Project – colour relationships

Exercise: exploring contrasts

For this exercise, I used a number of colours: purple, orange, green and red and, as requested, first painted a larger colour area around the original square with colour mixes close in the spectrum to the original.

As an example, for the green, I used the following colours to surround the original mix:

•      Original green (cadmium yellow & cobalt blue) mixed with white
•      The above mix with a little yellow added
•       Cadmium yellow
•       Cobalt blue
•       Dark, blue-green
•       Above mix & white
•       Crimson red as the complementary

One effect I noticed across the range of colours that I used was that the original mix was much brighter, and stood out more, when surrounded by a lighter tone – whether of a similar shade (ie the green lightened with white) or a different colour close on the spectrum (such as the yellow). 

When placed next to a very similar colour, the central square almost disappears and it is difficult to see the forms, even though they are very geometric.   For example, with the original crimson squares, the ones marked 2 and 3 (surrounded by a colour mix of pink and yellow) and no 5 (a pink/purple mix), the central square is much less visible then no 1 (crimson plus white) and no 4 (pink & yellow lightened with white).  As we have seen before, the most strong contrast is when the original crimson is surrounded by its complementary (green).  In this combination, the border between the red and green can appear to “move” due to the close tones of the two colours.

The next part of the exercise involved surrounding a neutral tone with different colours to assess the effect of colour on a neutral tone.  I found that the neutral tone appeared darkest when surrounded by a square of white (which formed the strongest tonal contrast).  The most noticeable effect was the way in which the neutral gray appeared to pick up the warmth (or coolness) of the colour surrounding it, eg, the gray surrounded by the blue appeared to be much colder (and darker) than when surrounded by the orange.

The surrounding colours also appear differently next to the neutral gray – the colour is more subdued then when painted directly onto a white ground.