Color Theory
In the visual arts , color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual effects of specific color combination. There are also definitions (or categories) of colors based on the color wheel: primary color , secondary color and tertiary color .
Color Abstractions
The foundations of pre-20th-century color theory were built around “pure” or ideal colors, characterized by sensory experiences rather than attributes of the physical world. This has led to a number of inaccuracies in traditional color theory principles that are not always remedied in modern formulations .
lightness (light vs. dark, or white vs. black),
saturation (intense vs. dull), and
hue (e.g., red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple) .
Primary Color : Red , Yellow & Blue
Primary colors are sets of colors that can be combined to make a useful range of colors . They are called primary colors because they cannot be created by mixing other colors . Primary colors form the basis for color theory or color mixing, as using these three colors it’s possible to mix most other colors .
Secondary Colors : Orange , Green & Purple
A secondary color is a color made by mixing two primary color together : red and yellow to get orange, yellow and blue to get green, or red and blue to get purple . The secondary color depends on the proportion in which you mix the two primaries .
Tertiary Color : Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green & yellow-green
There are the colors formed by mixing a primary and a secondary color. That’s why the hue is a two word name, such as blue-green, red-violet, and yellow-orange .
