Welcome! This article is a part of Crafted Colour – Practical Colour Theory for Craft series, which is aimed at helping you develop your colour confidence and craft with colour. Today you will learn why you need to know about colour and a little background and history.
What is Colour Theory?
Colour Theory is a simple set of rules using a logical arrangement of colours. Most branches of colour theory arrange colours around a wheel but there are others that use a triangle or square. For this mini course we’ll be using a colour wheel.
Why do you need to know about Colour Theory?
A working knowledge of colour theory can give your craft projects the WOW factor! Developing an eye for colour will help you get your craft projects noticed. It can help you get into juried shows and galleries and help your work sell. Above all this course will help you fall in love with colour and make others fall in love with your crafty creations.
Newton assigned musical notes to each colour.
Just a little History
In 1666 Sir Isaac Newton created the first recorded colour wheel based on how light refracts through a prism. His arrangement of the colours into a wheel fascinated the artists of the era. Since then there have been many different versions, based on topics such as biology of the eye or the brains perception of colour.
Designer’s and Printer’s colours
Today there are three main types of colour wheel. The printers colour wheel, based on CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black), the web or graphics colour wheel using RGB (red, green and blue) and finally the artists colour wheel using RYB (red, yellow and blue).
In the first part of this series I will be using the artists colour wheel to demonstrate basic colour theory.
