Is the Object or Event Upon Which a Work of Art Is Based

The Bespeak

A point is the visual element upon which all others are based. It tin exist defined equally a singularity in infinite or, in geometric terms, the area where two coordinates encounter. When an artist marks a unproblematic bespeak on a surface, (also referred to equally the basis ), they immediately create a figure-ground human relationship . That is, they dissever the work between its surface and anything added to information technology. Our eyes differentiate between the 2, and their organization has everything to practice with how we meet a final composition. The point itself can be used as a mode to create forms. For instance, Pointillism is a style of painting fabricated famous by the French artist Georges Seurat in the late nineteenth century. He and others in the Pointillist grouping created paintings by juxtaposing points—or dots—of color that optically mixed to course lines, shapes and forms within a composition. Look at a detail from Seurat's La Parade de Cirqueto run across how this works. His large canvas Lord's day Afternoon on the Grande Jatte is a testament to the pointillist style and aesthetic. Its creation was a painstaking process only one that generated new ways of thinking about color and form.

Georges Seurat, La Parade de Cirque, item, 1887-89. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. CC Past-SA

Definitions and Qualities of Line

Substantially, when you put 2 or more than points together yous create a line. A line can be lyrically defined as a point in motion. In that location are many dissimilar types of lines, all characterized past their length existence greater than their width. Lines tin be static or dynamic depending on how the artist chooses to employ them. They aid determine the motion, direction and free energy in a piece of work of art. We see line all around us in our daily lives; telephone wires, tree branches, jet contrails and winding roads are just a few examples.  Look at the photograph below to see how line is part of natural and constructed environments.

Photograph by NASA. CC BY-NC

In this image of a lightning storm we can see many dissimilar lines. Certainly the jagged, meandering lines of the lightning itself dominate the paradigm, followed by the straight lines of the lite standards, the pillars holding up the overpass on the correct and the guard rails attached to its side. At that place are more subtle lines too, like the gently arrondi line at the superlative of the image and the shadows cast by the poles and the standing figure in the middle.  Lines are even implied by falling water droplets in the foreground.

The Nazca lines in the arid littoral plains of Peru engagement to nearly 500 BCE were scratched into the rocky soil, depicting animals on an incredible scale, so large that they are best viewed from the air. Let's look at how the different kinds of line are made.

Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas from 1656, ostensibly a portrait of the Infanta Margarita, the daughter of King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Spain, offers a sumptuous amount of artistic genius; its shear size (nigh 10 feet square), painterly style of naturalism, lighting furnishings, and the enigmatic figures placed throughout the canvass–including the artist himself –is one of the great paintings in western art history. Let's examine it (below) to uncover how Velazquez uses bones elements and principles of art to achieve such a masterpiece.

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on sail, 125.two" x 108.7". Prado, Madrid. CC BY-SA

Actual lines are those that are physically present. The edge of the wooden stretcher bar at the left of Las Meninas is an bodily line, as are the picture frames in the background and the linear decorative elements on some of the figures' dresses. How many other bodily lines tin you lot find in the painting?

Unsaid lines are those created past visually connecting two or more areas together. The space between the Infanta Margarita—the blonde cardinal effigy in the composition—and the meninas, or maids of laurels, to the left and right of her, are implied lines. Both set upward a diagonal relationship that implies movement. Past visually connecting the space between the heads of all the figures in the painting we have a sense of jagged motion that keeps the lower part of the composition in motility, balanced confronting the darker, more static upper areas of the painting. Implied lines can too be created when two areas of different colors or tones come together. Tin you place more implied lines in the painting? Where? Implied lines are found in iii-dimensional artworks, too. The sculpture of the Laocoon beneath, a effigy from Greek and Roman mythology, is, along with his sons, being strangled by sea snakes sent past the goddess Athena equally wrath confronting his warnings to the Trojans non to accept the Trojan horse. The sculpture sets implied lines in move as the figures writhe in agony confronting the snakes.

