Saturday 10 May 2014

Hints And Tips To Colour Mixing

Hints And Tips to Colour Mixing


Hue: Colour, eg. red, blue or yellow.
Colour wheel
Chroma: The purity, saturation or intensity of a hue.
Tint: Hue mixed with white.
Tint
Shade: Hue mixed with black.
Shade
Tone: Hue mixed with Grey.
Value: The extent to which a colour reflects or absorbs light. 
Value
The Cadmium reflects a significant amount of light to give a high value whilst Yellow Ochre absorbs more light to give a lower value.
Undertone:  The colour of a pigment as it appears in a thin film; as opposed to its Top or Masstone straight from the tube.
Undertone and Masstone
Tinting Strength:  A measure of the ability of a pigment to tint a white.
Tinting strength
Transparency:  The ability of the pigment to transmit light and allow previous colour layers to show, eg. a violet can be obtained by placing  a transparent red over a transparent blue, or vice versa.
Transparency 
Opacity:  Opposite to transparency, eg. an opaque red will cover up any previous colour layers (N.B. Opacity in water colour is low due to thinness of film).
Opacity
Temperature:  A colloquial term used by artists to indicate the colour relative to red (warm) and blue (cold).
Temperature
Primary colour:  In paints: red, blue and yellow, or more correctly, magenta, cyan and yellow.
Primary colours

Secondary colour:  A secondary colour is the result of mixing two primary colours.
Secondary colours
Complementary colour: The complementary of a primary colour is the combination of the two remaining primaries, e.g. in paints, blue and yellow mixed gives green, which is the complementary of red. Mixing complementaries, for example red and green, makes deep intense darks (blacks, browns and greys).
Complementary colours 
Additive colour mixing: The mixing of coloured light is additive, secondary colours are purer, ie. away from black. This is the opposite to what happens when artists’ colours are mixed and is the reason for much of the confusion regarding colour mixing.
Additive colour mixing
Subtractive colour mixing: The mixing of pigments is subtractive, secondary colours become less pure, ie. towards black. This is the opposite to what happens when coloured light is mixed.




Subractive colour mixingCourtesy of Winsor and Newton

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