colour theory

1. SECTION ONE:
THE EVOLUTION OF COLOUR IN ART…

2. The element of colour has the strongest effect on our emotions
of all the elements of art.
We use it to create the mood, feeling and atmosphere of a
painting
We can use colour as LIGHT TONE PATTERN FORM
SYMBOL CONTRAST HARMONY ETC

3. Where does color come from?
• A ray of light is the
source of all color.
• Without light, color
does not exist.
• Light is broken down
into colors of the
spectrum. You can
often see a variety of
colors in a bright beam
when you look at
something like a
rainbow.
Where does color come from?
• A ray of light is the
source of all color.
• Without light, color
does not exist.
• Light is broken down
into colors of the
spectrum. You can
often see a variety of
colors in a bright beam
when you look at
something like a
rainbow.

4. • Color can alter the appearance of
form and space.
• Color can affect our performance
abilities and change our moods…
What feelings or moods do you
associate with different colours?

5. Pigments
• Pigments are substances that can be ground
into fine powder and used for adding color to
dyes and paints.
• Pigments were originally derives from animal,
mineral, and vegetable sources.
• Examples:
• Purple from shellfish
• Red dye from the dried bodies of scale insects

6. The Color Wheel
• The color wheel is a basic tool we use
when working with colors.
• Primary colors cannot be mixed from any
other colors.
• All other colors are mixed from
combinations of red, yellow, blue, black
and white.

7. Primary Colors

8. Secondary Colors
(colors made by mixing primaries)

9. Tertiary Colors
(colors that mix primary and secondary)

10. Using the Wheel
Complementary Colors
Colors opposite from one another on the
wheel.
These colors will provide the most visual
contrast.
Contrast is the noticeable level of
difference between two colors.

11. Practical Example
Neither of these flyers is
completely ineffective and
both provide shape contrast
with the text box.
But the orange box above
provides a nice contrast with
the blues and grays of the
clothes rack.
The blue box here, however,
is too similar to the clothes’
color palette.

16. The analogous color scheme is 3-5 colors adjacent to
each other on the color wheel. This combination of
colors provides very little contrast.
Analogous

17. Analogous Colors in Nature
Nature offers an excellent
look at analogous colors in
action.
provide a
strong and attention
drawing contrast?

19. “Mono” means “one”, “chroma” means “color”…
monochromatic color schemes have only one
color and its values.
Monochromatic

21. Artists that use Monochromatic Colors
“Tragedy” Pablo PicassoLeonardo da Vinci

22. Warm colors are found on the right side of the color
wheel. They are colors found in fire and the sun.
Warm colors make objects look closer in a painting or
drawing.
Warm

24. Artists’ Use of Warm Colors
Cezanne
Van Gogh

26. Cool colors are found on the left side of the color wheel.
They are the colors found in snow and ice and tend to
recede in a composition.
Cool

27. Artists’ Use of Cool Colors
Mary Cassatt
Vincent van Gogh
Henri Matisse
Vincent van Gogh
Claude Monet
Georges Seurat

30. Now you’ve wrapped your mind around the basics
of colour theory, let’s have a look at the evolution
of colour as used in art.
Colour theory basics:
• Know your colour wheel (primaries, secondaries, tertiaries,
complementaries and analogous colours)
• Know your colour schemes (monochromatic, warm, cool, triad,
varied, neutral)
So how is all this applied in the Visual Arts?

31. Artists invented the first pigments—a combination of soil, animal fat, burnt charcoal,
and chalk— early as 40,000 years ago, creating a basic palette of five colors:
red, yellow, brown, black, and white.
Since then, the history of color has been one of perpetual discovery, whether through
exploration or scientific advancement. The invention of new pigments accompanied
the developments of art history’s greatest movements—from the Renaissance to
Impressionism —as artists experimented with colors never before seen in the history
of painting.

32. Why is colour such an important element of
art?
• The Effect of Colour
• The effects of colour can be purely optical (eg. draws the viewer's
eye), emotional (eg. cool colours like blue or green have a calming
effect, while red or yellow are more stimulating to the senses), or
aesthetic (eg. the beauty that springs from the juxtaposition of two or
more harmonious colours), to name but three.
• In addition, a colour's impact varies according to its neighbouring
colours on the canvas. A grey surrounded by blue will appear cool,
while grey surrounded by yellow appears warm.

