UNDERSTANDING COLOUR

Johannes Itten was an artist, designer and educator who spent much of his life exploring how colour works, especially the dynamic relationship between colours. This is one of his exercises. Draw two grids of squares, filling one with colours that you like and the other with colours you dislike. Then put the two grids side by side and ask the question ‘which one looks better?’ The usual result is the grid full of colours you dislike. This is because we tend to pick bright colours as the colours we like, which when placed side-by-side look garish and jarring. By contrast the colours we think we don’t like as much are often the more subtle and muddier mixed colours, tertiary colours and occasional bright hues. When placed side by side the effect is more balanced. This is an important lesson for designers when picking a colour palette to work with: use bright colours but balance them against more subtle colours. It will also help you become better acquainted with your image manipulation or DTP software – identifying where your colour swatches are, how to select them and how you blend colours by changing their opacity. Next try experimenting with placing colours together as Itten did.

Try and find different combinations of two colours to illustrate each of these ideas:

Angry Brave Creative Dangerous Energetic Familiar Gregarious Hopeful Independent Jumpy Kinetic Luxurious Masculine New Open Precious Quiet Reasonable Sociable Tasteful Unhappy Vital Wonderful Extra special Youthful Zany

Analysis

Choose two colour combinations that illustrate the words Angry, Brave, Creative, Dangerous Energetic, Familiar, Gregarious, Hopeful, Independent, Jumpy, Kinetic, Luxurious, Masculine, New, Open, Precious, Quiet, Reasonable, Sociable, Tasteful, Unhappy, Vital, Wonderful, Extra special, Youthful and Zany according to my research.

Keywords

Colour palette

Colour theory

Colour harmony

Colour combinations

Johannes Itten

In the world of colour, Johannes Itten is known as one of the best teachers. The relationship between some colours and their outcomes was predictable to him, but the way artists and designers use and perceive colour is subjective. Colour relationships and how they work in context can help designers and artists make more meaningful choices by understanding their relationships to one another.

A colour solution can be achieved in three different ways by artists and designers. He distinguished three types of impression: visually (which he termed impression), emotionally (which he termed expression), and symbolically (which he termed construction). (Sherin, 2012)

Fig.1 Itten's Colours wheel (2012)

The colour wheel

The colour spectrum can be represented as a circular wheel. It describes the relationship between colours, and is an integral part of colour theory. Designers who wish to select systematic colour schemes can also use this guide to easily identify primary, secondary, and tertiary hues. A designer can establish a certain mood by choosing a colour that is warm or cool. (Ambrose and Harris, 2007)

By looking at colour harmony, I studied the different types of colour wheels. I looked at six of the most popular colour harmonies.

Analogous
Complementary
Split complementary
Monochromatic
Triad
Tetradic

There are also double complements and near complements.

The diagram below shows the mixing of primary colours to produce secondary colours.

Describing colours

Hue

In colour theory, hue refers to the unique characteristic of a colour that helps us identify it visibly. The wavelength of light determines the hue or colour of something.

Saturation

A colour's saturation, or chroma, indicates how pure it is. Levels of saturation describe the tendency of a colour to move towards or away from grey. The colour is described as vibrant, bright, rich, or full when it contains no grey at maximum saturation. Colours become subdued, muted and dull at lower saturation levels due to the increased amount of grey in them.

Value/brightness

Colour value describes how light or dark a colour is. Mixing white and black together can change the value of a colour. The mixture of a colour with white is called a tint, while the mixture of a colour with black is called a shade. Saturation and value are two different things that should not be confused. (Ambrose and Harris, 2007)

Colour Blindness

Dichromatic colour vision is caused by a total absence of one cone cell type, resulting in a particular area of the light spectrum that can't be perceived, for example these areas of the light spectrum ‘red’, ‘green’ or ‘blue’. People with red and green types of colour blindness experience many of the same colour confusions because the sections of the light spectrum which the 'red' and 'green' cone cells perceive overlap significantly. Red and green colour vision deficiencies are also called red/green colour blindness because of their similarity in how they see the world.

A person suffering from protanopia is unable to perceive any 'red' light, whereas those suffering from deuteranopia are unable to perceive any 'green' light, while those suffering from tritanopia cannot perceive any 'blue' light.

Blues and yellows become the dominant colours in a world where red and green deficiencies coexist. People with both types easily confuse browns, oranges, shades of red, blues and greens, as well as pale shades of many colors. (Colour Blindness, 2022).

