Color Theory Ep. 1 | Warm vs Cool Colors 

So glad it made sense for you Marva!

I totally agree, my UC never taught me the basics... money down the drain, this video fills the gap.

@Marva Stroud - Here's a plug for my school: I have a BFA in Interior Design from the New York School of Interior Design. For Color 2, I had the absolute greatest luck to have designer Sashi Cann as my instructor. Maybe that made all the difference, but I feel like I had a great grounding in color theory. To get a deep feeling for a color, I do not look AT a color, but I look INTO a color with concentration and unfocused eyes. I can then "see" the components that went into creating that color. EXAMPLE: "I see some red and and a lot of gray in that green." Therefore it would be a warm, shaded green to my eyes.

Exactly!

What schools did yall go to?!?! This is lit day one material, yalls schools have failed you!!

I agree, that is totally the safest way to choose a warmest red, since the line where a red crosses into cool red is so variable amongst different people. Thanks for watching Denise :D

Yes for me red orange is the warmest possible color too.

Yeah and warm colors are reds oranges and yellows and cool colors are greens blues and violets

I had the same thought. To me true vermillion or cadmium red lt (PR108 or PO20) feel like the warmest colors, and phthalo blue GS likely the coolest (like the color of light as transmitted through an iceberg).

Yep…All relative

I would've never event realised that I had my blues the wrong way round until you pointed it out a few months ago. It's really taken me until now to really get my head around it. Thank you so much for pointing it out to me :D

Well I think that the coldest Color on the wheel is Cyan-blue and the hottest is Orange. This is how I presume: Warm on Red side: Pink-Rose, Vermilion Hot: Orange Warm on Yellow side: Amber, Yellow Neutral: Lime Cool on Green side: Green, Aquamarine Cold: Cyan Cool on Blue side: Blue, Violet Neutral: Magenta-Purple. Fits the bill with CYM wheel. Cyan-Orange pair most temperature sensitive Lime-Purple pair least temperature sensitive. Pink-Green pair is Christmas and the most beautiful and my favourite. Square is the best Color scheme I guess.

Temperature is completely debatable because it is way to relative. This is why temperature used for bias is highly argumentative. For example-which “cyan”? RGB of light? Subtractive “cyan”? Actual spectrum “cyan” which is BG not B. Does one compare actual spectrum temperature in electro light energy as R=hottest and V the coolest making “cyan” “warm” compared to B? What about value and chroma? Would it not be best to just split the wheel in half and call Y the hottest and V the coldest and white the warmest and black the coolest? This way you can maintain a casual and more correct “temperature” system while still maintaining to use it as Bias.

@@TheSdzfrwhat is the theoretical direct complement of cyan? Is not R the actual DC of Cyan? Would not R then be the hottest and BG the coolest since cyan is BG in the spectrum and RGB theory? But then you have to deal with intrinsic color value…light to dark thus warm to cool…this splits the wheel again but this time between yellow and violet. Perhaps in terms of temperature and bias it would be best to slit the wheel in a + pattern sorta like Dr. Kano actually has and we stop arguing about which is the warmest and which is the coolest. It’s all relative. White and black is the same…they take on roles as warms and cools at the same time like ALL color does and is totally dependent on how it is perceived in a painting yes? Spectrally measured our standard whites are actually yellows in oil and our standard blacks are BV’s. Does that make Y again the warmest and BV the coolest now?

@@TheSdzfryour comparing “temperature” in terms of daylight and black body radiation to color. See? All relative…

Awww Boss Goose, so happy to hear that thinking it in terms of amount of red helps :D

Aw you are so kind Jill, thank you.

62 is crazy, but nice

Aw thank you for your kind words Gary.

Dr. Oto Kano , just be not be deceptive, Gary is my husband, this is his account, my name is Claudia. Just for the record. So when you see these messages they are coming from Claudia. We in the USA are celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow so today is baking and cleaning for me. 🥮🧼🥳

Hi Claudia! Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm so glad this video helped :D

That's also a great way to look at it, thank you for sharing it :D

So glad this video helped you understand it Josie. It's the one that confuses people the most by far (including myself!)

