| Third Proprty of Color: Contrast |
| The third property of color deals with Intensity, Complementary Colors, and Contrast. There are three main parts of this property; the first two are rather simple. Intensity, or the brightness of a color, gives a luminous quality to a composition. A lack of black and/or white, which dulls a color, will give a color its greatest intensity. Saturation deals with the amount of pigment in a color. It primarily refers to paints, pastels, and other implements to be used in a work of art (even color pencils). Neutralization is the act of dulling down the intensity of a color. This creates gray tones through the adding of complementary colors and/or black and white. Complementary Colors are colors that are opposite to each other on a color wheel. An example, blues complementary color, as well as contrasting color, is orange. There are three uses for complimentary colors. You can darken a color by adding its compliment and further neutralize that color by adding white to lighten it. You can also create contrasting and attention grabbing effects by placing complementary colors side by side. There are seven forms of contrast. Contrast is a large difference between two objects. The different forms of contrast are Hue, Value, Complements, Warm-Cool, Simultaneous Contrast, and contrast of Saturation and Extension. I'm not going to go into explaining all of these, but you get the idea just from the names. Optical Mixing is the third part and plays a big role. Optical Mixing is where two or more colors are placed separately from one another on a surface and the eye interprets these colors as one that does not actually exist. Simultaneous Contrast is an example of this effect that we have already covered. Successive Contrast is a visual phenomenon that uses high intensity colors, that when stared at for long periods, creates an after image. An After Image is an image of white that occurs as an image of contrast showing a form not actually existing. For instance, take a bright red marker and color in a dot on a piece of plain white paper and stare at it for about a minute or so. Turn the paper over to the other plain side and you should still be able to see what appears to be some sort of dot. Phantom Color is the color created by optical mixing of intense colors. Pointillism is a type of painting that uses all these forms of optical mixing by creating colors and shapes from small points of color applied to a surface. If you ever get a chance look closely at a true pointillism painting and you will not see any black or white and each point will be its own separate color. These paintings were meant to be seen from a distance, so stand back and let the optical mixing begin. Many people have made contributions to the knowledge of color. Leonardo De Vinci gave us the use of blue in outdoor lighting, this (believe it or not) was one of the first innovations to guild us to a better understanding of color, his work with tones should not go over looked either. Goethe, though a poet, revealed that shadows also contained color, mainly purples. Bezold showed us through his work that colors could pull double duty and enhance each other. One of the latest innovations was Pointillism, which Chevreals is accredited with. Albers also did much for western art. His hundreds of color squares taught the world how different colors interact with each other when placed side by side. |