How knowing a little about colour theory can change your life

As a recovering course junkie, who occasionally falls off the wagon and attends the odd short course, I've been taught a lot about colour theory. Unfortunately, I've never applied the theory to the practice until recently. This is partly because I didn't quite get it and also I'd never been shown how this theory relates to actuality. I attended an illustration course recently, where the teacher showed me the error of my ways. (Yes I know, just one more course and then I'll quit, I'm not addicted...)

Now, instead of staring at a painting or drawing and thinking, it's not quite right there's something wrong. I look at one of my pictures and think, what do I need to do to balance the colour? And why haven't I thought like this before? This shift from a vague, unknowing despair to a glimmer of hope that I can put things right has cheered me up no end and means my paintings may become less confused and look more as I want them to look.

Colour theory originates from a time when scientists wrote with feathered quills dipped in quaint black pots of ink and pondered on the wonders of the universe for hours on end. Sir Isaac Newton believed that light or white light had a spectrum of colours and he devised experiments to prove this. Memories of physics lessons from your schooldays are probably springing to mind. He showed that if a beam of light was shone through a prism, it was refracted into several colours. This is known as the visible spectrum. I won't go too far into this as I only got a C for this at school (Physics wasn't my best subject).

The colour wheel shows the visible spectrum marked out as a circle. Not sure exactly why it is shown as a wheel (as I'm sure at school it was illustrated as a row of colours), but it probably more clearly shows the relationship between the colours in this way. I purchased a pocket colour wheel from an art shop. They are quite inexpensive to buy and look pretty, even if you never use it.

Some people call these pure colours. However, as someone informed me once in a sniffy way, there is no such thing as a pure colour (don't ask me why, there just isn't okay?!!). But by pure colours we are probably referring to the primary colours. In other words, the main colours on the colour spectrum from which other colours are created, namely red, yellow and blue. In fact when printers reproduce colour, they use four layers of colours from which all the other colours are created: red, magenta (yellow), cyan (blue) and black. But let's not confuse things by going too far into that.

What has always baffled me in the past about colour theory and is one reason I didn't really take any notice of it, is that the colour theory relates to light. Light is very different to paint. You will notice how different the colour of paint is when compared with the colours you get on a computer screen. For example, if you mix all the colours of the spectrum in paint you won't get white just a muddy mess, but the combination of the colours makes up white light. However, moving swiftly along before I confuse the issue completely, there are ways that colour theory can be useful to artists.

These are colours that are created from the primary colours. For example, green is created from yellow and blue.

Tertiary colours are created from secondary colours. In my experience, however, in terms of paint the more colours you mix together the muddier the end result can be. Sometimes, if you want to match a colour (for example the colour of petals on a flower) it can sometimes be easier if you buy a ready-mixed paint in that colour rather than trying to mix it from primary colours yourself. I tend to mix from two colours and at the most three.

Colour balance is created by using colours that are opposites on the wheel. Using cool colours against warm colours, for example. It is also created using colours that are close together on the wheel. Using reds and oranges, for instance.

Now, the term complementary colour has always confused me a bit. I think it actually means contrasting colours that don't clash or colours that are a balanced by virtue of being on the opposite side of the colour wheel. It doesn't mean, as I mistakenly thought, colours that are next to each other on the wheel. So for example, red complements green and orange complements blue.

These colours are close together on the wheel, oranges and reds for example are harmonising colours.

The easiest way to balance colour would be to use triads, that is colours that are equidistant on the wheel. That is, three colours that are complementary to each other. For example, orange, green and purple form a triad of colours. If you used this combination of colours in a painting, the overall effect should look balanced.

You will also find that you can use harmonising colours, say reds and oranges balanced against a complementary colour, which in this instance would be green.

If you've ever had any art lessons, you may have been told never to use black. However, you may not have been told why or what to use instead. I would never recommend that you ban any colour from your palette. If you want to use it, then use it. In fact, depending on the style of the painting or drawing I am doing I've used black. There is nothing evil about black, in fact I love it as a colour, but it does tend to suck all the light in and create a stark effect. And I've often used white gouache in watercolour paintings (another no, no), but that's another matter. If you are following the harmonious path to colour balance, then there are alternatives to black that you can use instead. If you add a complementary colour to another colour it will darken it. So for example if you add purple to yellow, it will darken the yellow. If you add green to red this will also darken the colour. It also softens the colour, which is something black doesn't tend to do. Black is a very strong colour, so you need to use it where a strong effect or contrast is wanted.

Another thing about red is that it tends to be a prominent colour. Blues and greens recede more into the background. So for example if you make a painting that has red in it this colour will stand out more than the other colours. Traditionally, blues and greens have been used to suggest distance in paintings by using them near the horizon line. The way that colours recede is something to do with the way our eyes work, but I'm no biologist so I won't try and explain that. It is useful to think about this effect though, when choosing colours for your image. Sometimes prominent colours can create a focus in an image, that is an area where you want a viewer to focus on.

An accent colour, can be a strong red, blue or yellow colour that is offset against softer neutral colours, like creams or greys for instance.

The colour wheel shows primary and secondary colours, but you can also mix variations of this. Pastel colours are created by adding white or by adding water, colours can become less intense and sometimes more transparent. It is a good idea when using watercolours to try them out on a scrap of paper before adding them to your painting. Because of their transparent nature, watercolours look different in the mixing palette to how they appear on paper (when the white of the paper shows through). Acrylics however, are more opaque unless a lot of water is added, which is why they tend to be an easier medium to use. What you see is more or less what you get.