Composition, Colour and Creativity - Colour

1) There are three primary colours: Yellow, Red and Blue. 2) There are three secondary colours, formed by mixing primaries: Orange, Violet and Green. If you lay these out in a circle you have a colour circle and everything flows from here!

Follow the sequence and fill on the other colours in between and you end up with a familiar sight.

Often you will see the terms RGB, CYMK and HSL used when discussing colour on computers, try and ignore them - they are only there to confuse us non-computer literate artists! For your information this is what they mean RGB = Red, Green, Blue the light sources used in your monitor. CYMK is Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black, the four colours used for printed materials and finally HSL = Hue, Saturation and Light where Hue is the base colour (from the wheel), Saturation is the purity, in fact how much grey is mixed with the colour, and Lightness is how much black or white is in the colour.

In PSP terms the colour wheel is the Hue, the centre block allows you to select Saturation (from left to right) and Lightness (from top to bottom).

Colour Contrasts

You can contrast colours by Hue, Saturation or Lightness. To contrast by Hue, you would take two colours on opposing sides of the colour wheel. To contrast by Saturation you would take the same Hue, but in heavily and lightly saturated, and of course in Lightness it is a comparison of light and dark.

	Colour Contrast: Red to Light Blue (opposite on Colour Wheel)
	Saturation Contrast: Grey to Pure Red (opposite Saturations)
	Lightness Contrast: Dark Red to Pink (opposite Lightness)

Colour Harmony

Harmony is not the proximity of colours, but rather the balance of opposites. This is powered by the eye/brain combination trying to make a neutral, un-evocative grey. If colours are truly in harmony then you will likely create a picture of harmony, but also neutrality.

Specifically, a harmonious selection would involve taking colours from two or more opposite points on the colour wheel.

Don't forget: the opposite of a primary is always a secondary.

Harmonious Proportions

But colours also have relative strengths, for example Yellow is a strong colour and Violet is quite weak. If you put equal amounts of these two colours they would be unbalanced, there is a near numerical method of calculating this.

3 Yellow - Strong 4 Orange 6 Red / Green 8 Blue 9 Violet - Weak

The numbers in this table show the relative strengths of the colours. For example, 3 squares of Yellow would be balanced by 9 squares of Violet. 4 squares of Orange would be balanced by 8 squares of blue.

Putting this information into practice, this actual photo (colours un-retouched) would be balanced if we had 6 squares of red to 8 squares of blue. But we haven't, this is maybe only two blue squares so the picture has a dynamic, rather than stable impression. (Positioning the subject off-centre in the "dynamic" to "eccentric" zone helps that dynamic too).

OK, we are going to take a little side-track to round off some of our information about colour, then we will return to colour harmonies.

So just sticking with colour now. Colour works on three levels:

• Visual and objective
• Expressive, emotive and subjective
• Symbolic or cultural

So, I'm going to firstly talk through the core colours and their relative characteristics, then move on to discussing how they work with each other.

RED: Insistent and powerful, it immediately attracts attention and advances against cooler colours. Red radiates energy and is vital, earthy, strong and hot. With blood means war and destruction, can mean passion or damnation. Is also symbolically seen as Warning, Hot, War and Stop.

BLUE: Recedes visually, it is quiet and less active. Cool, passive, withdrawn and reflective. Symbolically linked to sky and water.

YELLOW: can be intense (against a black background) or insipid (against white) but is usually seen as a strong, sharp and vigorous colour. It is symbolic of sun and light. When used in gold remember it reflects and will contain other ranges from orange to grey.

BLACK: Obviously needs a contrast to show anything, black is generally seen as neutral but it can be heavy and oppressive, can represent both dense and empty space.

WHITE: Slight hints of colour are very obvious in white. White is generally neutral, but can be symbolic of purity.

GREY: Not surprisingly is just neutral.

Now, adding what we now know about colour we can return to colour harmony and start making some comparisons between colour comparisons:

Red/Green Harmony

Red and Green are similar strengths (see the table above) so balance well. They are an energetic combination, as is blue on red, blue-green on orange-red.

Orange/Blue Harmony

Orange is twice as luminous as blue, so best balance is 1/3rd Orange to 2/3rds Blue. This gives a strong cool/warm relationship, also pushes the orange forward.

Yellow/Violet Harmony

These are extremes of brightest and darkest, yellow should be 1/4 or less of the picture.

Three Way Balance

Red, Yellow, Blue - the three primaries - are the strongest of the possible triads, but any three opposites will tend to be lively.

Colour Contrasts

Loaded with our information about the characteristics of colours we can now discuss some different contrasts; based on the "warmth" of colours where orange/red is the warmest and green/blue the coolest.

Warm colours advance, the suggest opacity, earthiness, dryness. Cool colours recede, blue-green is often associated with backgrounds. Cool colours suggest transparency, airiness and wetness.

Perspective and colour

I don't want to discuss vanishing points and all that stuff, but just a quick note on how colours relate to perspective:

• Perspective is driven by shape, size and line
• Haze lightens far objects (lighten and desaturate)
• But bright objects (light and saturate) visually advance, dark ones recede
• Warm colours advance, cool colours recede
• Sharp objects appear in the foreground, far ones are blurred

Help I've read the theory but I don't understand how to use it!!!

I know what you mean, what does all this colour guff mean in practice? You must think in terms of an artists palette, selecting from a small choice of complimentary colours. Let us say you want to show a nice calm picture of a lady bathing by the seaside. What pallete would you use?

In this painting the artist started with core blues and some greens (6 o'clock on the colour wheel) which are cool, calm colours, by keeping the painting quite light and un-saturated it maintains a sense of calm.

The two central figures and the sand are then done in warmer colours, (taken from a triangular point on the colour wheel at 10o'clock). We now have a nice warm/cool comparison. By keeping the colours unsaturated the calmest prevails.

But wait, surely this is unbalanced, not really a triangular selection at all? Well at 2 o'clock on the wheel we pick up the violets, and in fact these can be seen on the shoreline as well as the picnic basket and in the shadows of the grasses.

The result? A well balanced calm and quiet, harmonious picture. Now, how about the reverse, a picture full of dynamic?

Claude Theberge's "Lovers of Normandy" positively screams dynamic, you can feel the wind whipping and buffeting. Clearly, there is clever use of the curved lines to present a strong part of the dynamic, but look also at the contrasts, the big almost neutral colour taking over most of the centre and bottom balanced dynamically by the brighter colours of the top third. Note also that the curved lines bring you to a focus point on the edge of the picture, right in the "dynamic" zone.

And as for colours, here is the basic colour wheel and triangulation. You have the strong blue/purple of the cloak, balanced by the strong golden yellow of the blonde hair. But notice, these are relatively small areas, the bulk of the picture is in a very desaturated, grey/green from the bottom of the colour triangle.

Notice also, how the same colours have been used, desaturated and darkened and blurred to create the background sky behind the lovers to create perspective. And also note that we go from strong detailed, crisp flows in the scarf and hair to large colour sweeps of minimal detail in the cloak.

The bursting dynamism of this picture comes from the many contrasts Theberge has been able to make within the image.

• Introduction
• Contrasts
• Space and Frames
• Design and Position
• Creativity