The Pigment Color Wheel, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black), is usually used for ink and printing. Therefore, their colors are more technically accurate to our eyes(although they too have limitations and issues which will be discussed in later posts.) So even when we see pigments of paint, we are really seeing the colors of reflected light off of pigment, resin, solvent, and additives.įilm and monitors use light to portray images, not pigments. Since we see color through light receptors in our eyes, we see colors differently than the way paint mixes. Further, the way pigments reflect color is different from the way the color of light itself works. They have different parts to them (such as binding agents) which can affect the way they reflect light. Paints use materials with various properties to portray different colors. This is partially due to the limitations of color reproduction technology, and the way pigments mix. These colors (red, yellow, blue) are often referred to as the Painter’s Color Wheel, because painters for generations would use these colors in paint, mixing them to get other colors. Orange is really just a tertiary color between yellow and red, but there’s a slot for that as well. I think it confuses cyan with blue, and confuses indigo as blue. For some reason, this mnemonic device has no room for cyan, while indigo and violet are both present even though they are virtually the same. You might remember the name Roy G Biv (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), but this is actually inaccurate when naming the colors. We teach children, and many adults, that the primary colors are Red, Yellow, and Blue, but they aren’t. Even the basics you were taught are probably incorrect. You are probably wrong unless you have studied Color Theory. You Are Wrong!įorget everything you think you know about color! And I mean everything. Finally, Value is used to talk about how bright or dark something is regardless of the color. A Hue is the difference between colors, such as blue vs. Saturation is how intense or washed out a color is.

A Tint is how bright (or dark) a single color is. For this post, I will focus on the standard western color associations.īefore we start, a little color theory vocabulary lesson. We have very strong attachments to color as a society, and yet these associations can vary drastically culture to culture. Colors can affect us on an emotional and even physical level. It is really all about how we can apply color and for artists, that is essential knowledge. It explores all aspects of color and how color works.

Color is a topic that deserves volumes of books, and I will probably dive into color several times in other posts, but for now I will cover the basics of color and some lesser known facts about how it relates to film.Ĭolor Theory contains the basics of understanding color. Everything you know about color is (probably) wrong.

Primary color wheels