What is Color?
AN ELEMENT OF MANY FACES
Color is a phenomenon of perception and reaches our eyes in a way you might not expect. Colors are actually wavelengths of light; when an object is red, it is reflecting red wavelengths and absorbing all other colors. In other words, you could say that an apple technically isn’t red—the apple is reflecting red.
Color is the element of art that seems to invite the most discussion. Because of this, the art world boasts an extensive vocabulary that helps us describe, categorize, and label colors. Traditionally, colors are distinguished by three qualities: hue, saturation, and value. Hue refers to the actual color in its brightest, purest form; saturation (also called “chroma”) is the color’s intensity; and value, as we’ve touched on, is the lightness or darkness of the color.
Because our eye is trained to notice color more than value, you may not have picked up on the variations of value between colors. For example, a black-and-white photograph would reveal that—in their purest forms—yellow is lighter in value and violet is darker in value than other colors.
A single color or hue (A) can vary in saturation and value in the form of tints, tones, and shades. A tint is a color plus white (B), a tone is a color plus gray (C), and a shade is a color plus black (D). Take a look at the variations of green below. —ETG
A
B
C
D
FUN FACT
In the visible spectrum of light, red wavelengths are longer than all other colors, and violet wavelengths are shorter than all other colors. But visible light represent only a small fraction of the full electromagenetic spectrum. Wavelengths shorter than violet include ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays, and wavelengths longer than red include infrared, microwaves, and radio waves.