Color and Painting

Color is fascinating and complex. Here we will focus on mixing primary (red, yellow and blue) and secondary colors (orange, green and purple) on the color wheel to create studies with monochromatic, analogous and complementary color schemes.

MONOCHROMATIC colors are created by painting with one color mixed with black or white. Adding black to a color creates shades or dark colors. Adding white creates tints of light colors.

ANALOGOUS colors are primary colors that lie next to each other. Analogous colors can be mixed to create secondary and tertiary colors. For instance, red mixed with yellow will create orange; red mixed with blue will create purple. The third level would be red-violet, violet, blue-violet.

Analogous colors give warm or cool feelings. Colors that are predominantly yellow, orange or red feel warm; colors that are predominately blue, purple or green feel cool. Feelings (happy, sad) create moods (dreary or angry temperament). A feeling is a brief emotional reaction, but a mood is a state of mind of longer duration.

COMPLEMENTARY colors are two colors that are opposite on the color wheel. Full strength, unmixed, complementary colors such as blue and orange create excitement. Complementary colors can be mixed to create brown or gray. Mixing these colors tends to neutralize them to make various kinds of grayed colors or feelings.