This tutorial was inspired by this Mini Course in Color:

“What is described here is not so much a color course as it is a series of problems to make students sensitive to color and composition, and to further develop eye skills. Sensitivity itself cannot be taught, but students can be made aware of it, and they can cultivate their intuitive capabilities.

Basic terms

• Hue is the name of the color family. Ex: red, yellow, green, etc. A hue is an abstraction, a “pure” color without shade,tint, tone, saturation, etc.
• Here are examples of different hues:
• Color and hue can be interchangeable terms.
• Tint is hue plus white.
• Shade is hue plus black.
• Tone is hue plus gray.
• Examples of tint, shade, and tone:
  Hue

  Tint

  Shade

  Tone
• Value is how light or dark the color is with the color removed.
• That means every color has an equivalent value.
• Another term for value is tone.
• Saturation, intensity, and brilliance mean the same thing. They refer to higher or lower degrees of vividness.
• Examples of saturation:
• Chromatic refers to all hues and their shades, tines, and tones.
• Examples of chromatic colors:
• Achromatic means “no color”, and so it refers to all grays and blacks.

Every hue has a corresponding black or gray value. In the canvas below, each hue is shown with its value underneath.

• Arrange the values horizontally into a progression with the darkest value on the left. The swatches should touch one another.
• The result should be a horizontal rectangle divided in half vertically and divided horizontally into 12 segments with hues on the top and their equivalent values on the bottom.

EX02: Boundaries

Two colors create a line where they meet. This line is called the boundary line. The line is either soft or hard according to values. If the values are close, the boundary line will be soft; and if one value is dark and the other light, the boundary line will be hard.

• Generate 6 different hues with varying values. Place the hues randomly next to each other horizontally, forming a rectangle.
• Generate 6 more hues.
• Choose one hue at random and place it directly under the left-most hue. This creates a boundary line with the rectangle and the chosen hue.
• Using the remaining hues, try to match the softness or hardness of the boundary line formed in the previous step on the succeeding 5 divisions.
• The final result is a rectangle horizontally divided in the middle, and having 6 vertical divisions composed of 12 color swatches. The horizontal center line should have the same degree of hardness or softness from left to right regardless of what hues or values are chosen:
• Here is the solution as values:

EX03: Transparency

Coming soon!