If there is one subject that is debated and comes up regularly, it is everything related to color theory.
How to choose the colors to put on your figurine for a beautiful harmony? How to achieve visually appealing contrasts? In short, how can you use colors judiciously to enhance a figurine? This is what we will try to see together through this series of articles.
I would like to point out now that the content of these articles comes from various sources of information, books, videos, discussions, various articles. I'm not trying here to comprehensively cover the entirety of color theory (I'm not even sure that's possible), nor to state a universal truth.
But rather give you the broad outlines, going into as much detail as possible to have a good theoretical basis. The articles will likely evolve, based on new information I glean and comments I may receive. With that being said, let's get to the heart of the matter!!
What is color theory?
What are we talking about ?
First of all, let's clarify what we're talking about here. Well yes, what does that mean exactly?
My very personal definition would be: Color theory is a science which brings together all of the knowledge on the properties of color, the interactions between different colors and the perception we have of them. I insist on the last sentence, which is perhaps even the most important: this is indeed a perception, an interpretation of the eye, faced with a physico-chemical phenomenon.
Or rather, an interpretation of the brain in front of the information transmitted by the eye. We can already see that this is an area where consensus does not exist, where the general truth can only be a legend, for the simple reason that the colors are perceived differently by everyone.
And yes, ask a color blind person (extreme case of course) his opinion on a figurine, my hand to cut that he will not see it quite the same way
Color and emotions
That being said, it is clear that colors are an incredibly powerful element for conveying emotions. Our education, our society, our personal history, have instilled in us a way of interpreting colors... or the absence of color. A completely white environment tends to undermine morale, while contact with colors stimulates the brain. And in the same way, green is associated with nature, with hope, while red is associated with strength, with war but also with passion.
Moreover, it is possible to further vary these associations for the nuances of these colors: a royal blue, as its name suggests, is associated with royalty and wealth. While a turquoise blue takes us more towards the paradise islands of the Caribbean.
In short, you will have understood, colors convey emotions and feelings. And that’s also what we’re going to talk about.
Color theory: interactions
Another point that comes into account in color theory, and not the least, concerns the interactions between them. Even if the perceived color can be different from one person to another, a mixture of two colors, in given proportions, will always lead to the same result. Colors interact with each other to give new colors, that’s a fact. But how do you know in advance what a mixture will produce? Not easy ! This is also a recurring subject in figurine painting.
How do I make my own mixtures to obtain a particular shade?
Two elements are important: understanding the color wheel (we will come back to this later) and observing the real world. Jérémy Bonamant explains it very well in his Great Book of Figurine Painting, we do not know the colors of nature. If we draw a tree, we do it with a brown trunk and green foliage, all in a very saturated way.
However, nature offers us a thousand and one shades of these colors. Each trunk, each leaf, has hundreds of color variations. Observing and understanding this is also part of color theory.
We will return to these interactions later. For now, let’s get to the heart of the matter: the definition of color.
What is a color?
The tint (or nuance)
The hue of a color is the concept that we perceive first.
In their “pure” form, each color comes from the decomposition of the spectrum of white light, each hue corresponding to a wavelength. This wavelength is captured by our eye and interpreted by our brain… this is what gives “color” as we understand it in its simplest form: blue, yellow, red, etc… I will not go into more “scientific” details.
But obviously, the hue is not enough in itself to define a color in its entirety. A red can be vibrant or conversely very desaturated. It can be dark or extremely bright. And this is defined by the clarity and saturation of the color.
Clarity (or brightness or value)
To understand the notions of clarity and saturation which give all the complexity to a color, you have to imagine the thing in 3D, in the form of a ball (and I say ball, not sphere, deliberately). First of all, we have a circle (the chromatic circle), which includes “all” of the hues. I put “together” in quotes because obviously, these shades are infinitely adaptable. Each color circle will therefore be more or less nuanced. But whatever the circle, the colors are pure, that is to say at maximum saturation.
Clarity comes to represent the brightness of the color. The more “bright” we are, the closer the color will be to white. In the range of a shade, we therefore find all the light levels from black to white, passing through pure color in the middle. If we take for example the color palette in Power Point or Photoshop software, we can see this perfectly on the right edge, as you can see below with blue (I grayed out the palette so as not to focus on the place I'm talking about).
Here in the example we have neutral blue, which goes to black in its darkest part, and to white in its brightest part. Be careful, however: this does not mean that to shade a color, you necessarily have to add black. Conversely, lightening a color does not systematically require adding white. But in theory, in fact, the hue stretches to these two extremes.
At this stage, we can schematize all of this as a sphere. Each point outside this sphere is therefore a very precise mixture between hue and brightness.
Saturation (or intensity)
So if you followed, you must say to yourself: ok, we have a sphere, but you were talking about a ball! And there I answer you… and yes, well done. And yes, to arrive at the image of the ball, you have to add saturation. Because as we have said, the color wheel has pure colors, therefore 100% saturated. Clarity adds more or less white or black. We therefore have on the sphere more or less light, more or less dark colors, but all highly saturated, therefore rich in color pigments. However, there are also less saturated, duller colors.
Here is an example :
And so we arrive… at the chromatic ball
Saturation is the last element that constitutes this ball.
The further we move away from the edge, where the colors are 100% saturated, the more we lose saturation. That is to say, we are going to get closer… to a gray!
A bit like an onion, each layer removed brings us closer to the center of the ball, and makes the color lose its intensity. If we think about clarity, it’s logical: the “top” of the ball is pure white, the bottom of the ball is pure black. The center of the ball being halfway between these two points, we obtain… a pure gray! QED
Here is a diagram that illustrates my points quite well:
And there you have it, now you know how to define a color according to its three variables: hue, lightness and saturation. I already see lots of little stars in your eyes. You say to yourself “Wow, all these possibilities!!!!”… and suddenly, you ask yourself “… but how to use them correctly”?
Well, that’s what we’ll see in part 2, where we’ll discuss the interactions between colors. For now, I'll let you digest this first information.
I hope you liked this article. If you have any questions or comments, the comments are there.
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