Colour Theory and Colour Application
The colour question tests vocabulary and practical mixing: can you name relationships on the colour wheel, mix a required colour without muddying it, and apply colour so that distance and light still read correctly?
Core theory
- Traditional painting primaries are red, yellow and blue; secondaries are orange, green and violet; tertiaries mix a primary with a neighbouring secondary. (Printing uses cyan, magenta and yellow; school painting exercises use the red-yellow-blue wheel.)
- Complementary colours sit opposite and neutralize each other when mixed. Analogous colours sit next to each other and harmonize.
- Hue is the colour name; value is its lightness or darkness; saturation (intensity) is its purity.
- A tint adds white, a shade adds black, a tone adds grey or the complement.
- Warm colours (red, orange, yellow) advance; cool colours (blue, green, violet) recede. Simultaneous contrast makes a colour look different against different grounds.
Application
- Judge value before hue: a photograph in colour hides tone, so check it in black and white terms.
- Distance is painted with cooler, paler, less saturated colour and softer edges.
- A shadow on a coloured object is made by adding its complement plus a little blue, not by adding black.
Worked example
A yellow pot in shadow. Mix the shadow from yellow plus a touch of violet and a little blue, keeping it a dull olive-yellow rather than grey. The lit side stays close to the local yellow, slightly warmed. The cast shadow on the table is the coolest passage. The reasoning: shadow colour is the local colour darkened and cooled; black would kill the yellow and make the pot look dirty rather than shaded.
Traps
Using black as a universal darkener, mixing more than three pigments and producing mud, painting every area at equal saturation, giving all colours equal areas so nothing dominates, and painting distant objects as brightly as the foreground.