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Your Digital Art Cheat-Sheet for Color Theory
This article will teach you everything about Color Theory.
Bringing color to your artwork isn’t just about looks; it breathes life and emotion into your creation. It shapes the mood, highlights details, and even defines your artistic style. Color isn’t just an extra; it’s what makes art exciting and sparks your imagination. Learning Color Theory isn’t tricky; it’s your key to crafting the art you dream of with a few clever techniques.
In this article, we’ll explore the basics of color theory to add a splash of creativity to digital art.
Important Terms To Know
Below are some terms used when talking about color. Knowing their definitions will help you understand the different aspects of color and how to manipulate them. This will help you to create palettes and use color to enhance your art.
| Hue | The name of the color. (“red” or “blue”) |
| Chroma | All of the different versions of a specific color group (the spectrum for light “red” to dark “red”) like a wedge on the wheel. |
| Saturation | A term used when discussing how pure a color is. Looking at a line scale going from black to white, the pure color is the right in the middle. This is like the difference between “Royal Blue” and “True Blue”. |
| Tint | In the spectrum of a chroma, tint is when you add white to the pure color. (Tint = Hue + White) |
| Shade | In the spectrum of a chroma, shade is when you add black to the pure color. (Shade = Hue + Black) |
| Tone | In the spectrum of chroma, the tone is when you add gray to the pure color. (Tone = Hue + Gray) |
| Value | This refers to how the color would look in grayscale. |
| Temperature | A color’s temperature is a way to group them pleasingly. There are 2 types of color temperatures: “Warm” and “Cool”. Visually temperatures can relay the mood of the artwork. Like how Music has a Major key that resembles “Happy” and a Minor key that resembles “Sad”, the color’s temperature gives similar feelings. Warm colors (reds, oranges, and yellows) give a happy, positive feeling. Cool colors (blues, greens, and purples) give a sad, negative feeling. |
Basic Color Theory
The first step to understanding color is knowing how to use the Color Wheel.
The Color Wheel is the spectrum of all visible colors. It contains twelve commonly identified and used colors that are usually divided into three groups.
Primary Colors: Blue, Red, Yellow
Secondary Colors: Orange, Green, Purple
Secondary Colors are the results of mixing two primary colors.
Tertiary Colors:
Tertiary Colors are the results of mixing a primary color and a secondary color. These colors tend to have fancy names, like indigo, turquoise, and teal, or very descriptive ones like red-orange or blue-green.
Use Color Theory to Group Colors
Imagine a color palette as your art’s exclusive color crew. As digital artists in progress, your goal is to assemble a palette that breathes life into your work, setting the vibe and defining your artistic style. Crafting this palette isn’t a cakewalk—some colors just don’t vibe together visually. But fear not, creative minds! Here are some nifty tips tailored for colorwork beginners. Learn how to use the color wheel. It’s your tool to pick hues that dance together visually, turning your artwork into vibrant expressions of your creativity. Ready to dive into the world of color harmony?
Color Combinations Proven to Work
Use these simple techniques to easily combine colors and make your art POP!
Complementary Colors- A Pair of two colors directly across from each other on the color wheel.
Analogous Colors- A pair of two colors that are next to each other on the color wheel.
Triadic Colors- This is a group of three colors that form an equilateral triangle on the color wheel.
Split Complementary Colors- A group of three colors that form an isosceles triangle on the color wheel. To create this group you would match one color with the two colors that are on either side of the first color’s complement.
Monochromatic Colors- A group of three colors that are in one chroma. This combination simply uses various tints, shades, and tones within the chroma of one hue/color.
Double Complementary (Tetradic) Colors- The pairing of two complementary color pairs. These are four colors in a rectangular arrangement on the color wheel.
How To Use Color Theory Basics
Using color theory will help you create beautiful color palettes in Procreate and take your artwork to the next level. The mood of an art piece can completely change with the addition of color. Color can also make art exciting. I used color to make my Zentangle art more interesting. Check out my Instagram to see how I use color to elevate my Zentangle Art!
