Introduction to Basic Color Theory

 

Basic COLOR THEORY

Color theory explains how the colors are formed.It is explained by using Color Wheel.It explains how the colors are combined to form a third color.

There are two types of color wheel.

1)    Artistic Color Wheel

2)    Technical Color Wheel

Artistic Color wheel

In daily life people use a color combination in their dressing sense to look decent and attractive.Same way when a colorful design is created the combination of these color shoud be matching.For this purpose a color wheel guides how to combine the color with with each other to create an attractive output.

Basic color Theory – Color Wheel

1)    Primary Colors –Red ,Blue, Yellow are primary colors.

RED            BLUE         YELLOW

2)    Secondary Colors – Colors formed by mixing of two primary colors

RED  +  BLUE  =  VIOLET

RED + YELLOW = ORANGE

BLUE + YELLOW= GREEN

TERTIARY COLORS – Color formed by mixing one Primary and one Secondary color.

Color Schemes – It is a choice of colors used in design for a range of media.It is used to create style and appeal.

Some color schemes:

MONOCHROMATIC COLOR SCHEME :- It consist of different values of single color.

ANALOGOUS COLOR SCHEME :- Colors that are adjacent to each other on color wheel.Yellow and Red are adjacent to Orange.

NEUTRAL COLOR SCHEME :- Color scheme that includes only colors not found on color wheel,called NEUTRALS,such as brown and gray.

WARM COLOR SCHEME :- Warm color scheme contains colors like Red , Orange , Yellow color.These color can be related with fire,they are warm color.

COOL COLOR SCHEME :- This color scheme contains green violet and blue colors.

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS – Colors which are opposite to each other on the wheel are complementary colors Eg – Green and Red.

TECHNICAL COLOR WHEEL

Color wheel explains how colors are displayed on the monitors.

Just like artistic wheel this wheel also has Primary,Secondary,Tertiary colors , but it differs from other wheel.

Primary Colors –Red ,Blue, Yellow are primary colors.

                                   RED            BLUE         GREEN

Secondary Colors –CYAN     MAGENTA   YELLOW

 

TERTIARY COLORS – Color formed by mixing one Primary and one  Secondary  color.

The digital display devices uses this color wheel to create different colors on the screen as well as the same wheel can be used in opposite way to print media.