Choose colors in harmony: the color wheel !

Color theory

What is a color? It is obvious, everybody knows! And yet, how to define simply with words, a vibration, a wavelength which the retina is sensitive?

No question here to talk again a theory of colors, but to provide simple components and tools that enable you to better match your colors ... and so vary your scrapbooking pages.

Primary colors, secondary and tertiary

There are 3 primary colors: yellow, cyan (also called primary blue) and magenta (primary red).

These 3 colors, by mixing, will allow us to recover all the others (at least in theory because the painters know that this is not always easy).

Thus, mixed in equal parts, two primary colors will give the 3 secondary colors:

the Green (Y + B)	TheOrange (R + Y)	the Violet (R + B)

These colors are called : binary colors.

Continue mixing ... a primary color mixed with a next binary color ... gives a tertiary color! It defines 6 tertiary colors ...

Thus, Red and Violet give the Purple, Blue and Violet give the Indigo, Blue and Green lead to turquoise ...

Then count again: 3 primary, 3 secondary and 6 tertiary ... This resulted in 12 colors that can be placed on the color wheel:

Complementary Colors

Two colors are calledcomplementary when placed opposite on the color wheel and if you mix them in proper proportion, they produce a neutral color (dark grey). In the picture above you see:

Red is the complement of green, orange the complement of blue and yellow that of Violet.

And the human eye is so constituted that in the presence of a color, it looks for its complementary ... This explains the very theoretical harmony of two complementary colors.

In painting, the mixture of 2 complementary colors gives dark gray ... But by adding a small portion of its complementary color, it darkens a color (this is, in painting, the shadow color theory ).

For our purposes, retain for obtaining a maximum contrast we have to juxtapose color and its complement:

So use the color wheel to enhance the visibility of your colors by playing with the maximum contrast without destroying their relative balance.

New color wheel

By playing on the nuances, the light intensities ... you can get a color wheel fuller rich :

Color harmonies based on the contrast

Let me say first that you must choose a base color or dominant color we will find 75% of the picture... the remaining 25% will be for one or the other colors.

With 2 colors: You choose a color and its complement on the color wheel (that which is diametrically opposite on the color wheel. For example, yellow and purple ... as below:

With 3 colors: You choose a basic color (75%). To find the two others, draw an isosceles triangle on the color wheel ...

With the black triangle: your base color is purple, and the two other colors in harmony are green and orange.

With the white triangle ... blue is in harmony with the orange and yellow orange.

With 4 colors: Draw on the chromatic circle, a rectangle with the main color as the top. The other vertices of the rectangle give you colors in harmony with the main color.

Here are the corresponding harmony:

We obtain strong contrasts, but these colors are harmonics in the color theory. If we plot the rectangle on the "new color wheel" on this page, we would have had tons more "broken" or otherwise more "folded".

Camaieu Harmony of colors

We say that a harmony is monochrome when obtained with the same color declined in different tones. Here, for example, a monochrome blue camaieu:

They are found on the color wheel declined on the same radius, the brightest color (towards the center) to the darker (periphery).

But you can also make a camaieu in choosing adjacent colors on the color wheel. As in this example:

Brilliant Tools ...

The Color Scheme generator ...

There is a tool that saves a lot of time in research harmonies of color ... It's the Color Scheme Generator:

To use it, click a color from the color wheel (1). This is your base color ...Then choose, just with the top  (2), the type of harmony you want : 2 colors (contrast), color 3 (triad) 4 colors (tetrad) or Camaieu (analogic).

Your harmonies appear immediately in the window (3).Now you can select the desired options . Your can try your colors by clicking in (4)

You can also enter the RGB code for your color and get instantaneously your harmonies

You can find this great tool at:

http://colorschemedesigner.com/

The Color Schemer Online V2 ...

The colorscheme Studio 2 is a professional color application that will help you establish a beautiful color schemes quickly and easily.

It is unfortunately not free but you can download a trial version ... and use it, partially online ...

To learn about: 

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html