Understanding Color: Rainbows, Light, Pigments, and Saturation

Understanding Color: Rainbows, Light, and Pigments

A rainbow occurs when sunlight passes through raindrops, separating the light into seven colored lights.

Absorption conveys the feeling of color when light illuminates an object. The object's surface absorbs some of the light. This property is called the absorption of light.

Reflection is when light is not absorbed but rejected, changing direction and creating the sensation of color.

Color is the name for each color and describes the colors that comprise their mixture (e.g., yellow and green make yellow-green).

Value and Saturation

Value describes the degree of clarity or obscurity of a tone, i.e., the amount of white or black in the composition. For example, magenta can be light, dark, or very dark. If a tone is cleaner and has no white or black blended, the degree of clarity determines its value.

Saturation refers to the purity of a color. A very saturated color is very pure and contains very few mixed colors. Purer tones are primary (thick cyan and magenta) because they are composed of a single color. Secondary colors (green, blue, and red) are less saturated because they are composed of two primary colors.

Colored Lights

Colored lights can be achieved in two ways: by breaking white light (using a prism) or by using lights with colored filters, such as a flashlight. The most important colors are called basic colors, and you can obtain them by mixing other colors.

Materials are colored with light blue, red, and green. By mixing these, you can obtain all other colors. If you combine primary lights, you get white light.

Secondary lights are obtained by combining two primary lights. The primary and secondary lights, along with basic colored lights, are fundamental.

Pigments

Pigments are made of colored powder mixed with a binder, a substance that unites the color particles. The type of binder varies depending on the type of paint: watercolor, wax color pencils, markers, pastels, etc. Pigment powders are characterized by the light they absorb and reflect.

The primary pigments are cyan, magenta, and yellow. Black pigment is obtained by mixing them.

Tertiary colors are a mixture of two primary pigments.