34. For the purpose of our studies, we will now turn
our focus to Western Art and the use of colour to
represent internal and external realities

35. As art styles and subjects evolved, so did the
use, and production, of colour.
Over the history of Western Art, artists have used colour not only to
represent the things they see but also to symbolise meaning, create
association and express their interpretation of the world.
With the invention of the camera, artists were set free from realistic
representations of the world and began to use colour, line, shape etc in
new and innovative ways.

36. A history of colour symbolism
• There is great diversity in the use of colors and their associations
between cultures[1]and even within the same culture in different time
periods.[2] The same color may have very different associations within
the same culture at any time. For example, red is often used for stop
signs[3] or danger.[4] At the same time, red is also frequently used in
association with romance, e.g. with Valentine's Day.[5] Whitevariously
signifies purity, innocence, wisdom or death.

37. Colour as light
• Balla, street light
• Physical properies of light, shows heat/
movement
• (Futurist celebration of the power of
technology)

38. Monet – Impression Sunrise

39. Rene Magritte ‘empire of light’ 1954
Surreal.
Set at night but the sky is midday
Day/night light/dark reality/imagination
Draws you into the irrational realm

40. Colour as emotion
Emile nolde, lake Lucerne, 1930
Expressionistic use of colour – colour expresses feeling about subject rather than describing naturalistically.
Above – painted from memory rather than observation
A shifting mood in the landscape

42. Van Gogh

43. Gauguin

44. Colour as pattern

45. Op Art and Victor Vassarely

46. Colour History and Symbolism

47. RED

48. First employed in prehistoric cave paintings, red ochre is one of the oldest pigments still in use.
Found in iron-rich soil and first employed as an artistic material (as far as we know) in prehistoric cave paintings,
red ochre is one of the oldest pigments still in use. Centuries later, during the 16th and 17th centuries, the
most popular red pigment came from a cochineal insect, a creature that could only be found on
prickly-pear cacti in Mexico. These white bugs produced a potent red dye so sought-after by artists
and patrons that it quickly became the third greatest import out of the “New World” (after gold and
silver)..

49. Red is a rich colour with an even richer history.
Use of the pigment can be traced way back to
Ancient Egypt where it was considered both a
colour of vitality and celebration, as well as evil
and destruction. From here on, red was a
staple hue throughout history, used in ancient
Grecian murals, in Byzantine clothing to signal
status and wealth, and heavily applied
throughout art movements ranging from the
Renaissance through to modern day art.
Red is considered to be a colour of intense
emotions, ranging from anger, sacrifice, danger,
and heat, through to love, passion, and
sexuality.

51. BLUE

52. • For hundreds of years, the cost of lapis lazuli
rivaled even the price of gold.
• Ever since the Medieval era, painters have
depicted the Virgin Mary in a bright blue
robe, choosing the colour not for its religious
symbolism, but rather for its hefty price tag.
Mary’s iconic hue—called ultramarine blue—
comes from lapis lazuli, a gemstone that for
centuries could only be found in a single
mountain range in Afghanistan. This precious
material achieved global popularity, adorning
Egyptian funerary portraits, Iranian Qur’ans,
and later the headdress in Vermeer’s Girl
with a Pearl Earring (1665). For hundreds of
years, the cost of lapis lazuli rivaled even the
price of gold. In the 1950s, Yves Klein
collaborated with a Parisian paint supplier to
invent a synthetic version of ultramarine
blue, and this colour became the French
artist’s signature. Explaining the appeal of
this historic hue, Klein said, “Blue has no
dimensions. It is beyond dimensions.”

55. The Void, in which he recreated Yves Klein‘s
“blue urine” experiment. In May 1959, on the
opening of Yves Klein’s exhibition Le Vide
(The Void) in Paris, Klein served special blue
cocktail, containingMethylene blue. As Klein
intended, the cocktails caused the urine of
drinkers to turn blue for about a week.

56. • Blue is a colour that has long been associated with royalty,
art, military, business and nature, making it a colour with a
lot of applications. blue would go on to live a long life in the
world of art, from stained glass windows in the Middle Ages,
fine blue and white porcelain in China through to famous
applications by artists such as Renoir and Van Gogh.
• Blue is also thought to promote trustworthiness, serenity,
and productivity amongst other positive traits, the use of the
colour dominates tech, financial and medical branding.

