed-down colours often makes the greyed colours look dull and washed out.

Most people wear higher intensity colours (brighter colours) in the summer and lower intensity colours (greyer colours) in the winter.

When can you mix them?We can, however, use greyed-down colours in the background of a piece of art and more intense, purer colour in the foreground to create the illusion of depth.

Things that are far away are greyer and lighter than things that are up close.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/302022718732652117/

Think about driving in a car on a highway. You can easily tell what colours people are wearing if they are sitting next to you in the car. It’s much harder to tell what colour people are wearing if they are by the side of the

road, or even identify the colours of the cars when you look way ahead on the highway.

Colour wheels:To describe how colours can be mixed or how they can be put together into various colour schemes, we usually arrange the colours into a circle, or colour wheel. This is referred to as a “Prang” colour wheel after the man who first arranged colours like this to explain how colours work together. His name was Louis Prang.

The three primary colours are placed an equal distance from one another around the wheel (this is called “equidistant

from one another.”) The three primary colours in art are red, blue and yellow.

of 10

Mixing secondary colours:If you mix two primary colours together you get a new colour called a “secondary colour.” These three colours are purple, orange and green.

So, if you mix red and blue together you’ll get purple. If there is more red pigment in the mix it’ll make a red-purple; if there is more blue in the mix it’ll make a blue-purple.

https://www.slideshare.net/absg/color-wheel-powerpoint

The same thing happens with yellow and red: mixed together in equal amounts they’ll give you an orange. If there is more red pigment it’ll create a red-orange and if you have more yellow you’ll get a yellow- orange.

Once again, mixing blue and yellow will give you green, and a blue-green if there’s more blue, a yellow-green if there’s more yellow.

Tertiary colours:The colours that you get when you mix a secondary colour with the adjacent primary colour (its next door neighbour) are called tertiary colours. They are always named by the primary colour first: a red-orange or a blue-green.

http://www.homeworkshop.com/2009/03/27/color-wheel-101/

When you mix orange with yellow you get a yellow-orange; when you mix an orange with red you get a red-orange. There are 6 tertiary colours (one on each side of the secondary colour).

Warm and Cool colours:

of 10

When you look at the colour wheel, the colours on one side will be the reds, oranges and yellows; and on the other side you’ll see the blues, purples and greens.

Warm colours:The colours of fire, fall, molten lava, and the sun are all the reds, and oranges and yellows. These are known as warm colours.

http://photoinf.com/General/Robert_Berdan/Composition_and_the_Elements_of_Visual_Design.htm

Cool colours: The colours of ice, and snow and water are the blues and greens and purples. These are the cool colours.


Psychological and physiological responses (how they affect you):

How warm colours make you feel:These colours can physically make a difference in your heart rate and blood pressure. If people are put in rooms painted with strong warm colours their heart rates increase, their blood pressure rises and people tend to over-estimate the time that they have been placed in the room.

People often feel physically warmer in rooms painted in warm colours.

Warm colours actually make the eye lens fatten up to focus in on the colours, so to see red it makes your eye change shape. This makes it look as if the red is closer to you than a cool colour.

Putting this knowledge into practice:

of 10

You might be able to see why these colours would be good for businesses like fast-food restaurants. If people’s heart rates are up they will tend to eat faster. It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to resister that it is full once you have eaten a meal.

https://www.pinterest.com/uanidi/modern-fast-food-restaurant-interior-decor/?lp=true

If you eat very quickly you are likely to eat more food as you’ll not get the message from your stomach that you are full in enough time to control how much you eat. The restaurant therefore sells more food. On top of that you don’t stay around for long as you figure that you need to get going . . . you’ll often think that you were there longer than you actually were.

On top of this fast food restaurants often play music with a fast beat as people usually “eat to the beat”. This will also help to get people to eat more food quickly and go, so there is more room for the next customers. Restaurants make more money when they sell more food in a short amount of time.

Cool colours:The other side of the wheel has the cool colours. These colours, the blues, greens and purples remind us of water and ice.

How cool colours make you feel:To see cool colours in focus the lens has to thin out. This makes the colour look further back. Cool colours calm us down, they make the heart rate slow down and the blood pressure drop. People often under-estimate the time they have spent in rooms painted in light cool colours.

of 10

These colours have a calming, peaceful effect on people. Cool colours are often used in places where we want people feeling calmer, less stressed, and where their blood pressure and heart rate should be lower.

Doctors’ offices, hospitals, and spas often use light cool colours. In spaces painted in cool colours people tend to underestimate how long they have been there. This certainly would help in most waiting rooms.

Colour Schemes:

Putting colours togetherOften people are not sure how to put colours together so that they look good. There are several “formulas” that are tried-and-true methods of putting colours together so that they look good. These are referred to as “Colour schemes.” There are certain combinations that seem to work well.

Monochromatic colour schemes:This is a colour scheme that uses a single colour (or hue). To make this scheme work well there needs to be a full range of value from dark to light of that colour.

Adding black or a very dark hue gives it drama; and white, or a very light hue, adds the necessary contrast to make it interesting.

This type of colour scheme tends to be very restful and peaceful, and is often used in formal fashion or sophisticated decorating schemes.

https://www.pinterest.com/source/intrepidwebdesigns.com

of 10

https://www.pinterest.com/source/intrepidwebdesigns.com

Analogous colour schemesThis is a colour scheme that uses colours that are adjacent (next to one another) on the colour wheel.

Usually there is a range of about 3 to 7 colours that are put together in this scheme. An analogous scheme usually includes only the colours between two pure primary colours, although it might include the colours adjacent to just one primary colour. If you think about the primary colours as parents then you can see how the colours are “related”.

So, a red, orange and yellow scheme would include all the yellow-oranges and the red-oranges. It might include the yellow-green on one side and the red-

purple on the other.


It usually is too visually busy if many more colours are included. If there are too few colours it will look like a monochromatic scheme. You can see analogous colour schemes in many advertisements.

In advertising they often use an analogous scheme for the background behind the product they want you to buy. The product itself is then shown in the opposite colour. This scheme is very dramatic and is called an analogous-complementary scheme.

Complementary colour schemesThese are colour schemes that are based on colours that are directly opposite on the colour wheel.

They are usually very dramatic as there is such a high level of contrast between the two. One colour needs to dominate so that the scheme does not look confusing.

of 10

Think about how much red geraniums stand out in a lush, green garden and you will see how this type of scheme works.

of 10

eastdaleart.files.wordpress.com … · Web viewColours that are used in winter clothes, or in...

Documents

Transcript of eastdaleart.files.wordpress.com … · Web viewColours that are used in winter clothes, or in...