Color Theory

Color theory can be immensely complicated sometimes, but once you figure out one part of it the rest is easy to pick up on. The idea of subtractive color is what most painters use.
Subtractive color: where mixing the hues will create black.

Grasping this theory will help you understand many things like understanding why certain colors "work" together and others don't. Or how paintings are deigned, because color is a vital element of the comosition. Learning how to simply mix the colors will be better understood, you will better recognize the individual properties. And you will understand the basic principles of painting.

Start with color. Colors are classified by three properties: hue, purity and value. People tend to confuse the terms and misunderstand them. It should be known that colors will mix and appear differetly on a computer screen.

Hue: color (it really is that simple).

Purity: The freedom from other color admixtures.

Value: The luminance — brightness or dullness — of a hue, as measured by the amount of light reflected. Also called tone or tonal value.

To tint a color you would add white while a shade would be adding grey or the compliment of that color.

In order to understand how complimentary colors work you need to understand mixing colors as well as primary colors, scondary colors and tertiary colors.

The primary colors are red, yellow, and bue.

The secondary colors are the mixing of 2 rimary colors, orange, green and purple. Example - red plus yellow equals orange.

A secondary color mixed with an adjacent primary (on the color wheel) will create a tertiary color.

Colors also have a temperature. Colors are commonly described as warm or cold. Warm colors lie at the orange-red end of the spectrum, and are 'active', causing them to 'advance'. Blue colors, particularly when dark and/or undersaturated, are 'cool' and tend to 'recede'. Other areas of the spectrum remain neutral. I personally tend to have difficulty mixing colors and trying to get just the right teperature and if I want perfect color harmony I really need to get that down. I demand some sort of thermometer for paint.

There are a few approaches to having successful color harmony.

Monochrome
One hue. Composition is achieved entirely through adjusting purities and tones. A limited but powerful approach, that always makes a good exercise.
In this detail from his Diana and Callisto (1556-9. National Gallery of Scotland. Edinburgh), Titian has used a simple orange hue throughout, not far from that shown above in the color purity strip. The marvelous variety comes from modifying purity and tone with glazes and scumbles — which demonstrates the power of old master techniques. (The whole picture uses a wider color range, including blue and a pink-red.)

Complementary
Composition uses one hue and its complementary — e.g. blue and orange. The hues can be mixed in various proportions, and tones added with white or black (or preferably earth pigments).

The detail comes from a famous painting by Monet of the Beach at Trouville (1870). It was painted on the spot. Though seeming a careless, even clumsy, improvisatory sketch, it is nothing of the sort. Monet served a traditional apprenticeship, and is here playing off an orange in beach and flesh tones against chalky tints of blue.

Analogous.
Composition using just 3 hues of 12-color wheel - e.g. orange, orange-red and red. As before, the hues can be mixed, and their tones adjusted.
This scheme can be further divided into:
1. one pure hue and the other two semi-neutral (i.e. mixed, muddy, low intensity). The pure tone will advance more than the others, whether is warm or cold.
2. high key pure hues. Usually applied in a broken fashion so that hues of the same value shimmer when seen close to, but group to broad areas of color from a distance.
3. one dominant, one subordinate and one minor. The dominant is varied with different purities and values.
The detail is from Eugene Delacroix's Death of Sardanapolis. 1826. Musée du Louvre. Paris. The whole picture employs an analogous color scheme of red, red-orange and orange.

Split Complementary
Like analogous, but with the addition of the complementary of the mid-hue of the analogous range. A warm/cool balance is more easily introduced with this scheme.

This intimate painting by Mary Cassatt (The Bath. c. 1892. The Art Institute of Chicago) uses tertiary hues, and falls somewhere between a triadic scheme and a split complementary one of red-purple against hues of green-blue. The background repeats the foreground colors but in muddier and darker colors.

Triadic
Uses all three hues that are equidistance on color wheel. Hues may be varied in purity and tone as usual, and the scheme is further divided:

1. Primary colors only: very difficult to use outside posters and graphic design.
2. Secondary triadics, e.g. scarlet, mauve and viridian. Very beautiful effects can be achieved, probably because all colors contain some of the other two secondaries.
Green, blue and yellow appear in this detail from Vermeer's The Music Lesson (c. 1664. HM The Queen's Royal Collection. St. James's Palace). Harmony has also been achieved by very skillful use of tone.

I'm certain this wasn't exactly enlightening, but there no better way to learn other than reading and practicing. And I'm a compulsive note-taker....this blog is kind of enabling me.