Color Vocab 101
The value of a color pertains to its lightness or darkness of a color. Values of a color can be found by figuring out its tints and shades. The tint is the light values of colors, usually gathered by mixing the said color with white – some good examples are mixing red with white to create pink, mixing blue and white to get light blue, and mixing green with white to mint green. Hence, pink is a tint of red, light blue is a tint of blue, and mint green is a tint of green.
On the other hand, a shade is the dark values of colors that can be discovered by mixing a color with black, technically this may be the opposite of a tine. For example, mixing red and black makes maroon and mixing blue and black makes navy blue. Maroon is a shade of red, and navy is a shade of blue.
Analogous Colors
Analogous colors are colors that can be found sitting next to each other on the color wheel. They look very appealing, cool to the eyes, well-blended and very pleasant together because their shades are so closely related. Yellow, yellow-orange, and orange are examples of a set of analogous colors. They blend very nicely in paintings of sunsets or sunflowers, or even just simple landscapes of the horizon. Another example would be violet, red-violet and red or green, blue-green, green-blue, and blue! Sometimes analogous colors can last for a whole range of up to 30 different shades in between the two main colors.
To understand analogous colors better, try using paint and a paintbrush, mixing one primary color (for example blue) and one secondary color which roots from it (for blue, it can be either red or yellow). Pour some paint of one color on one side of a sheet of paper and some more on the other – then gradually mix the two colors and observe the midpoint – beautiful, right?
Color Wheel
A color wheel is a tool that allows people to see how colors are related. On a color wheel, all the secondary colors are between the two primary colors that were used to make it – for example, green is between yellow and blue because blue and yellow produce green when mixed. Orange, on the other hand, is between red and yellow because orange is made by combining red with yellow. The final one is violet or purple, which is created by mixing the primary colors blue and red. So we have primary and secondary, but what colors go between them? The next level of colors – intermediate or tertiary colors are produced by mixing a primary color with the secondary color that they find themselves next to! Examples of intermediate colors are yellow-orange, red-orange, or yellow-green.
You can try making a color wheel yourself so that you can further understand colors- all you need is paper, paint and a great imagination!