Laocoon Group, Roman copy of Greek original, Vatican Museum, Rome. Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC BY-SA

Direct or classic lines provide structure to a composition. They tin exist oriented to the horizontal, vertical, or diagonal axis of a surface. Straight lines are by nature visually stable, while still giving management to a composition. InLas Meninas, you lot tin see them in the canvas supports on the left, the wall supports and doorways on the right, and in the background in matrices on the wall spaces betwixt the framed pictures. Moreover, the small horizontal lines created in the stair edges in the background help ballast the entire visual design of the painting.

Straight lines, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Expressive lines are curved, adding an organic, more dynamic character to a work of art. Expressive lines are oft rounded and follow undetermined paths. In Las Meninas you can encounter them in the aprons on the girls' dresses and in the canis familiaris's folded hind leg and glaze blueprint. Look again at the Laocoon to see expressive lines in the figures' flailing limbs and the sinuous grade of the snakes. Indeed, the sculpture seems to be fabricated up of nothing but expressive lines, shapes and forms.

Organic lines, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

There are other kinds of line that comprehend the characteristics of those in a higher place even so, taken together, help create additional artistic elements and richer, more varied compositions. Refer to the images and examples below to become familiar with these types of line.

Outline, or profile line is the simplest of these. They create a path around the edge of a shape. In fact, outlines define shapes.

Outline, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Cross contour lines follow paths across a shape to delineate differences in surface features. They give flat shapes a sense of grade (the illusion of 3 dimensions), and can as well be used to create shading.

Cantankerous Contour, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Hatch lines are repeated at brusk intervals in generally one direction. They give shading and visual texture to the surface of an object.

Hatch, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Crosshatch lines provide boosted tone and texture. They can be oriented in any direction. Multiple layers of crosshatch lines can give rich and varied shading to objects by manipulating the pressure of the cartoon tool to create a large range of values.

Crosshatch, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

Line quality is that sense of character embedded in the way a line presents itself. Certain lines accept qualities that distinguish them from others. Hard-edged, jagged lines have a staccato visual movement while organic, flowing lines create a more comfortable feeling. Meandering lines can be either geometric or expressive, and you tin can meet in the examples how their indeterminate paths animate a surface to different degrees.

A Line, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Although line every bit a visual chemical element generally plays a supporting role in visual art, there are wonderful examples in which line carries a strong cultural significance equally the primary bailiwick matter.

Calligraphic lines use quickness and gesture, more akin to paint strokes, to imbue an artwork with a fluid, lyrical graphic symbol. To see this unique line quality, view the work of Chinese poet and artist Dong Qichang's Du Fu's Poem, dating from the Ming dynasty (1555-1637). A more geometric example from the Koran, created in the Arabic calligraphic fashion, dates from the 9^th century.

Both these examples show how artists use line as both a grade of writing and a visual art form. American creative person Marker Tobey (1890–1976) was influenced by Oriental calligraphy, adapting its class to the act of pure painting within a modernistic abstract style described as white writing.

Shapes: Positive, Negative and Planar Issues

A shape is divers as an enclosed surface area in ii dimensions. By definition shapes are ever implied and flat in nature. They can exist created in many means, the simplest past enclosing an surface area with an outline. They can also be made past surrounding an area with other shapes or the placement of unlike textures next to each other—for example, the shape of an island surrounded by h2o. Because they are more complex than lines, shapes practice much of the heavy lifting in arranging compositions. The abstract examples below give us an idea of how shapes are fabricated.

Shapes, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Referring back to Velazquez's Las Meninas, it is fundamentally an arrangement of shapes; organic and hard-edged, light, dark and mid-toned, that solidifies the composition inside the larger shape of the canvas. Looking at it this style, we can view whatsoever piece of work of art, whether 2 or three-dimensional, realistic, abstruse or non-objective, in terms of shapes lone.

