Language of Color

 

While we are on the subject of color, I thought I would share with you a glossary of color terms that I've collected over the years.   Becoming familiar with these terms will in itself go a long way to expand your knowledge and understanding of color.  Enjoy your journey!   Until next time…

Achromatic:  Literally, without color.  In art, a composition in shades of black, white, and gray.

Additive:  Colors made by light; the additive primaries are red, green, and yellow.

After-image:  The illusion of a visual complementary color image that occurs after staring at a hue, then shifting the gaze to a plain white surface.

Analogous Colors:  Refers to colors that are close to each other on the color wheel.

Attributes of Color: The three main descriptions or properties of colors are namely, hue, value, and intensity.

Balanced Color:  Colors that are balanced by their complements and varied across their values and intensities.

Binocular Vision:  Two retinal images, one from each eye, melded by the brain’s visual system into a single image that appears three-dimensional.

Chroma:  The degree of purity or brilliance of a color.

Chromaticity:  A term interchangeable with chroma, saturation, and intensity.

Color Constancy:  The psychological tendency to see colors we expect to see even when the actual colors are different.

Color Harmony:  The pleasing result of balanced color relationships.

Color Scheme:  A set of colors chosen to combine within a composition.

Color Schemes:  Recipes for using color combinations which help to tell the story of your painting in color.

Color Temperature:  Temperature dominance occurs when mainly warm or cool colors are used in a painting;   temperature contrast occurs when both warm and cool colors are used in a painting.

Color Wheel:  A two-dimensional circular arrangement of colors that reveal color relationships of the spectral hues.  

Color Wheel:  An arrangement of colors in a circle which can include the three primary colors,   three secondary colors, and six intermediate colors.

Complement, complementary:  Colors that lie opposite each other on the color wheel.  Placing them side by side enhances the brilliance of both; mixed together, they cancel the intensity of both.

Complementary Colors:  Colors that are directly opposite of the colors on the color wheel.

Composition:  The arrangement of shapes, spaces, lights, darks, and colors within the format of an artwork.

Cool Colors:  Colors that connote the coolness of water, dusk, and vegetation:  usually violets, blues, and greens.

Crosshatching:  A method of shading by using short parallel lines, often in superimposed sets of lines crossed at various angles to darken an area.

Double complementary:  A color combination of four hues:  two sets of complements such as red/green and blue-violet/yellow-orange.

Dyad:  A color scheme based on two colors.

Expressive Color:  Color that describes the subject as it really is or realistic color.  Local color is another description of the actual color.

Glaze:  A transparent film of color painted over another color.

Grisaille:  A method of painting that uses shades of gray in an underpainting to establish the value structure of a composition.

High Key Painting:   Light and middle values are used to make the painting.

Hue:  The name of a color.

Hue:  The name of a color.

Intensity:  Refer to the purity or saturation of a color.

Intensity:  The brightness or dullness of a color; also called chroma, chromaticity, and saturation.

Intermediate Hues:  Yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-orange, and yellow-orange.

Line:  A narrow mark that defines the edges of spaces and shapes in a composition.  Line can also be used for shading, as in crosshatching.

Local Color:  The actual color seen on objects or persons.  See perceptual color and expressive color.

Low Key Painting:  Dark and middle values are used to make the painting.

Luminosity:  In painting, the illusion of radiance or glow.

Monochromatic:  In painting, a work based on variations of one color.

Monocular Vision:  By closing or covering one eye, the brain receives a single image, which appears to be flat like a photograph.

Negative Spaces:  In art, the shapes that surround the objects; sometimes considered background shapes.

Neutral Mixtures:  Complementary colors mixed together create neutral or grayish colors.

Palette:  A surface on which an artist places and mixes colors.

Perceptual Color:  The actual colors of objects and persons.  See local color or expressive color.

Pictorial Color:  The adjustments to perceptual color needed to bring a color composition into unity, balance, and harmony.

Pigment:  Dry color ground to a fine powder and mixed with a liquid for use as a painting medium.

Primary Colors:  Colors that cannot be mixed from any other colors—for example, red, yellow, and blue.

Primary Hues:  Red, Yellow, and Blue.

Reflected Color:  Color reflected from one surface to another.

Saturation: A term signifying the rightness or dullness of a color:  used interchangeably with intensity, chroma, and chromaticity.

Secondary Colors:  Colors that are mixtures of two primaries—for example, mixing yellow and red (theoretically) makes orange.

Secondary Hues:  Orange, Violet, and Green.

Shade, Shading:   Color changes made by adding black, thus decreasing the proportion of the original color.

Shade:  A color to which black is added to make it darker.

Simultaneous contrast:  The effect of one color on an adjacent color.

Spectrum, Spectral Hues:   The sequence of colors seen in a rainbow or in the colors created by passing light through a prism.

Spectrum:  A band of six colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet) produced by separation of the components of light by their different degrees of refraction, e.g. in a rainbow.

Style:  An artist’s personal, usually recognizable, manner of working with images and art materials.

Subtractive Color:  Pigments and pigment mixtures used in painting that absorb all wavelengths except those of the color or colors apparent to the eye.

Successive Contrast:  Interchangeable with after-image.

Tertiary Colors:  Colors made by mixing a primary and it’s adjacent secondary—for example, the tertiary yellow-orange results from mixing the primary yellow and the secondary orange.

Tetrad:  A color scheme based on four hues equidistant on the color wheel—for example, green, yellow-orange, red and blue-violet. 

Tint:  A color to which white or water is added to make it lighter.

Tint:  A light value of a color.

Tone:  Refers to the graying or neutralizing of a color.

Toned Ground:  A thin wash of a neutral color on a surface, such as a canvas, panel, or board to prepare it for painting.

Triad:  A color scheme based on three colors equally spaced from each other on the color wheel—for example, yellow, red, and blue.

Triadic Color Scheme:  A set of three connected colors separated by two or three hues.

Underpainting:  A preliminary toning of the surface to be painted, often somewhat more detailed than a toned ground.

Unity:  The ruling principle of art and design that all parts of an artwork contribute to the harmonious unity of the whole.

Value:  Refers to the lightness of darkness of a color.

Value:  The degree of lightness or darkness of a color.

Warm Colors:  Colors associated with heat or fire, such as red, orange, and yellow.