The Journey: Colour Theory

Colour Theory is very strong and powerful they can have a huge impact on our lives. Weather you see it or not colour they can change your mood, it all affects us differently. Some bright colours people cannot concentrate, whereas some cooler colours that aren't so bright might come across as a more relaxing colour. I as an artist love working with bright colours, abstracted bright colours but i can work with that and communicate by working with them on to the canvas. I just don't do dull art its always so bright and happy and sometimes it makes me want to dive into the colours. As i said we are all different and we all know what colours work with us, and colours that do not work. For example when i look at yellow it makes me happy, because it reminds me of summer, and the blazing sun. If i look at green or blue they don't lighten me so much its the brighter colours that do. Colour theory is a body practical guidance to colour mixing and the visual affects of a specific colour theory; the colour wheel, colour harmony, and the colour context.

The colour wheel

(source: photo from the book "Colour Perception - A practical approach to colour theory" by Tim Armstrong, page 6)

Colour wheel or colour circle is a basic tool of combining colours. It is designed so that virtually any colours you pick will look good together. The most common version is a wheel of 12 colours based on the artistic colour mode. The wheel is divided in too warm and cool colours. Warm colours are energetic and tend to advance in space, and on the other side, cool colours are calm and create a soothing impression. The colours black, gray and white are not in the colour wheel - they are considered to be neutral.

Sir Isaac Newton designed the first colour wheel in 1666. He also discovered that when three primary colours of light (red, green and blue) are mixed in equal amounts, the result is white light.

(source: photo from the book "Colour Perception - A practical approach to colour theory" by Tim Armstrong, page 50)

in 1766 Moses Harris made a first full-colour wheel; 18 colours were diverted from what he called 'the primitive colours' - red, yellow and blue. He used the colour black because it is formed by the superimposition of these colours.

Moses Haris's colour wheel

(source: http://kidugly.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/color-wheel.html)

Colour Harmony

There is a number of colour combinations that are considered especially pleasing to the eye and that work well together. These are called colour harmonies or color chords. They consist of two or more colours with a fixed relation in the colour wheel. Here are some examples: