Understanding Color Theory and Visual Language Elements
Color Theory: Ranges, Properties, and Applications
Color Ranges
Establish colors that have a relationship with each other, that are close on the chromatic circle.
- Warm Range: Involves magenta, yellow, red, orange, ochres, and earth tones. These colors evoke feelings of closeness and force.
- Cold Range: Involves blue, violet, and green. These colors evoke feelings of distance, cold, calm, tranquility, and spirituality.
- Monochromatic Range: Formed by a single tone, including a scale of that color. For example, a blue scale.
- Polychromatic Range: Formed by all intermediate tones between two colors.
- Temperate Range: Created by mixing cold and warm colors in the same composition.
- Achromatic Range: Involves only white, black, and gray. It is considered a cold range.
Elements of Visual Language
- Conceptual Elements: Point, line, plane, and volume.
- Expressive Elements: Point and line as graphic appeals.
- Visual Elements: Color, shape, texture, and size.
When conceptual elements like the point or line acquire shape, color, thickness, depth, rhythm, or movement, they cease to be conceptual and become elements of expression, used as a graphic resource.
- Point: The most basic graphic sign in simple drawing.
- Line: The path of a moving point. Line drawings are used as a graphic resource to express form, structure, and flat surfaces.
Standard Colors
A color palette provided by the industry can be found by mixing other colors.
Light and Color
Light affects the color characteristics of objects and their pigment quality.
- Black Objects: Absorb all color waves.
- White Objects: Reject all color waves. White light is composed of all colors of the rainbow. The union is an additive synthesis of:
- Primary Colors: Magenta, cyan, and yellow.
- Secondary Colors: Green, purple, and orange.
Color Pigments
Colored substances used for painting, consisting of:
- Pigments: The coloring agents.
- Binder: A product that allows the paint to adhere to a surface.
- Thinner: Makes the paint more liquid or dissolves it.
Pigment Sources
- Natural: Rocks, flowers, soil, plants.
- Artificial: Human-made through manufacturing processes.
Secondary Colors
Created by mixing two primary colors:
- Red and Orange: Yellow + Magenta
- Green: Yellow + Cyan
- Blue or Violet: Magenta + Cyan
Chromaticity
The grammatical sorting of colors.
Analogous Colors
Colors that resemble each other, neighbors on the chromatic circle.
Complementary Colors
Colors with opposite positions on the chromatic circle. Mixing two complementary colors creates a visual sensation of black.
Four-Color Process (CMYK)
A mechanical printing process using magenta, cyan, yellow, and black inks. The white of the paper provides the base tone.
Monotype
A technique involving a wet composition on a non-porous support, such as glass or methacrylate. Before drying, the image is transferred by contact to paper, where adjustments can be made.
Qualities of Colors
- Hue: The name of each color.
- Brightness/Value: The degree of darkness or lightness.
- Saturation: The maximum degree of purity of a color. A highly saturated color contains little to no mixture with other colors.
Communicative Value of Color
Color conveys information (e.g., traffic lights), expresses feelings or moods, and aims to influence people. For example, white often symbolizes purity.
Symbolic Function of Color
Each color has a symbolic meaning.
Textures
Textures are defined as visual or tactile sensations of surface appearance.
- Textures are surface characteristics that can be seen and touched.
- They are the qualities perceived on the external surface of objects, related to the effect or feeling they produce (smooth, soft, rough, etc.).
- Treatment of an image’s surface to give it expression (visual).
- The finish of a fabric.
Types of Textures
- Natural: Found in nature, such as animal fur or tree trunks.
- Artificial: Transformed by humans, such as plastic or wood.
Perception of Textures
- Tactile Textures: Can be touched, have reliefs belonging to real elements like sand, rice filings, ground cloth, wool, or pulp.
- Visual Textures: Perceived by the eye, have a smooth surface. The image is reproduced on a plane through painting or other means of expression.