Positive / Negative Shapes and Figure / Ground Relationships

Shapes animate figure-footing relationships. We visually make up one's mind positive shapes (the figure) and negative shapes (the ground). I way to sympathize this is to open your hand and spread your fingers apart. Your paw is the positive shape, and the space around information technology becomes the negative shape. You can too see this in the example in a higher place. The shape formed past the black outline becomes positive because it's enclosed. The expanse effectually information technology is negative. The same visual organization goes with the gray circle and the purple foursquare. Merely identifying positive and negative shapes tin get catchy in a more complex composition. For case, the 4 blueish rectangles on the left have edges that impact each other, thus creating a solid white shape in the eye. The four green rectangles on the right don't really connect yet still give us an implied shape in the center. Which would y'all say is the positive shape? What about the red circles surrounding the gray star shape? Remember that a positive shape is one that is distinguished from the background. In Las Meninas the figures become the positive shapes because they are lit dramatically and hold our attention confronting the dark background. What about the night figure standing in the doorway? Hither the dark shape becomes the positive one, surrounded past a white background. Our eyes always return to this figure as an anchor to the painting's entire composition. In three dimensions, positive shapes are those that brand up the actual work.  The negative shapes are the empty spaces around, and sometimes permeating through the work itself. TheLaocoon is a adept example of this. A modern piece of work that uses shapes to a dramatic effect is Alberto Giacometti'southward Reclining Adult female Who Dreamsfrom 1929. In an abstract fashion the artist weaves positive and negative shapes together, the result is a dreamy, floating sensation radiating from the sculpture.

Plane

A aeroplane is divers equally whatsoever area in space. In two-dimensional art, the picture aeroplane is the apartment surface an epitome is created upon; a piece of newspaper, stretched canvass, woods panel, etc. A shape's orientation within the picture show plane creates a visually implied airplane, inferring direction and depth in relation to the viewer. The graphic below shows three examples.

Shape Planes, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Traditionally the picture plane has been likened to a window the viewer looks through to a scene across, the artist amalgam a believable image showing implied depth and planar relationships.Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, painted by Pieter Breughel the Elder in 1558 (below), presents us with the tragic ending to the Greek myth involving Icarus, son of Daedalus, who, trying to escape from the island of Crete with wings of wax, flies too shut to the sunday and falls to world. Breughel shows us an idyllic mural with farmers tilling their fields, each terraced row a unlike plane of earth, and shepherds tending their flocks of sheep in the foreground. He depicts the livestock in positions that infer they are moving in unlike directions in relation to the "window" of the film plane. We expect further to run across a gradual recession to the body of water and a middle ground dominated past a ship under sheet. The curves of the billowing sails imply two or three different planes. The background of the painting shows the illusion of deep space, the massive cliffs now pocket-size in relation to the foreground, and the afar ship nearly the heart every bit smaller and lighter in tone. In the grandeur of the scene Icarus falls into the sea unnoticed just off shore to the lower right, only his legs nevertheless above water. The artist'southward utilise of planar description is related to the idea of space and how it'due south depicted in two dimensions. We will look at the element of space just ahead.

Mural with the Fall of Icarus, Peter Breughel the Elderberry, 1558. Musee des Beaux-arts, Brussels. CC BY-SA

Space

Space is the empty area surrounding existent or implied objects. Humans categorize space: there is outer space, that limitless void we enter across our sky; inner space, which resides in people's minds and imaginations, and personal space, the important just intangible area that surrounds each individual and which is violated if someone else gets too shut. Pictorial space is apartment, and the digital realm resides in cyberspace. Art responds to all of these kinds of space.

Clearly artists are as concerned with space in their works as they are with, say, color or form. There are many means for the artist to present ideas of infinite. Call back that many cultures traditionally use pictorial space as a window to view realistic subject field matter through, and through the subject affair they present ideas, narratives and symbolic content. The innovation of linear perspective, an implied geometric pictorial construct dating from fifteenth-century Europe, affords us the accurate illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface, and appears to recede into the distance through the use of a horizon line and vanishing points . Encounter how perspective is ready in the schematic examples beneath:

1 Signal Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

One-point perspective occurs when the receding lines appear to converge at a unmarried betoken on the horizon and used when the flat front of an object is facing the viewer. Notation: Perspective tin exist used to bear witness the relative size and recession into space of any object, but is most effective with hard-edged three-dimensional objects such as buildings.