Awwww this makes me so happy! Happy painting Patricia.

You totally can do abstracts with any medium you want Kathee! :D I too find abstracts to be my favourite way to paint.

That’s a good general aerial perspective rule of thumb but not always true. You should also add that in general colors are less chromatic as they recede and more chromatic as they advance-even though this is not always true either.

Ailuro, you might find the next video in the series useful for that :)

@@OtoKano Nice! Btw I got your paints today, I am super exited to paint with them :D

Actually, your mind and color theory still says ultramarine is cooler than Phthalo blue. It all depends on how “temperature” is related by someone to color. Listen to the video again…

In theory and practice…one needs to drop traditional miss understood Newtonian theory which produced “traditional” RYB. One needs to keep up with Newtonian color physics as well as human color perception. As far as all that goes…I personally think it is best to leave it to mankind’s natural relationships to temp: hemisphere, light and shadow , season, day and night, ice and fire, wet and dry and more modern knowledge. Measured electro magnetic spectrums reveal UV is cooler than IR, which means as light transitions between the two in the “visible spectrum” Violet is coolest and Red warmest with Magenta as transition between hot and cold and Green as transition middle temp. But that doesn’t solve the intrinsic value of color and light values common to all mankind in the world: light is warm…shadow cool. Thus you have the most common factor of light Saturation and color Chromaticity. Therefore, Y is warmest and Violet coolest. Then there is the issue of daylight temperature and black body radiation where blue is HOT and orange is Cold! Is that standard common knowledge and experience throughout the world? No. What MOST people are trying to do is use “temperature” (which is entirely relative and different to each individual) as a way to describe color “bias” (which direction a color leans since no color is “purely” monochromatic except in “pure” abstract concept theory) and this is the problem. Temperature is therefore a “pure” psychological phenomenon whereas Bias is a spectral measurement and/or a psychological sensory to each person just like taste, smell, touch, and sound. Our biggest fundamental color wheel relationship should be just that-fundamental in relationship to light and shadow which holds the effects of light to a neutral single source temperature value as we fundamentally explore color perception as it moves between light and shadow and intrinsic color value. This is why a good starting color wheel should hold Y at top and V at the bottom, R on left and B on right and W, NG, and Blk center. Every Hue family still has a “temperature”/“bias” relationship. Leave the psychological perceptions of other relationships for the advanced theory.

You can discuss the effects of temperature vs light energy intermediately. High temperature light energy produces a bluer bias whereas a low temperature light produces a yellow orange bias. Also, we keep in mind that we don’t live in space…we live on earth. A cloud covered day produces a more neutral diffused light and a sunny day produces a diffused “cyan” bBG effect and no two skies are the same as they change in relationship to hemisphere and season and time of day. Then there is reflected bounce light from nearby sources and other multiple light sources to be considered. How do we show the different effects of opacity and transparency colors and fluorescent colors in one wheel? Or light and. Subtractive materials mixing? The list goes on. Tell me how anyone can put that into one color wheel model? If you’re Divine and can see all dimensions simultaneously yes. Good luck with that. I have not met anyone who can or has. Trying to put to much information beyond fundamentals in one single color model and compounding terminology as totally synonymous to something else is the causation of all the confusions among artists. With the exception of Dr. Kano (who brilliantly did her best to get you all to understand all this “temperature and stuff”) Bruce MaCavey, and Dr. Briggs (two actual color theorists), this problem is wide spread among “professors” artists who do not hold doctorates in color theory, but instead promote false theorems based on improper theory and this goes in both directions of Traditional RYB and Modern CYM users and many who use RGB. It’s shameful really.

So glad it helps Mikey!

Aw so glad this video helped. It took me AGES to get my head around the warm and cool blue too.

So glad it was easy to understand :)

So glad it made sense Danielle :D