14-Day Beginner Series - What Is “Color”

Hi, I am Mackenzie Swenson and welcome to day seven. Today, we are going to be exploring color. Color is a huge subject. Tons of books have been written on color theory, you know, the emotions around color, you know, the science of color, you know, there's so many different ways to approach color but what we're gonna be focusing on today is really just how to even think about color. So, you guys are, you know, probably familiar with the color wheel. Most of us learned about that in, I don't know second grade or something. And so, we are going to just pop right back into the color wheel and let's start with red at the top. And then green is gonna go opposite that. Okay. So, red and green are complimentary colors. So in the color spectrum, in the color wheel, they're directly on the opposite sides of each other. So, then we're gonna get into, I don't have like a super bright yellow, but you know, when you're working with markers, it is what it is. So, I've got yellow and that's a pretty true blue. He's a little purple-y, but we're gonna have yellow over here. Then, we're gonna have blue over here. And these three are what's known as primary colors. So they are kind of the building blocks of all other colors. Every other color is derived from red, yellow, and blue. Green is what's called a secondary color because it's made when you mix yellow and blue, and then there's also a secondary color that happens here, right? Red and blue make purple, this is a little magenta-y, but we're gonna just let it be our purple for today. And then over here between yellow and red, we have orange. So, then just like red and green are complimentary colors yellow and purple are complimentary colors. And then blue and orange are complimentary colors. Okay. Now, I don't exactly understand all of the science behind this, but I do know that there is something really strange that happens because I experienced it recently when I was out in the woods. And I had like, there was, I was camping with some friends and there was this like glowing end of a stick in the dark and was kind of like waving it around a little bit. And I had to jump back because all of a sudden I thought I was seeing bright green dots. And I was like, there are fairies here, there weren't fairies. It was the aftershock of the red that was on the glowing end of the stick was like leaving a weird visual green-like after glow that my eye was picking up on. And so even though I don't know exactly how all of the science behind that works, I know that in a very like physical, physics-y way, you know, there's a really interesting relationship between the color green and red. And so, with like an intense version of a lot of these colors, if you stare at a really, really bright red, and then you shut your eyes, that aftershock is gonna be green. And if you stare at a really, that's actually the only one I've ever tried that with. But, I know that there's a similar relationship with these other opposites, as well. And so that is kind of the foundation of the color wheels, these colors, like the actual, you know, what these are all called is a hue. So, hue is hue. Right, and so when we talk about the hue of something, you know, like the hue of this dress is green. The hue of this part on this landscape is also green, even though they're very different expressions of green, they both fall into the category of a green hue. So, when we talk about hue, it's just, where is it on the color wheel, right? So, even something like, like if we look down, let's see, okay, actually, this is great. Hilma coming in clutch. So, like this right here is a very, very muted expression of kind of an indigo purple. So it's very muted and light, but it still is in the family of purple. It's close to blue. It's like, kind of right in between them. So, this is our foundational color wheel, right? Okay. So, the next thing to keep in mind when thinking about color is actually value. So, we do pull value back into the conversation a little bit. And again, if you look at this Hilma af Klint painting, she really shows the way these colors progress from a darker value up into a lighter expression of the color. So, if we were to go in and say, draw a core thing and okay, you can see, honestly, a marker's probably not the best way of expressing this, but it's a lot faster than going in and carefully shading everything. So, you can imagine this big core paper towel tube, almost with a chunk at the bottom that's just pure black, right? And then at the top, it's white. And then as we go, it's everything in between. So, what I want you to imagine then is either if we took this tube and stuck it down the center of this color wheel, or if we took this color wheel and flipped it and put it over the middle of this tube. What you would find is, let's say, we've got. We are going to, put, we're gonna have red here. Red, it's gonna be over there. Green, it's gonna be over here. We're gonna put, yellow is gonna be here. Orange, whoops, is gonna be here. And then yellow, green, blue in the back over here, and purple, it's gonna chill over here. And what you will find is, as the colors come in toward this core, they are going to have more and more of that neutral. They are gonna have more and more of that, just pure black or white or gray mixed into them. And what ends up happening in the middle there then is they become very, very neutral. So, very low chroma, very low saturation. And so where you're close to this value core, or how dark or light colors are, value, it's kind weird looking but that's fine. The chroma is how close to neutral, how close to that center is the color, or how far away is it, now what's interesting is every single color reaches its highest chroma at a different value. Yellow reaches its highest chroma way up in this range, right? So, if we follow it kind of into the center, it's almost you know, up with pure white where it reaches its most intense color, blue reaches its most intense chroma usually down here. So, if we have this little space going on with how dark it is, and this is actually a pretty light blue, so I've got a kind of darker blue here. This is actually gonna be a much richer blue but that's gonna come out over here. And as we get closer to the center, it'll get more and more gray. So then, green is also a color that, you know, gets its most intense, usually on a lower value. So, that we'll say is somewhere over here, where it comes out, and then purple is also this, you know, again is a little more of a fuchsia, so it's gonna be a little brighter, but this will also kind of be in some of these lower ranges. So, that's gonna come out here, and then over, here, orange is gonna get its most chroma up, it's not gonna be as high as yellow, but it's definitely gonna be brighter. So, maybe somewhere in here and then red is kind of gonna be more red is usually very, very mid tone. So, red is gonna be somewhere in here where it reaches its most chromatic value. Now, the easiest way to show this is something called color space, which is a big three-dimensional model where essentially you can see all the little, all the little kind of moments of color as they come in toward this core of value. And then as they move further out and the further things come out away from that neutral core, the higher the chroma is, so chroma is the also the saturation. And so, I'm gonna show you an image that'll come up on your screen of kind of what color space is and looks like. And you can see how every single bit of color of value of, you know, all of those things exist in this big framework of, you know, that encompasses the hue, you know, where the color is on the color wheel that encompasses how dark or light that color is. And then that includes how chromatic or aromatic that color is, how close it is to the core or how far out into the extremes it is. And so those three components, hue, value, and chroma are the three elements that you can use to identify and pinpoint any specific color. So, I don't have a specific prompt for you today 'cause that's a lot of, it's a lot of information to take in, but what I guess, what I do want you to do is just kind of think about as you're looking around and you know, just observing you know, the worlds that you walk through. You know, if you have a second where it comes into your brain, just kind of ask, oh, I wonder what the hue, so where it is on the color wheel, does this belong to the blue family or the orange family, or you know, whatever color family is. What's the value, how light or dark is it? If I had to place it on a scale from 0 being black to 10 being white, where would I place it on that scale? And then, how chromatic is it? Is it like a really bright green, right? So, this little guy here, he's kind of in between green and yellow and he's a very intense chromatic green, right? He's almost fluorescent. So, that's gonna be out further on that scale of chroma or is it super neutral and low chroma? So, hope you guys found that useful and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, thanks.