A archetype Renaissance artwork using ane point perspective is Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper from 1498. Da Vinci composes the work by locating the vanishing point directly behind the head of Christ, thus drawing the viewer's attending to the middle. His arms mirror the receding wall lines, and, if nosotros follow them as lines, would converge at the aforementioned vanishing point.

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1498. Fresco. Santa Maria della Grazie. Work is in the public domain.

Two-point perspective occurs when the vertical edge of a cube is facing the viewer, exposing two sides that recede into the distance, one to each vanishing point.

2 Point Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

View Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Weather from 1877 to see how two-point perspective is used to give an accurate view to an urban scene.  The creative person'southward composition, still, is more complex than just his utilise of perspective. The figures are deliberately placed to direct the viewer's heart from the front right of the picture show to the building'south front edge on the left, which, like a transport'southward bow, acts as a cleaver to plunge both sides toward the horizon. In the midst of this visual recession a lamp post stands firmly in the middle to arrest our gaze from going right out the back of the painting. Caillebotte includes the niggling metallic arm at the top correct of the post to directly u.s. once more along a horizontal path, at present keeping us from traveling off the top of the canvas. Equally relatively spare equally the left side of the work is, the creative person crams the right side with hard-edged and organic shapes and forms in a complex play of positive and negative space.

Three-point perspective is used when an artist wants to project a "bird'due south-heart view", that is, when the projection lines recede to 2 points on the horizon and a 3rd either far higher up or below the horizon line. In this case the parallel lines that make up the sides of an object are not parallel to the edge of the ground the creative person is working on (newspaper, canvas, etc).

Three-point perspective (with vanishing points above and below the horizon line shown at the same time). Pattern by Shazz, CC BY

The perspective arrangement is a cultural convention well suited to a traditional western European idea of the "truth," that is, an accurate, clear rendition of observed reality. Even after the invention of linear perspective, many cultures traditionally use a flatter pictorial space, relying on overlapped shapes or size differences in forms to indicate this same truth of observation. Examine the miniature painting of the 3rd Courtroom of the Topkapi Palacefrom fourteenth-century Turkey to dissimilarity its pictorial space with that of linear perspective. It'southward composed from a number of different vantage points (equally opposed to vanishing points), all very flat to the motion picture airplane. While the overall epitome is seen from higher up, the figures and trees appear as cutouts, seeming to bladder in mid air. Find the towers on the far left and right are sideways to the moving-picture show plane. As "incorrect" as information technology looks, the painting gives a detailed description of the landscape and structures on the palace grounds.

Third Court of the Topkapi Palace, from the Hunername, 1548. Ottoman miniature painting, Topkapi Museum, Istanbul. CC BY-SA

After nearly five hundred years using linear perspective, western ideas nearly how infinite is depicted accurately in ii dimensions went through a revolution at the kickoff of the 20^th century. A young Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, moved to Paris, so western culture'southward capital of art, and largely reinvented pictorial space with the invention of Cubism, ushered in dramatically by his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. He was influenced in part by the chiseled forms, athwart surfaces and disproportion of African sculpture (refer back to the Male person Figurefrom Cameroon) and mask-similar faces of early on Iberian artworks. For more information about this important painting, listen to the post-obit question and answer.

Picasso, his friend Georges Braque and a handful of other artists struggled to develop a new space that relied on, ironically, the flatness of the picture airplane to carry and animate traditional subject matter including figures, yet life and landscape. Cubist pictures, and eventually sculptures, became amalgams of dissimilar points of view, light sources and planar constructs. Information technology was every bit if they were presenting their subject matter in many ways at one time, all the while shifting foreground, middle ground and background then the viewer is not certain where one starts and the other ends. In an interview, the artist explained cubism this mode: "The problem is now to laissez passer, to go around the object, and give a plastic expression to the result. All of this is my struggle to break with the 2-dimensional attribute*"(from Alexander Liberman, An Creative person in His Studio, 1960, page 113). Public and critical reaction to cubism was understandably negative, merely the artists' experiments with spatial relationships reverberated with others and became – forth with new ways of using color – a driving force in the evolution of a modern art movement that based itself on the flatness of the picture plane. Instead of a window to wait into, the flat surface becomes a basis on which to construct formal arrangements of shapes, colors and compositions. For some other perspective on this idea, refer back to module 1'south give-and-take of 'abstraction'.

