Simple Color Theory for Photo Encaustic ……………………………………………………………………………………………

The Artistic Image

Colors can create emotion and learning some basics about color and color mixing can help you create more freely and effectively.

Red is considered to be the most powerful color with the greatest impact on the psyche. Red, the color of blood and fire, is associated with meanings of love, passion, desire, heat, longing, lust, sexuality, sensitivity, romance, joy, strength, leadership, courage, vigor, willpower, rage, anger, danger, malice, wrath, stress, action, vibrancy, radiance, and determination.

Yellow, the color of sunshine, hope, and happiness, has conflicting associations. On one hand yellow stands for freshness, happiness, positivity, clarity, energy, optimism, enlightenment, remembrance, intellect, honor, loyalty, and joy, but on the other, it represents cowardice and deceit.

Blue has positive effects on the mind and the body. Blue represents both the sky and the sea, and is associated with open spaces, freedom, intuition, imagination, expansiveness, inspiration, and sensitivity. Blue also represents meanings of depth, trust, loyalty, sincerity, wisdom, confidence, stability, faith, heaven, and intelligence. However not all blues are serene and sedate. Electric or brilliant blues become dynamic and dramatic, an engaging color that expresses exhilaration. Also, some shades of blue or the use of too much blue may come across as cold or uncaring.

Green is at the center of the spectrum and represents perfect balance. It is the color of life, renewal, nature, and energy, is associated with meanings of growth, harmony, freshness, safety, fertility, and environment. The color green has healing power and is understood to be the most restful and relaxing color for the human eye to view.

Orange is the color of joy and creativity. Orange promotes a sense of general wellness and emotional energy that should be shared, such as compassion, passion, and warmth. The meaning of the color orange is stimulating, vibrant, and flamboyant. While made up of red and yellow, it carries less aggression and fierceness than the color red due to its combination with the calming color yellow.

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Purple combines the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red. The color purple is often associated with royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition. Purple also represents meanings of wealth, extravagance, creativity, wisdom, dignity, grandeur, devotion, peace, pride, mystery, independence, and magic. Different shades, tints, and hues of purple have different meanings. Light purple hues represent feminine energy and delicacy, as well as romantic and nostalgic feelings. Dark purple hues evoke feelings of gloom, sadness, and frustration. Bright purple hues suggest riches and royalty.

(Color meaning referenced from Bourne Creative, www.bourncreative.com)

The Color Wheel

The color wheel has six main colors, three PRIMARY COLORS and three SECONDARY COLORS The primary colors are red, yellow and blue. If you mix any two primary colors, you get one of the secondary colors: orange, green and violet.

For example, we learned as children when mixing pigments or paints:

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Red + Yellow = Orange

Yellow + Blue = Green

Blue + Red = Violet

TERTIARY COLORS are in-between colors such as blue-green, red-violet and yellow-orange. These colors are formed by mixing a primary and a secondary color.

SATURATION refers to the amount of color. Low saturation implies gray, high saturation is “pure” color.

VALUE refers to the scale from light to dark, white being the lightest value and black being the darkest value.

LUMINOSITY is brightness. A color can be saturated but not bright.

Color theory provides only a rough guide to mixing paints. In practice, you will need to experiment to learn the individual properties of pigments and their mixtures. You may even want to make a reference chart to save and refer to later.

Purchase pigments for the secondary and certainly the tertiary colors. Mixing primaries will often result in muddy hues.

Avoiding Mud

1. Mixing complementary colors of paint together will create mud. For example:

Red + Green = Mud

2. Mixing secondary colors together will create mud. For example:

Green + Purple = Mud

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Helpful Hint

I suggest you start with the lighter of the two colors, then slowly add the darker color, little by little. If you do it the other way around, you will need a lot of the lighter color to affect the darker color, and you might end up wasting paint.

You can change the value — the scale from light to dark — of any color by adding white or black.

Layering with Translucent Paints

Adding layers of thin, translucent pigment allows you to keep any interesting marks, shapes or patterns visible underneath while completely changing the color on top. In this way, translucent pigments add interesting depth to your image by creating “windows” into the deeper layers. Translucent paints also can be a handy way to unify your color palette.

Opaque colors used straight have total hiding power. Both opaque and transparent encaustic paints can be extended with medium to make them more transparent.

Layers of extended color can be laid one on top of another or separated by layers of straight medium to create unusual translucent effects. Glazing can be done by greatly extending a color with medium. There is no technical danger in adding large amounts of medium to a color as there is in adding large amounts of oil to oil paint. The encaustic can also be made more fluid by adding medium or raising its temperature a little (be careful here to not raise the temperature above a safe range).

Color Harmony (choosing a color scheme):

MONOCHROME: Using different values of only one color is a color scheme that is often used, not just white, black, and gray.

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS: Using colors that appear opposite each other on the color wheel, such as blue + orange, red + green and yellow + violet. Because of their strong contrast, using complementary colors next to each other in your work will create a dynamic and vibrant ‘pop’ or even tension, often drawing the viewers eye to a certain place.

ANALOGOUS COLORS are colors that live next door to each other on the color wheel such as red, orange and yellow; green, blue and violet; and yellow, yellow–green, and green. Using analogous colors often creates a calm effect on the eye. One might use one pure hue and the other two semi-neutral (i.e. mixed, muddy, low intensity). The pure tone will advance more than the others.