The diagram below shows how the colour wheel is usually perceived on the left and on the right how a visually deficient person may perceive the colour wheel.

Fig.2 Color blindness tests and facts (2022)

Protanopia

Protanopes are more likely to confuse:- 1. Black with many shades of red 2. Dark brown with dark green, dark orange, dark red, dark blue/purple and black 3. Some blues with some reds, purples and dark pinks 4. Mid-greens with some oranges

Fig.3 Color blindness tests and facts, Protanopia (2022)

Deuteranopes

Deuteranopes are more likely to confuse:- 1. Mid-reds with mid-greens 2. Blue-greens with grey and mid-pinks 3. Bright greens with yellows 4. Pale pinks with light grey/white 5. Mid-reds with mid-brown 6. Light blues with lilac

Fig. 4 Color blindness tests and facts, Deuteranopia (2022)

Tritanopes

The most common colour confusions for tritanopes are light blues with greys, dark purples with black, mid-greens with blues and oranges with reds. (Colour Blindness, 2022).

Fig.5 Color blindness tests and facts, Tritanopia (2022)

Subtractive and addictive colour

Red, green, and blue are the primary colors in the RGB colour system, which allows for a wide range of colours to be created. A white colour is achieved by adding all the primary colours together and an absence of light produces a black colour. RGB colour systems are used for screen and display design as well as for large-format printers that print using CMYK inks when interpreting RGB colors. There are many devices that use RGB systems, including TVs and video monitors, mobile phones, and cameras.

Colours cyan, magenta, yellow, and black make up CMYK, a subtractive process. Using halftone dots, the inks that are used for printing subtract, or mask, the background (which is usually the white of the paper). When CMYK ink colours are printed on white paper, colours are produced by combining them. In offset lithography, all graphics and imagery must be converted to CMYK before being sent to the printer.

Europe, Asia, and the United States use standardised SWOP guides. In order to ensure that the colours specified match the finished print product, they show the percentage of CMYK values needed to create a particular hue. The appearance of colour on print media is also affected by

by the paper stock (whether it is coated, uncoated, or matte), and whether a varnish or coating has been applied over the ink. (Sherin, 2012)

Colour Emotion and mood

My illustration words required research into the psychology of colour and what moods or emotions these colours evoked. I research across a number of different books and brainstormed all the ideas into my sketchbook.

Collectively taken from (Sherin, 2012) (Eiseman, 2017) (Sutton, 2020) (Adobe, 2022)

Paint samples

I took a trip to my local hardware store to pick up samples of paint colours. I used to love collecting these as a child. These are the perfect example of monochromatic colour harmonies.

Colours I like, colours I don't like

I used Adobe InDesign to create a table of the colours I like and the colours I dislike.

Through this exercise, I gained a great deal of insight into myself. In addition to being bold, bright, and mostly based on cool colours, some pinks and yellows are also included in my favorite colours. When all of them are placed side by side, there is a high contrast between them. Choosing colours I dislike, I saw oranges, reds and browns, autumnal colours and a very muted colour palette.

Experimenting with colour combinations

In my research, I explored how colour can affect a viewer's mood. My thumbnail colour combinations were based on this. Due to the limited colour choices with my marker pens, I wasn't able to produce tints, shades, and tones. As part of my experiment, I got a rough idea of what colours I wanted and then played around with tints and shades in Adobe.

Final colour combinations

This is the result of the colour combinations I used in Adobe InDesign. The colour combinations looked different depending on if I inverted the colours for example youthful looks more purple than yellow. The other way round looked too jarring on the eye. The proportion of the colours used made a big difference to the overall look. I had to keep changing tints and shades until I got the balance right.

Reflection

I learnt so much from this project, I learnt that I am naturally drawn to colours which are cool but also to bright bold colours. However, I'm learning to embrace all colours to help balance out my colour palettes. By using more subtle tones, tints and shades.

I also learnt that the type of mood that I'm trying to convey all depends on colour mood and psychology. For example a calm quiet colour like blue and green won't have the same effect as bright yellow or pink.

The combination of monochromatic and analogous colours is very appealing to me, so I made use of this a lot when choosing colours.

There is a function under accessibility tools on Adobe's colour wheel that shows whether the design sample is accessible to colour blind people. In order to see how some of my colour combinations would look, I uploaded some of them. The results were very surprising.