Paint Consistency | helloartsy.com

Sometimes fine art terms can be darn right confusing. Today's post is all well-nigh some weird terminology that painters use to describe their colors.

Remember the Colour Wheel?

Remember the colour cycle; (you can get one here) this lovely tool describes the placement of a color'south hue in relationship to one another.

The color wheel is helpful in predicting results from mixtures of various paint colors. The color bicycle tin can just about exist divided in half leaving the hues yellow through red for one section and green through purple for another section. This xanthous through blood-red zone on the colour wheel is what most artists consider to exist the warm side of the color bike.

The light-green through majestic zone of the color wheel is considered by about to be the cool colors. Used hither the terms "warm" and "cool" are used in an absolute sense.

Whatsoever hue such as red, yellow, or blue-green has a definite placement on the color bicycle and it will be located in either the warm zone or the cool zone. In this sense, when one considers its accented placement on the color wheel, a scarlet is without a doubt considered a warm color.

Now here'due south where things get more interesting.

Artists also speak of colors in terms relative to the hue existence discussed. It'southward a hue-centric way of thinking. A red tin be considered warmer or cooler co-ordinate to its relative proximity towards the cool colors.

And then if nosotros were comparing two different reds we could say "Alizarin crimson is a cooler red when compared to cadmium red". In other words, alizarin crimson can be thought of every bit a ruby-red that favors bluish, has more bluish in it, or leans towards blue in its placement on the colour wheel. This way of thinking works for just about any color because colors are rarely perfect; they e'er tend to lean one direction or the other.

Fifty-fifty if we practice find a cherry-red that is a perfect red, once we compare it to another red we will exist describing i of the red's as cooler than the other!

A yellow can also exist considered to be absurd or warm depending on which mode it leans on the colour bicycle. Lemon yellow has traditionally been a cool yellowish while cadmium yellow typically leans towards the warm side of the colour wheel.

Once we understand the realm in which an artist is describing a color we can gain more insight into what kind of hue they are using and finer calibrate our discussions regarding color choices.

Color Quantification?

The article is hither to aid y'all understand what other artists are talking about when they refer to colors being "warm" or "cool".  The problem with all of this kind of talk is that it'south a fleck vague and tin vary from person to person.

Wouldn't it be bang-up if we could depict a color and all of us empathize exactly what color we would be referring to?

You tin can… and that trouble was solved 100+ years ago by a human being named Albert Munsell.

Delight read my article on An introduction to Munsell Color to get a really good grasp on how to work with colour in a logical way!  Information technology'south a much more precise way to describe color rather than using terms like "warmer" and "cooler".