You lot tin run into the radical changes cubism made in George Braque's mural La Roche Guyonfrom 1909. The trees, houses, castle and surrounding rocks contain well-nigh a single complex grade, stair-stepping upward the canvas to mimic the distant hill at the top, all of information technology struggling upwards and leaning to the right inside a shallow pictorial space.

George Braque, Castle at La Roche Guyon, 1909. Oil on canvas. Stedelijk van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Licensed through GNU and Artistic Commons

As the cubist way developed, its forms became even flatter. Juan Gris's The Sunblindfrom 1914 splays the yet life it represents beyond the canvas.  Collage elements like newspaper reinforce pictorial flatness.

Juan Gris, The Sunblind, 1914. Gouache, collage, chalk, and charcoal on canvas. Tate Gallery, London. Image licensed under GNU Free Documentation License

Information technology's non so difficult to understand the importance of this new idea of space when placed in the context of comparable advances in science surrounding the turn of the nineteenth century. The Wright Brothers took to the air with powered flight in 1903, the same year Marie Curie won the first of ii Nobel prizes for her pioneering piece of work in radiations. Sigmund Freud's new ideas on the inner spaces of the mind and its outcome on behavior were published in 1902, and Albert Einstein's calculations on relativity, the thought that space and time are intertwined, first appeared in 1905. Each of these discoveries added to human understanding and realligned the way nosotros look at ourselves and our world. Indeed, Picasso, speaking of his struggle to define cubism, said "Even Einstein did not know information technology either! The condition of discovery is outside ourselves; but the terrifying thing is that despite all this, we tin can only find what we know" (from Picasso on Fine art, A Selection of Views by Dore Ashton, (Souchere, 1960, page 15).

3-dimensional space doesn't undergo this fundemental transformation. It remains a visual tug betwixt positive and negative spaces. Sculptors influenced past cubism exercise, however, develop new forms to make full this space; abstract and non-objective works that chanllenge us to run across them on their ain terms. Constantin Brancusi, a Romanian sculptor living in Paris, became a leading artist to champion the new forms of mod fine art. His sculpture Bird in Space is an elegant instance of how abstraction and formal organisation combine to symbolize the new movement. The photograph of Brancusi'southward studio below gives further show of sculpture's debt to cubism and the struggle "to become effectually the object, to give it plastic expression."

Edward Steichen, Brancusi's studio, 1920. Metropolitan Museum, New York. This photograph is in the public domain.

At present that we've established line, shape, and spatial relationships, we can turn our attending to surface qualities and their importance in works of art. Value (or tone), color and texture are the elements used to practice this.

Value is the relative lightness or darkness of a shape in relation to another. The value scale, divisional on 1 cease by pure white and on the other past black, and in between a series of progressively darker shades of gray, gives an artist the tools to make these transformations. The value scale beneath shows the standard variations in tones. Values near the lighter end of the spectrum are termed high-keyed, those on the darker end are low-keyed.

Value Scale, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC BY

In 2 dimensions, the employ of value gives a shape the illusion of mass and lends an entire composition a sense of light and shadow. The 2 examples below show the effect value has on changing a shape to a form.

2D Class, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC Past

3D Class, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC BY

This aforementioned technique brings to life what begins equally a unproblematic line drawing of a immature man'southward head in Michelangelo's Caput of a Youth and a Right Hand from 1508. Shading is created with line (refer to our word of line earlier in this module) or tones created with a pencil. Artists vary the tones past the amount of resistance they use between the pencil and the paper they're drawing on. A cartoon pencil's leads vary in hardness, each 1 giving a different tone than another. Washes of ink or colour create values adamant by the amount of h2o the medium is dissolved into.

The utilize of high contrast, placing lighter areas of value confronting much darker ones, creates a dramatic event, while low contrast gives more subtle results. These differences in effect are axiomatic in 'Guiditta and Oloferne' by the Italian painter Caravaggio, and Robert Adams' photo Untitled, Denver from 1970-74. Caravaggio uses a high contrast palette to an already dramatic scene to increase the visual tension for the viewer, while Adams deliberately makes use of depression contrast to underscore the drabness of the mural surrounding the effigy on the cycle.

