Color Theory Notes

Most Importantly:

Color=Value

The color wheel is a system to learn this principal above. The color wheel is a break down
of the color spectrum, scientifically, not based on a palette system, although it is rooted
in a palette.

The palette is derived from pure colors, pure from each Hue, or color family in the color
spectrum.
The wheel is the color spectrum, in value relationship, from one color to the next.
Starting with Yellow a 9 on my value scale, we move all the way through to the purple, a
2 or close to that value.

The color wheel is also a tool to help us comprehend and fully understand the saturation
spectrum, or chroma, or intensity. All three of these terms are identical in talking about
color. I will stick with chroma.

The palette is derived of pure hues in the color spectrum, the science of color. This is in
no way an influence to a palette system, but, if you take proper note, this palette we will
be using gives you basically every color in the color spectrum. Because color is intensity
relative, the earth tones are finally realized as nothing more than toned down, pure color.
This thought process, though, can be transferred to any palette system, as long as the
principals of color are strongly adhered to:

Principals:

1. Hue

2. Value

3. Intensity

But I still preface that this palette is the strongest palette I have ever used, offering the
brightest possible results to the dullest results, all of which are good in their proper
context.

The wheel is broken down into three rings. Each ring is a chroma ring, based on
intensity. The lower the intensity, the more gray is added to the colors. When finally seen
as just a color wheel, one arrives at the conclusion that the term gray is a big
misinterpreted word, when an artist thinks of this term. When we hear the term, it is
usually thought of as something devoid of color, something bland and neutral.

Why do I draw the value system backwards, that is, why is it numbered in reverse? Quite
simply, in art class, teachers tend to say “drop the value of this or that,” or “raise the
intensity of this or that.” This translates to: drop the value=add more black, raise the
intensity=get rid of the black or possibly add white. In either case, you can see that it is
stating something quite clear. Then we confuse this statement with “drop this value to a
7 or 8 value,” when the way we think of numbers, dropping a number means going
backward down the number scale, adding a this or that is moving back up the scale. To
simplify thinking here in these confines, we will stick with 1= black and 0=white.

This translates into color with our color wheel. The colors are as I stated previously.
9=yellow, and 2=purple. Because, as we will soon learn, in painting in a High Key of
chroma, a new term, we will not be using black, arriving at our darks through the means
of color. If we think of the color wheel as value, we can resolve the high key painting
quite simply by understanding that color=value. When we drop the chroma to a middle
or low key of chroma, we will be adding black and white, de-intensifying the color, or
dropping the purity of the true colors. Most all paintings are painted in a middle key
spectrum, or an earth tone range. The old masters, Rembrandt and such, used a low key
of chroma spectrum, or the absence of most color, until it is almost unrecognizeable to
what color family it came from.
To explain the terms I have included, the low, middle, and high keys of chroma.. The
chroma keys are identifiable markers for our eye, to understand what key to paint in.
Sorolla painted in a naturally high key of chroma, as did most of the impressionists.
Manet was the father of this movement, using only pure colors to create the impressions
we see of things around us, letting the eye fill in the details. Sargent was a sophisticated
impressionist, but worked mostly in a middle to low key of chroma. His impression was
the adept ease at which he arrived at shapes, not rendering, but finding light on the
form. Rembrandt painted mostly in a low key of chroma, which is usually added to a
major key of intensity (another set of terms to be introduced and explained shortly). He
painted with such an intense amount of concentrated light, in a dark room, to increase
the drama to his statements he was creating; extreme value range, from the blackest
black, to the whitest white.

Why high key of chroma? Why do we want to paint so bright? First, let’s speak of
something else; a bit of its history. Explaining the history can answer most of this
question I bring up. For many centuries, art had very few rules that helped it remain
organized. Somewhere just before the dark ages, man lost some sensibility with art. The
classic Greek and Roman art was to be forgotten, and art basically started over from
crude, ill conceived ideas, flat, with no tonal control, and no perspective, plus a false
sense of understanding of the true human form. Then slowly, through the ages, artists
such as Leonardo Da Vinci (perspective, anatomy), Michelangelo (anatomical rhythms)
began adding tools, or resources to the history strand of the ever-expanding growth of
art. These new tools allowed artists more freedom to finally create impressions that were
meaningful, powerful, and to the heart. Since most of art during these times were for the
state, the church, or historical recording, the more accurate, and more powerful, the
better. These were some of the only imagery most people ever saw, going to pay taxes,
paying respects to their lords, and worshipping of rulers and god. These images needed
to be made clear, and important, to really make an ever lasting impress on the peoples.
During these days of painting, color was not the most well organized item on the list.
Although most colors had been created in their mundane mixtures of primitive hues,
violet or purple being the rarest, there was no understanding of the color spectrum. Plus,
all these new tools allowed artists to now use light and shadow to mould the organized
forms in 3 dimensional space, the things our eyes really see. But one piece was still
missing; color. It was used, but lacking in its rich vibrancy that we all know of because of
the glorious, vibrant sun. A painter by the name of Diego Velasquez came along (Spain)
and introduced two things to painting that will forever make him the most important
painter of all time: he introduced color into the shadows, and he molded form
impressionistically, adding atmosphere to the mix, blending edges into each other, where
other artists dare not do such a thing because it went against all that was ever taught.
These two principals opened up the path to all the great art we see today, from
Waterhouse to Sargent, the Impressionists to the Realists, Velasquez (1600’s) gave art
its heart, and the impressionists followed this up many hundred years later with the soul;
color and impression. Sorolla(Spain) could be claimed to be the greatest impressionist
that ever lived. He brought real color to art, done very realistically, and very sound.
Manet brought impressionism, but Sorolla taught most painters to understand how to
paint in true direct light. He was the master of color…

