Color circle, complementary colors, and their contrast – video lesson
Color circle, complementary colors, and their contrast, summary:
1. Blue, yellow and red are known as primary colors, because one can’t mix them from other colors and one can mix other colors from primary colors
2. If one mixes some yellow with a bit of red and gradually adds more red, slowly transitioning from yellow to red, and then mixes blue with red and yellow with blue in the same way, one will make a color circle (color wheel)
Note: the image is not perfect, but the idea is clear. Due to the monitor’s color limitations it’s hard to draw it perfectly.
3. The colors, which are opposite to each other in the color wheel, are known as complementary colors. When they are mixed in the right proportion it will result in gray.
4. The way our vision works is that if our eye sees colors surrounded by a bright color, the vision adds a tint of complementary color to those colors (complementary to the bright color, i.e.: blue on a background of orange and so on). That’s why a neutral gray which is surrounded by orange will seem blue to us.
*Some people claim that the effect is more obvious when you focus on one gray square and at the same time try to note using peripheral vision the neighboring gray color (I don’t know if this is correct way). Some people try to look at two gray squares at the same time and compare them. Some people try to cover the other color squares and look at only one.
5. If one complementary color is adjacent to another, they make each other more powerful and cause especially strong contrast, which is known as the “vibration of color”.