58. • Turner used the experimental watercolour Indian Yellow—a fluorescent
paint derived from the urine of mango-fed cows. Few artists in history
have been known for their use of yellow, though Joseph Mallord William
Turner and Vincent van Gogh are the most notable exceptions. Turner so
loved the colour that contemporary critics mocked the British painter,
writing that his images were “afflicted with jaundice,” and that the artist
may have a vision disorder. For his sublime and sun-lit seascapes, Turner
used the experimental watercolour Indian Yellow—and for brighter
touches, Turner employed the synthetic Chrome Yellow, a lead-based
pigment known to cause delirium. Vincent van Gogh also painted his starry
nights and sunflowers with this vivid and joyful hue.

60. Heralded as the colour of sunshine and gold, yellow is a vibrant, historic colour.
Ancient Egyptians were pretty prolific users of the colour too. Thanks to its close association
with gold, the colour was considered eternal and indestructible.
Yellow has a longstanding relationship with the world of art, with artists such as Van Gogh
adopting it as a signature colour to signal warmth and happiness.
Amongst these associations, Yellow is a colour that embodies many ideas depending on the
shade and application. As previously mentioned it can symbolise happiness, sunshine,
good energy, and joy.
In Japan, yellow is thought to represent courage, and in some parts of Mexico certain
shades can are thought to represent death

61. GREEN

62. • Green pigments have been some of the most poisonous in history.
• While the colour green evokes nature and renewal, its pigments have been some of the
most poisonous in history. In 1775, the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a
deadly hue, Scheele’s Green, a bright green pigment laced with the toxic chemical
arsenic. Cheap to produce, Scheele’s Green became a sensation in the Victorian era,
even though many suspected the colour to be dangerous for artists and patrons alike. The
French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s bedroom wallpaper even featured Scheele’s
Green, and historians believe the pigment caused the revolutionary’s death in 1821. By
the end of the 19th century, Paris Green—a similar mixture of copper and arsenic—
replaced Scheele’s Green as a more durable alternative, enabling Claude Monet, Paul
Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to create vivid, emerald landscapes. Used as a
rodenticide and an insecticide, Paris Green was still highly toxic, and may have been
responsible for Cézanne’s diabetes and Monet’s blindness. Not surprisingly, it was
eventually banned in the 1960s.

63. • Green is a colour with close and distinctive ties to
nature, the environment, and all things to do with the
great outdoors.
• Historically, green was a pigment that did not appear
as early in prehistoric art as other hues as it was a hard
pigment to reproduce. Due to this, many art and fabric
applications of green either turned out a dull brown-
ish green, or eventually faded due to the
temperamental pigments used. So, it was only when
synthetic green pigments and dyes were produced that
green was seen more prolifically throughout modern
art.
• In Western countries, green is seen as a colour of luck,
freshness, the colour for ‘go’, jealousy, and greed. In
China and Japan, green is seen as the colour of new
birth, youth, and hope. However in China it is also a
symbol of infidelity as to wear a green hat is
considered a symbol of your partner cheating on you.
• Psychologically speaking, green is thought to help
balance emotions, promote clarity, and create an
overall feeling of zen. Green is obviously the colour of
nature and health, thus it also has close ties with
emotions of empathy, kindness, and compassion.

65. • The Impressionists—especially Monet—so adored the new hue that
critics accused the painters of having “violettomania.”
• “I have finally discovered the true colour of the atmosphere,” Claude Monet
once declared. “It’s violet. Fresh air is violet.” The purple shadows and
lavender specks of light that enliven Monet’s haystacks and waterlilies owe
much to a little-known American portrait painter named John Goffe Rand.
In 1841, Rand grew frustrated with the messy practice of storing paint in a
pig’s bladder, which was the prevailing method for preserving pigments at
the time, and invented a more practical and portable option: a collapsible
paint tube made of tin. This enabled artists like Monet to paint plein air,
easily transporting their colour to outdoor locations to capture impressions
of the environment, and in turn led to the production of nuanced, pre-mixed
paint shades in tin tubes, such as Manganese Violet, the first affordable
mauve-coloured paint that meant artists no longer had to mix red and blue
to make purple.