Why High Key? Some people truly experience life from a colorful point of view. In some
instances, when I step into a new corner of life, I see it not from the point of view of
details and textures, but of color, lots of colors that tease the mind. The earth tone
palettes most artists recommend never allow you to fully experience colors the way
colors can be experienced. But using this bright color spectrum does have its costs. If
using bright colors, one cannot use a full value range. Both contradict one another and
create two entirely different meanings. This leads us into the contrast keys…

Contrast keys help us to gage how much dark and light to use in a picture, and this
controls our saturation levels too. In a high key of chroma, we use a major key of
contrast. In a middle key of chroma, we can use just about any key from the major key
to the minor key. The middle key of chroma is the most forgiving. The minor key of
contrast is bringing the value range down to just a few values. This system will become
more complex as we progress into the semester, but for now I want to keep it simple in
just these three terms for now.
Let’s review these terms in charts:

Chroma:..........................Contrast:
High Key.........................Minor Key

Middle Key.......................Medium Key

Low Key..........................Major Key

Now, let me mention briefly mixing this color wheel:

The yellow square is the only square where we use nothing but out-of-the-tube color.
This is the cad yellow pale. All the other colors are mixtures of the color, plus the
succeeding neighbor color and white.

The Warm Side

Yellow- Cad Yellow Pale

Yellow Orange-Cad Yellow Pale Plus Cad Yellow Orange and a touch of white possibly
Orange-Cad Yellow Pale Plus Cad Yellow Orange and small amounts of white
Red Orange-Cad Yellow Orange and Cad Red Light Plus a touch of white

Before going further, I want to state that these previous colors don’t necessarily need
white if the rest of the colors are mixed correctly. The following warm colors most
definitely need white to adjust their value—ahhh, there’s that word again…

Neutral Red-Cad Red Light plus Red Rose Deep and white

Red-Purple-Red Rose Deep and Ultramarine Blue and white

Purple-Red Rose Deep and Ultramarine Blue and white

I need to stress one more point here…keep in mind the thought of color=value…now,
look at your straight-out-of-the-tube blue…it is really dark, no? So if you are making a
Red Purple, which, if we are thinking in terms that this wheel is a value wheel, then
naturally we deduce that our Red Purple is at least a 3 on the value scale, we need to do
a little adjusting to the blue. Add white to the blue until you have the correct value
relative to the color wheel value, then mix that with the red rose deep that will also have
the same treatment. That is, white added to that until it too has the same value. This
way, you are not falsifying the value of the color you are attempting to mix. Out of the
tube colors are not made as a value, they are made for the sake of the color we need.
Each color is a chemical compound, again, not a value system. For us to make order of
this subtle chaos, white is added to the color, prior to mixing it to any other color on your
palette so you get it value correct to the other parts of your mixture. This is something
Sorolla brought to us - a very HUGE reason he got the shape, value, and color correct the
first time, in one brush stroke. He knew these tricks. These are tricks, but they have
been taught from Sorolla to get impressionistically accurate in one swipe. That is our
ultimate goal anyway - total freedom with the brush to do the paintings we want, in an
effortless fashion. And if we render, these “tricks” will still help us resolve many
frustrations, merely by ignorance of our tools. Let’s get back to the mixtures:

The Cool Side

Yellow Green-Cad Yellow Pale plus Viridian and maybe, just maybe a bit-o-white
Green-Cad Yellow Pale plus Viridian and again, white

Now white is a must!!!

Green Blue - Viridian Green and Cerulean Blue and white

Neutral Blue - Cerulean Blue and Ultramarine Blue with white

Blue Purple - Ultramarine Blue plus Red Rose Deep and White

Purple - see above.

Remember-use the least amount of white possible to obtain the highest key of chroma
you can achieve.

As we enter the middle ring, we pull out the black paint, and mix a value scale relative to
the scale we are using on our color wheel. Then we taint our puddles of color we mixed
earlier, de-intensifying the colors. As we go into the low key ring, it is mostly the grays,
with a bit of color. Now here, you will find some startling things occurring. Your grays will
turn green in the top part of the wheel, and purple in the lower part of the wheel. The
reason for this is the black. Black makes great greens when mixed with yellows and
slight oranges, which still have yellow in them. And red added to black makes purple.
There is black in all these mixtures you are making for your gray values. You will need to
add the neighbor color previous to the color you are mixing with to neutralize the gray so
that you get the hue more accurate. There is always a little adjusting to do to make it all
work right, because with each step, something else is mixed into the batches of colors.
That is why I stated previously adding white to the out-of-the-tube mix before mixing the
colors together for your final mixture (whew). The fewer problems you throw into the
whole thing, the easier you will spot what is wrong, and fixing it will be easier to figure
out as well.

On a final note, I want to share a new bit of information a painter named Ken Auster
gave. It has to do with another level of complexity in our thinking with paint. It has to do
with the tools we use:
There are three things to consider when using oil paints and the other tools in
conjunction with them:

1. Do you have the right tool ? The right tool for the right occasion ? Most people do
not understand the brushes they use, the knives they buy, the paints, or the
surfaces… why a bristle ? Why a sable ? Why canvas, or masonite ? Mediums ?
Why…

2. The consistency of the paint, when to make it thin, when thick, what mediums to
add, and when to add them, for brushstrokes, and layers…it’s very important to
know these things.

3. The pressure in which you lay down the paint - when to flick as opposed to
troweling, or when to let up at an end vs. scooping the brush up etc.

These notes are meant for study with oil, in the color mixing part of the wheel that is.
The rest is universal. You can apply it to every medium. When I transfer the data from
my laptop over to this drive, I will show you a few new life paintings I did digitally using
this info.