Colour theory and chromatic expression
This block tests the vocabulary of colour and the reasoning behind mixing decisions. In a coloured-pencil, pastel or gouache answer the marker reads whether shadows are chromatic or merely darkened, whether a palette has a hierarchy, and whether you can explain temperature and harmony in words.
Three coordinates
- Hue (tono), value (valor), saturation (saturación). Two colours can share a hue and differ strongly in value; check by squinting or isolating a patch.
- Pigment mixing is subtractive. The teaching model is RYB, real primaries are closer to cyan, magenta and yellow; either way, mixing two complementaries neutralises rather than producing a clean black.
Contrast and harmony
- Itten's seven contrasts: hue, light–dark, cold–warm, complementary, simultaneous, saturation, extension.
- Chevreul's law of simultaneous contrast: a grey looks warm beside blue and cool beside orange; every colour shifts toward the complement of its neighbour.
- Schemes: monochrome, analogous, complementary, split-complementary, triad. Three to five pigments give unity; more usually gives noise.
Colour and space
- Chromatic perspective: in daylight, distance lowers saturation, cools the hue, lightens value and reduces contrast.
- Shadow is not local colour plus black. It shifts in hue, value and temperature, and reflected light carries the colour of the neighbouring surface.
Worked example
A red apple on blue-grey cloth. Shadow side: crimson shifted toward a green-violet (complementary plus cooling), so the shadow stays deep and chromatic. Contact: darkest and least saturated. Reflected band on the lower shadow edge: cool violet from the cloth. Cast shadow: the cloth's own colour darkened and cooled, darkest at contact. Squint to confirm the value order: contact, core shadow, cast shadow, half-tone, highlight.
Traps that cost marks
- Black to darken: kills chroma and turns the shadow grey mud.
- White added everywhere, producing chalky, desaturated mid-tones.
- Maximum saturation across the whole sheet, so nothing leads.
- Ignoring light temperature: warm light implies cool shadows, and vice versa.
- Mixing four or five pigments for one note; dirty water between mixes.