The Art of Color

The Art of Color

Color harmony | Developing a visual relationship and structure between colors that are capable of serving as a basis for composition and revealing content.

Color Impression

Colored light reflected from colored objects modifies the colors of other objects.

Full Light Medium Light Shadow

William Eggleston Joel Sternfeld Paul Graham

Hue name and properties/mixture of a color that enables it to be perceived.

Brilliance how light or dark a color is.

Saturation the level and mixture of white, black, grey or complimentary included in color.

Extension proportions of color

Simultaneous shifting of colors to their complementary

Color Altered or Varied in 5 Modes

Paintings by Mark Rothko

Color Agent is the physically or definable colorant.

Color Effect is the psychophysiological color reality.

On a white background, the yellow square looks darker and warmer.

On a black background, the yellow square acquires extreme brilliance and is cooler.

On white, the red square looks darker .

On a white background, the blue square looks darkerand suggests depth.

On black, the red square radiates warmth.

On a black background, the blue square acquires extreme brilliance with deep luminescence of hue.

Color Agent and Color Effect

Color Expression

Color is not only experienced and understood visually, but also psychologically and emotionally

Gregory Crewdson Philip Lorca diCorcia

12 Hue Color Circle

Yellow

RedBlue

Orange

Violet

Green

YellowOrange

YellowGreen

BlueGreen

RedOrange

RedViolet

BlueViolet

Yellow

• Yellow is the color of sunshine. It's associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. Yellow produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy.

• Shades of yellow (when gray is added) are visually unappealing because they lose cheerfulness and become dingy.

• Dull (dingy) yellow represents caution, decay, sickness, and jealousy.

• Light yellow is associated with intellect, freshness, and joy.

Philip Lorca diCorcia

William Eggleston

Nan Goldin

Red

• Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.

• Light red represents joy, sexuality, passion, sensitivity, and love.

• Pink signifies romance, love, and friendship. It denotes feminine qualities and passiveness.

• Dark red is associated with vigor, willpower, rage, anger, leadership, courage, longing, malice, and wrath.

• Brown suggests stability and denotes masculine qualities.

• Reddish-brown is associated with harvest and fall.

Philip Lorca diCorcia

William Eggleston William Eggleston

Stephen Shore

Blue

• Passive from the point of view of material space. Always cool and shadowy. Atmospheric.

• Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.

• When dimmed, blue suggests fear, grief, and perdition.

• Light blue is associated with health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness.

• Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.

Richard Misrach

Stephen Shore

Alec Soth

Green

• Intermediate between yellow and blue. Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety. • If the green inclines towards yellow, an energetic sense of nature is felt. Activated by orange, it assumes vulgar cast. If it inclines towards blue, cold and vigorous aggressiveness.

• Dark green is associated with ambition, greed, jealousy and is also commonly associated with money.• Yellow-green can indicate sickness, cowardice, discord, and jealousy.

• Aqua is associated with emotional healing and protection.• Olive green is the traditional color of peace.

Stephen Shore

William Eggleston

Cindy Sherman

Orange

• Mixture of yellow and red. Maximum radiant activity and solar luminosity. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation. Orange is the color of fall and harvest. In heraldry, orange is symbolic of strength and endurance.

• Suggests a range from festive to when whitened, a loss of character. When diluted with black, declines into dull and withered brown. By lightening the brown, beige tones achieved suggesting warmth and quiet atmospheric quality.

• Dark orange can mean deceit and distrust.

• Red-orange corresponds to desire, sexual passion, pleasure, domination, aggression, and thirst for action.

• Gold evokes the feeling of prestige. The meaning of gold is illumination, wisdom, and wealth. Gold often symbolizes high quality.

Edward Burtynsky

Joel Sternfeld

Violet

• Violet combines the stability of blue and the energy of red and is associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition. It conveys wealth and extravagance.

• Violet is associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic as well as chaos, death and exaltation.

• Solitude and dedication in blue-violet. Divine love and spirituality in red-violet.

• Light violet evokes romantic and nostalgic feelings.

• Dark violet evokes gloom and sad feelings. It can cause frustration.

Christian Patterson

Tim Davis

Mitch Epstein

Seven Color Contrasts

1. Contrast of Hue

2. Light - Dark Contrast

3. Cold - Warm Contrast

4. Complementary Contrast

5. Simultaneous Contrast

6. Contrast of Saturation

7. Contrast of Extension

William Eggleston Henry Wessel

Contrast of Hue

• At least three (3) clearly differentiated hues are necessary.

• Some obvious combinations include:

red yellow blue

red blue green

blue yellow violet

green red violet

blue green orange

orange yellow redWilliam Eggleston

Light - Dark Contrast

• Strongest expressions of light and dark are the colors white and black.

• The effects of of black and white are in all respects opposite, with the realm of of grays and chromatic colors between them.

• Difference between level of brilliance and illumination. Obscured v. Revealed.

• Yellow and Violet have the strongest light - dark contrast.

Alec Soth

Cold - Warm Contrast

• Contrast that is both physical and psychological.

• Red - orange represents is at the warmest range of colors, while blue - green is at the coolest.

• Cold - Warm properties can be described as: shadow / sun ; transparent / opaque ; sedative / stimulant ; airy / earthy ; far / near ; wet / dry.

Yellow

RedBlue

Orange

Violet

Green

YellowOrange

YellowGreen

BlueGreen

RedOrange

RedViolet

BlueViolet

Cold Colors Warm Colors

Martin Parr

Gregory Crewdson

Complementary Contrast

• Two colors are called “complementary” when mixed together they produce a neutral gray. Complementary colors are opposite each other on the Color Wheel.

• Analogous colors are any three colors which are side by side on a 12 Hue Color Wheel.

• Some examples of complementary colors include:

Yellow | Violet Orange | Blue Red | Green

Christian Patterson William Eggleston William Christenberry

Simultaneous Contrast

• Results from the fact that for any given color, the eye simultaneously requires the complementary color, and generates it spontaneously if it is not already present.

• The simultaneously generated complementary color occurs as a sensation in the eye of the beholder, and is not objectively present.

• It cannot be photographed.

Contrast of Saturation

• Relates to the degree of purity of a color.

• Contrast between pure, intense colors and dull, diluted colors.

• Pure colors may be diluted in four different ways:

1. Color diluted with white

2. Color diluted with black

3. Color diluted with gray

4. Color diluted by a mixture of corresponding complementary colors

Stephen Shore Stephen Shore

Contrast of Extension

• Involves the relative size of two or more areas of color. It is the contrast between large and small areas.

• Colors may be assembled in areas of any size, but the proportion between two or more colors may be said to be in balance or harmony so that no one of the colors is used more prominently than the other.

Christian Patterson William ChristenberryMartin Parr