Color Wheel: a circle or wheel of colors used by artists
Primary Colors:Red, yellow, and blue. With these three colors (and black and white) all other colors can be made. The primary colors themselves can not be made by mixing other colors.
Secondary Colors:Those colors which are created by the mixture of two primary colors in approximately equal proportions. The secondary colors are orange, violet and green.
Neutral Colors: Black, white, gray, and variations of brown. They are included in the color family called earth colors.
Tertiary Colors: Those colors created by the mixture of an adjacent primary and secondary color. The tertiary colors are named by combining the names of the two parent colors, with the primary element listed first: orange + red = red-orange.
Complementary Colors: colors that are opposite on the color wheel
Warm colors: hues that remind us of heat: red, yellow, orange
Cool colors: hues that remind us of the cold: greens, violet, blue
Analogous colors: colors next to each other on the color
Monochromatic: different values of the same color
Value: the lightness or darkness of the color
Tint: a light value of hue-made by adding white
Shade: a dark value of hue-made by adding black
Intensity: the purity of hue-may be bright or dull
COLOR
There are three main characteristics of color: Hue, color's name (red, blue, green, etc.), Value (how light or dark it is), and intensity (how bright or dull it is).
Hue
Hue refers to the color itself. Each different hue is a different reflected wavelength of light. White light broken in a prism has seven hues: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. White light occurs when all the wavelengths are reflected back to your eye, and black light occurs when no light is reflected to your eye. This is the physics of light.
Looking at the color wheel above, when using color pigments, the three primary colors used are yellow, blue and red. These three colors are blended together to produce other colors, called secondary colors, such as green, orange and purple. Mix enough colors together, and you get black.
Computer Colors
Computer colors are produced by combining the three colors of red, green and blue together. Believe it or not, you can get yellow by combining these colors
Printer ColorsThings get even more in depth on computers when you print out these colors. Printing uses the CYMK convention which takes cyan (light blue), yellow, magenta (pinky red) and black inks and tries to recreate the color that your computer created with red, green and blue light.
Value
Color value refers to the lightness or darkness of the hue. Adding white to a hue produces a high-value color, often called a tint. Adding black to a hue produces a low-value color, often called a shade.
Intensity
Also called chroma or saturation, intensity refers to the brightness of a color. A color is at full intensity when not mixed with black or white - a pure hue. You can change the intensity of a color, making it duller or more neutral by adding gray to the color. You can also change the intensity of a color by adding its complement (this is the color found directly opposite on the traditional color wheel). When changing colors this way, the color produced is called a tone.
When you mix complementary colors together, you produce a dull tone. However, when you put complementary colors side by side, you increase their intensity. This effect is called simultaneous contrast - each color simultaneously intensifies the visual brightness of the other color.
