Drawing lessons - illustrated lesson notes for teachers and students

The psychology of color No2

7-5 COLOR HARMONIES AND PSYCHOLOGY

Using colors and developing a color scheme for your painting is a lot easier than you think.

Many more color combinations work than don't work. Let us think more on the music analogy

where each note has pitch, force and length - just as in painting each color has hue, value and

saturation.

A chord in music is a collection of notes that harmonise. Similar to music I like to think

paintings can be composed of color chords. A painting 'chord' could then be thought of as a

collection of colors that harmonise. But what causes colors to harmonise?

Below: Colors of similar hue, value and saturation will harmonise just as will musical notes one

octave apart. The colors must for they are the equivalent!

Below: Colors of similar value and hue (but different saturation) will harmonise. Any of these

'harmonies' can be utilised in a painting as either major or minor accents (chords).

Below: Colors of similar value (but different hue and saturation) will harmonise. This would

describe a painting of colors with no value difference. No forms would be discernible just hues.

We define a high key painting as one with the 'majority' of the painting surface painted with

high value colors. Some years ago a particular paint manufacturer produced (modular) colors

labled with their value so artists could more easily harmonise their color schemes!

Below: Colors of similar hue (but different value and saturation) will harmonise. This would be

equivalent to a painting done in sepia tones.

In this painting (left) red is the dominant hue. The

Dominant hue is the 'base' color that can be slightly

vaied by adding a little of any of the other colors red,

blue, or yellow to slighly modify. Having this 'base'

color in all the mixes will unify the painting and can

be done at any stage. The deep thinkers usually do

this progressively but others (me included)

sometimes use a unifying glaze to rescue their

problem painting. To be safe a lot of painters add a

little of the one hue to every color they use even the

highlights! Here (left) light red is the dominant hue. I

used light red to unify all the elements even though

some of the greys almost appear blue. This painting

is simple in that it has just one major scheme(chord)

• colors of similar hue. Here the light source is red-
  yellow therefore the shadows appear of the opposite
  (complimentry) hue. There is an old adage in

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