Video: How to Understand Color Theory & Pigments

To understand color theory and pigments, consider all of the qualities of a color, such as shade, tone and saturation, and compare these qualities in different colors. Learn how intensity and luminance can affect the appearance of colors in this free video on color theory from a professional cartoonist and illustrator.

Video Transcript

Alright folks. In this clip I'm going to talk to you about how to understand color theory. Start by asking yourself what exactly is color? It's a good questions actually. Maybe we always just kind of assumed or we just think that color is what it is. I mean it's like saying what is water? A perceptual characteristic of light honestly. It's essentially, color is essentially different shades, tones and attributes of light just given individual names to help categorize them and differentiate between them. That is essentially what color is though. It's all different shades and tones and attributes of light and how we perceive it. Color is described then in three different ways. One, by its name, two, how pure or desaturated it is and three, by its value or lightness. How light or dark it is. For instance, even though pink, crimson and say maroon are all different shades of red, they are all basically defined individually by their distinct levels of chroma, of saturation, intensity and then value. All these terms help to define color as a whole. For instance, chroma is how pure the saturation is in relation to the color gray. How much color essentially there is in that regard also is saturation. Saturation is basically the degree of purity of color within the hue itself within the color of red, how vibrant that particular color is ranging from lighter to no light whatsoever to essentially gray. I would say the intensity is what it sounds like. It's the brightness or in contrast, dullness of the shade of color. And then finally, the luminance or value is a measure of the amount of light reflected from the hue itself and the contrast it has I guess with other levels of luminance around them and it gets very technical from that point. But as long as you understand the basic theory that color is really nothing more than light in many, many different forms and shades and colors and tone, well in tones, that is what color is. Color is basically a manifestation of light through our visual perception and that is basically how you understand or at least begin to understand color theory.

How to Understand Color Theory & Pigments

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