Caravaggio, Guiditta Decapitates Oloferne, 1598, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Italian Fine art, Rome. This work is in the public domain

Color

Color is the virtually complex artistic element considering of the combinations and variations inherent in its utilise.  Humans answer to color combinations differently, and artists written report and use color in part to give desired direction to their piece of work.

Color is fundamental to many forms of art. Its relevance, utilise and role in a given work depend on the medium of that work. While some concepts dealing with color are broadly applicative beyond media, others are non.

The total spectrum of colors is contained in white light. Humans perceive colors from the lite reflected off objects. A red object, for example, looks cerise because it reflects the scarlet office of the spectrum. It would exist a different color under a different light. Colour theory kickoff appeared in the 17^th century when English mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white light could be divided into a spectrum by passing it through a prism.

The study of color in art and design ofttimes starts with color theory. Color theory splits up colors into 3 categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

The bones tool used is a color wheel, adult by Isaac Newton in 1666. A more circuitous model known as the colour tree, created by Albert Munsell, shows the spectrum made upward of sets of tints and shades on connected planes.

There are a number of approaches to organizing colors into meaningful relationships. Well-nigh systems differ in construction only.

Traditional Model

Traditional colour theory is a qualitative attempt to organize colors and their relationships. It is based on Newton'south colour wheel, and continues to be the nigh mutual system used by artists.

Blue Yellow Red Colour Wheel. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

Traditional colour theory uses the same principles as subtractive color mixing (see below) just prefers different primary colors.

• The primary colors are ruddy, blue, and yellowish. You discover them equidistant from each other on the colour wheel. These are the "elemental" colors; not produced by mixing any other colors, and all other colors are derived from some combination of these three.
• The secondary colors are orangish (mix of red and yellow), green (mix of blueish and yellow), and violet (mix of blue and scarlet).
• The 3rd colors are obtained by mixing one primary color and ane secondary color. Depending on amount of color used, unlike hues can exist obtained such every bit crimson-orangish or yellow-greenish. Neutral colors (browns and grays) can be mixed using the iii primary colors together.
• White and black prevarication exterior of these categories. They are used to lighten or darken a colour. A lighter color (fabricated by calculation white to information technology) is called a tint , while a darker color (fabricated past adding black) is chosen a shade .

Color Mixing

A more quantifiable approach to color theory is to recollect about color as the upshot of lite reflecting off a surface. Understood in this way, colour can exist represented every bit a ratio of amounts of primary colour mixed together.

Condiment color theory is used when dissimilar colored lights are existence projected on height of each other. Projected media produce colour by projecting low-cal onto a reflective surface. Where subtractive mixing creates the impression of color by selectively absorbing part of the spectrum, additive mixing produces colour by selective projection of office of the spectrum. Common applications of additive color theory are theater lighting and television screens. RGB color is based on condiment color theory.

• The primary colors are red, blue, and green.
• The secondary colors are yellowish (mix of ruby and dark-green), cyan (mix of blue and green), and magenta (mix of bluish and cherry).
• The third colors are obtained by mixing the in a higher place colors at different intensities.

White is created by the confluence of the three primary colors, while black represents the absence of all colour. The lightness or darkness of a color is determined past the intensity/density of its various parts. For instance: a middle-toned grey could exist produced by projecting a carmine, a blue and a light-green light at the same signal with 50% intensity.

Additive Color Representation. This paradigm is in the public domain.

The primaries are red, dark-green and blue. White is the confluence of all the primary colors; black is the absenteeism of color.

Subtractive color theory ("procedure colour") is used when a single light source is existence reflected by different colors laid i on tiptop of the other. Color is produced when parts of the external light source's spectrum are absorbed by the textile and non reflected back to the viewer's eye. For case, a painter brushes blue pigment onto a canvas. The chemic composition of the paint allows all of the colors in the spectrum to be absorbed except blue, which is reflected from the pigment's surface.  Subtractive color works equally the reverse of additive color theory. Mutual applications of subtractive color theory are used in the visual arts, color printing and processing photographic positives and negatives. The primary colors are red, yellowish, and blue.

