A Brief Note on Color

In a Nutshell…

I am going to touch briefly on color in this post. In last week’s post, I shared the link for a free Skillshare class I did a couple years ago called How to Draw: The Very Basics. In it, I started off by covering the basic elements of art. The basic elements are:

• Color
• Line
• Shape
• Form
• Space
• Texture
• Value

Color was not part of that particular lesson, but I covered it briefly. It is also not something we will be using right away here, but it is important nonetheless. So, I will address it now to get it out of the way for the time being. We will revisit it later in other lessons.

Color is the element which is produced when light strikes an object and is reflected back to the eye. It is made up of three properties: hue, intensity, and value.

Hue is basically the name we give to a color (red, blue, yellow). These are broken down into three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Primary hues are red, blue, and yellow. They are the basic colors from which all others are made. Secondary hues are orange, green, and violet. These are made when you mix equal parts of two primaries together. Tertiary hues are made by mixing equal parts of a primary with a secondary hue. These are red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet.

Value is the lightness or darkness of a hue. Every hue has a full range of values. For example, the values of red range from the very palest of pinks to the darkest maroon. Even though with some hues, like red, we assign different names to its values (pink and maroon), we know that they come from red.

Intensity refers to the purity of a hue. The primaries will be the most pure in intensity. Those less intense are referred to as tones. Tones are created either by adding a neutral grey, equal in value to the hue, or by adding the hue’s compliment. Complimentary hues are the colors directly opposite on the color wheel (green:red, yellow:violet, orange:blue). Hues lighter than the original color are tints. Tints are created by adding white to the color. For example, pink is a tint of red. Hues darker than the original, created by adding small touches of black, are called shades. Maroon is a shade of red. Note: Intensity can also be referred to as chroma or saturation.

For us, color won’t come into play until much later. But I felt it important for you to at least have the basic overview of what it is. The reason we’re putting it off until later is that color is essentially a detail. Details like color, texture, and patterns can be very distracting, especially for the beginner artist. We will address them, but only after you have a firm grasp of everything else that is crucial to building your drawing skills. So for now, tuck this bit of knowledge away into your memory banks and I’ll see you back here next week when we talk about line.