68. • Purple has long had a noble and fairly regal history surrounding the
hue. Due to the fact that producing purple pigments was expensive
and difficult, the colour was often worn by those of high status and
royal descent throughout the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires as
well as Japanese aristocracy.

69. OUTSIDE THE COLOUR WHEEL
Purple has long had a noble and fairly regal history surrounding the hue. Due to the fact that
producing purple pigments was expensive and difficult, the colour was often worn by those
of high status and royal descent throughout the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires as well
as Japanese aristocracy.

70. • Of all the pigments that have been banned over the centuries, the colour most
missed by painters is likely Lead White.
• Of all the pigments—Chrome Yellow, Scheele’s Green, Paris Green—that have
been banned over the centuries, the colour most missed by painters is likely Lead
White. This hue could capture and reflect a gleam of light like no other, though its
production was anything but glamorous. The 17th-century Dutch method for
manufacturing the pigment involved layering cow and horse manure over lead
and vinegar. After three months in a sealed room, these materials would combine
to create flakes of pure white. While scientists in the late 19th century identified
lead as poisonous, it wasn’t until 1978 that the United States banned the
production of lead white paint. In this era, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Ryman
and Agnes Martin turned to titanium and zinc whites to create monochromatic
white paintings, while artists like Dan Flavin bypassed pigments altogether in
sculptures that emitted white light directly.

74. • The darkest pigment of the Old Masters, “bone black” is produced by
burning animal bones in an air-free chamber.
• While the Impressionists avoided black paint—finding areas of darkness to
be filled with colour—American artists in the ’50s and ’60s returned to
black with avengeance.
• Frank Stella, Richard Serra and Ad Reinhardt all created monochromatic
black paintings, stripping the canvas of any subject matter other than the
paint itself. Taken together, these painters prove that black is as nuanced as
any other, capable of many permutations, tones, and textures. Speaking
about his practice in 1967, Reinhardt quoted the Japanese painter and
printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, saying, “There is a black which is old and a
black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and
black in shadow.”

78. the man, Jacob, wrestles with what
is evidently an angel, a
representative of divinity. The
Jabbok River (a.k.a. the Jordan
River) separates Jacob from
Canaan, or the Promised Land. So
Jacob is, in essence, trying to make
peace the old fashioned way
between the better and worse
elements of his human nature so
that he can get on with simply
living a decent life.

79. • BOLD, FLAT, SYMBOLIC COLOUR
• CLEAR OUTLINES
• ABSTRACT COLOUR AND SHAPE
• THE DOMINANT RED OF THE GROUND ACCENTUATS THE DYNAMIC
ENERGY OF THE STRUGGLING WRESTLERS.
• THE COMPOSITION IS BOLDLY DIVIDED BY THE DARKER OCHRE OF
THE TREE TRUNK, WHICH ARCHES DIAGONALLY ACROSS THE
CENTRE, EFFECTIVELY SEPARATING THE TWO COMPONENTS.

80. Finding inspiration in Japanese woodblock prints from Hiroshige and Hokusai, which he owned,[1]
Gauguin developed the idea of non-naturalistic landscapes.
He applies large areas of flat color to the composition, and the red ground departs from conventional
representation of earth, field, or grass.
In portraying the watching figures Gaugin experiments with the distortion of shapes, exaggerating
features, and use of strong contour lines rather than gradual shifts in tone that most painters
practiced. The brown trunk, black garments, white hats and red field are painted with minimal color
shading. Gauguin is showing it is possible to move away from naturalism towards a more abstracted,
even symbolic, manner of painting.
While formal elements of Gauguin's paintings reflect the influence of Japanese prints, his choice of
subject matter and composition are uniquely his own.
Gauguin structures the painting by placing a tree trunk diagonally through its center. By sectioning
the image this way, he creates a visual separation between the Breton women and their vision of an
angel wrestling with Jacob. This compositional decision is developed to frame the main subjects of
the painting. The curve of the trunk follows the line of the head of the center-most figure. The
branches and leaves shoot out directly toward the upper right corner of the painting to form a second
frame around the angel and Jacob. The overall perspective of this painting is purposely skewed but
effectively accomplished by his clustering of people in diminished sizes along its left edge.