Quiz next Tuesday!

Remember, we have class on Tuesday next week instead of the usual Thursday.  Below is the Study Guide.

Art 105: Two-Dimensional Design

Professor: Kyle Stevenson

Project 5 vocabulary: Color

Reading: Pipes- Intro to Design, Chapter 7, pages 143-171

The Vocabulary of Color:

color: The perceptual response to the wave lengths of visible light named red, green, blue and so on; having the attributes of hue, saturation, and brightness.

color wheel:  An arrangement of colors based on the sequence of hues in the visible spectrum, arranged as the spokes of a wheel.  The most common is Itten’s 12-step wheel.

spectrum:  The bands of identifiable hues that result when a beam of white light is divided into its component wavelengths by a glass prism.

complementary colors:  Two colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel.  A primary color is complementary to a secondary color, which is a mixture of the two remaining primaries.  Complementary colors accentuate each other in juxtaposition and neutralize each other in mixture.

primary colors:  The brain accepts four colors- red, yellow, green, and blue- as primaries, and this fact is reflected in the composition of modern color wheels.  The basic hues in any color system may in theory be used to mix all other colors.  In light, the three primaries are red, green and blue; in pigments, the three primary colors are red, yellow, and blue.

secondary colors:  A color produced by a mixture of two primary colors.  In pigment colors secondaries are orange, green, and purple (violet).

afterimage:  The complementary color seen after staring at an area of intense color for a certain amount of time and then quickly glancing away toward a white surface.

transmitted color:  Light direct from an energy source,  or shining through colored filters in a theater or displayed on a computer screen via a cathode-ray tube.  The primary colors of light are red, green, and blue (RGB). Light color is inherently additive color.

pigment colors (or subtractive colors):  The materials in pigments and dyes absorb different wavelengths of light, and reflect or retransmit others.  They are inherently subtractive: a mixture of all pigment primaries- red, yellow, and blue- will in theory produce black.

constancy effect:  The proximity of other colors affects our perception of colors; because we know grass to be green, we see it as green even when it really appears blue-gray, as at twighlight.

additive color:  Color created by superimposing light. Adding together (or superimposing) the three primaries- red, blue, and green- will produce white.  The secondaries are cyan, yellow, and magenta.

intermediate color:  A color produced by a mixture of a primary color and a secondary color- yellow-green, for example.

primary triad:  On a 12 step color wheel, an equilateral triangle with vertices (sharp corners) at the primaries.  Similar triads join up the secondaries and tertiaries.

saturation: The strength or purity of a color, also known as intensity or chroma.  A saturated color is bright and intense, a pure hue, whereas a desaturated color has no hue and is called achromatic- neutral gray, black, or white.

tone: A low-saturation color produced by mixing a hue with a shade of gray or its complement.

brightness:  The relative lightness or darkness of a color.  Zero brightness is black and 100 percent is white; intermediate values are light or dark colors, also called luminance or value.

value: a measure of lightness or darkness of a color, also known as brightness.

shade:  A hue mixed with black.

tint: A hue mixed with white.

high-key colors: A color that has a value of middle gray or lighter.

low-key colors:  Any color that has a value level of middle gray or darker.

flat color:  An even area of color with no shading or variation in value.  In graphic design, also known as match or spot color.  The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is an industry-standard collection of flat colors used by printers.

visual mixing:  Instead of mixing colors on the palette, dabs of pure hues are juxtaposed on the canvas.  Any color mixing occurs in the eye and brain of the viewer.

pointillism: A system of visual color mixing based on the juxtaposition of small dabs of pure color on a white ground.   

chromatic gray:  Cull “almost neutral” colors, sometimes with a hint of brightness.

monochromatic color:  Colors of one hue; the complete range of value from white to black.

analogous colors:  Colors that are closely related in hue, usually near or adjacent to each other on the color wheel.

local color:  Color as perceived in the real world under ordinary daylight, the color we know objects to be- such as the green of grass; also called objective color.

optical color:  Color that has changed under different lighting conditions according to the time of day.

arbitrary color: Unnatural colors that are the product of the artist’s imagination, or the result of an emotional response or visual defect.

heightened colors: The bright unnatural colors of, for example, van Gogh and Gauguin.

warm colors:  Colors have subjective temperatures: red and yellow we associate with fire and sunlight.  On the Itten color wheel, they are the yellow to red-violet segment.

cool colors:  Colors have subjective temperatures: blue and green we associate with ice,  water, or, say crisp salads.  On the Itten color wheel, they are the yellow-green to violet segment.