• The secondary colors are orange, green and violet.
• The third colors are created by mixing a primary with a secondary color.
• Black is mixed using the three primary colors, while white represents the absence of all colors. Note: considering of impurities in subtractive colour, a true black is impossible to create through the mixture of primaries. Because of this the result is closer to brown. Similar to additive colour theory, lightness and darkness of a color is determined by its intensity and density.

Subtractive Color Mixing. Released nether the GNU Free Documentation License

The primaries are bluish, yellowish and red.

Colour Attributes

At that place are many attributes to color. Each 1 has an result on how we perceive it.

• Hue refers to colour itself, but also to the variations of a color.
• Value (as discussed previously) refers to the relative lightness or darkness of 1 color next to another. The value of a colour can brand a difference in how it is perceived. A colour on a dark background will appear lighter, while that aforementioned color on a light background volition appear darker.
• Tone refers to the gradation or subtle changes fabricated to a colour when it'southward mixed with a gray created by adding two complements (encounter Complementary Color below). You can see various colour tones past looking at the color tree mentioned in the paragraph to a higher place.
• Saturation refers to the purity and intensity of a color. The primaries are the most intense and pure, merely diminish as they are mixed to form other colors. The cosmos of tints and shades also diminish a colour's saturation. Two colors work strongest together when they share the same intensity. This is chosen equiluminance.

Color Interactions

Across creating a mixing bureaucracy, color theory also provides tools for agreement how colors work together.

Monochrome

The simplest color interaction is monochrome. This is the apply of variations of a unmarried hue. The advantage of using a monochromatic color scheme is that you become a loftier level of unity throughout the artwork because all the tones relate to one another. See this in Marker Tansey'due south Derrida Queries de Homo from 1990.

Analogous Color

Analogous colors are similar to one some other. As their name implies, coordinating colors can be establish next to 1 some other on whatever 12-part color bicycle:

Coordinating Color, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

Yous tin see the effect of coordinating colors in Paul Cezanne'southward oil painting Auvers Panoromic View

Colour Temperature

Colors are perceived to take temperatures associated with them. The colour bicycle is divided into warm and cool colors. Warm colors range from yellow to ruby-red, while absurd colors range from xanthous-green to violet.  Y'all tin can achieve circuitous results using just a few colors when yous pair them in warm and cool sets.

Warm cool color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are found directly opposite one another on a color bike. Hither are some examples:

• purple and yellow
• green and scarlet
• orange and blue

Complementary Color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Blueish and orangish are complements. When placed nearly each other, complements create a visual tension. This colour scheme is desirable when a dramatic effect is needed using only two colors. The painting Untitled past Keith Haring is an example. You tin can click the painting to create a larger image.

A split complementary color scheme uses one colour plus the two colors on each side of the first color's complement on the color wheel.  Like the use of complements, a separate complement creates visual tension but includes the variety of a third colour.

Carve up Complementary Color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Color Subtraction refers to a visual miracle where the appearance of one color volition lessen its presence in a nearby color. For case, orange (carmine + xanthous) on a ruby-red background will appear more like yellow. Don't misfile color subtraction with the subtractive color system mentioned earlier in this module. Color subtraction uses specific hues within a colour scheme for a certain visual effect.

Simultaneous Dissimilarity

Neutrals on a colored background will appear tinted toward that colour's complement, because the eye attempts to create a rest. (Grayness on a red groundwork will appear more than green, for example.) In other words, the color will shift away from the surrounding color. As well, non-dominant colors will appear tinted towards the complement of the dominant color.

Color interaction affect values, too. Colors appear darker on or nigh lighter colors, and lighter on or near darker colors. Complementary colors will look more intense on or nearly each other than they volition on or near grays (refer dorsum to the Keith Haring example above to see this effect).

Simultaneous Contrast, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-herkimer-artappreciation/chapter/oer-1-9/

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