Bachelor of Design & Fashion Textile, Design Exploration In Fashion, Colors

1. Color
 Vocabulary
o Primary and secondary colors
o Complimentary and analogous colors
o Warm and cool
o Saturated and desaturated/neutral colors
o Value, hue,saturation/intensity
o Subtractive and Additive color
 Light -- Additive Color
o All color is light because it is made of light -- either projected directly into your eye
(candle flame, monitor screen),or bounced off a surface (tabletop, mirrow, fur coat).
o There must be light for us to see color. A red shirt will not look red in the dark where
there is no light.
o The whiter the light, the more true the colors will be. A yellow light on a full color
painting will change the appearance of all the colors.
o A ray of white light passing through a prism separates into the hues seen in a rainbow
 Pigment -- Subtractive Color
o Surfaces absorb some light, and reflect back the rest. A red shirt absorbs all the light
except red, which it reflects back into your eye. When you work with PIGMENT, you are
painting with color that absorbs, or takes away,light. A black shirt or asphalt street is hot
because it absorbs all the light, reflecting back nothing.
Color has three properties...

2.  HUE -- the name of the colors. The primary hues are yellow, red, and blue. Secondary colors are
made by mixing two primaries. Intermediate colors are mixtures of a primary and adjacent
secondary color.
 SATURATION (aka intensity) -- the purity of the hue (also called "chroma").
 VALUE -- the lightness or darkness of hue.
Color Wheel
 Primary colors --3 main colors that all colors are made from Working with LIGHT, they are
Red, Green, Blue. When you add all 3 you get WHITE LIGHT
 Secondary colors -- created from combining two primary colors. Working with LIGHT, when
you put two lights together, you get a brighter light. Therefore the secondary colors are
BRIGHTER than the primary colors. They are Yellow (Red+Green), Cyan (Green+Blue),
Magenta (Blue+Red)
 Complimentary colors -- are opposite colors. Working with LIGHT, the compliment of Red =
Green+Blue (Cyan)
 Analgous colors --
 Warm colors -- from yellow to red to red-violet on the color wheel. In a painting, they seem to
advance or come forward.
 Cool colors -- from yellow-green through violet. In a painting, they seem to recede,or go back in
space.
 Neutral colors -- made by adding a complementary color (opposite on the color wheel) to a hue.
Neutralized hues are often called "tones".
Texture
 Includes actual and simulated texture, and textures in fabric, wood, metal, and nature.
 Sharp focus = Distinct details & well defined; Soft focus = indistinct details & blurry
References-
1) http://char.txa.cornell.edu/language/element/form/form.htm
2) “DesignStudies”byManmeetSodhia,KalyaniPublisher