Intro. Art: Color Vocabulary

Color Vocabulary

ANALOGOUS COLORS - An analogous color scheme consists of any three or four adjacent colors on the color wheel. Their proximity to one another assures that analogous colors will contribute to a harmonious scheme, and where colors meet, they will blend beautifully.

OPAQUE - Having covering power; not permitting paper or other color to show through.

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.

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.

HUE - The name of a color as it appears on the color wheel: red, orange, yellow, red-violet, etc.

WARM COLORS - Red, orange, yellow, (red-violet, yellow-green), warm color tend to advance in visual space.

COOL COLORS - Violet, blue, green, cool colors recede in space.

TINT - Hue plus white (or water).

SHADE - Hue plus black.

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS - Hues which are opposite each other on the colors wheel. The complement of red is green, the complement of yellow-orange is blue-violent, etc. When two complements are placed next to each other each color appears at its highest visual strength.

VALUE - The natural lightness or darkness of a hue or the amount of white or black in a color, pink is a light value of red, navy-blue is a dark value of blue, etc.

INTENSITY - The purity of a hue. A hue at its highest intensity has no other color mixed with it. A hue loses its intensity as another color is added to it.