Colour plays such an important part in our lives, whether it’s choosing your newest dress or decorating your house – colour choice is crucial and having an understanding of colour theory makes things a little easier! If art and design is a hobby for you, colour is bound to be a huge element of your creative projects; in this article we’ll cover some of the basics of colour theory which will help us understand how to choose and use colour in our artwork.
You may associate certain feelings with colour – for example; red may invoke feelings of anger, and yellow is linked to happiness. Reds, oranges, and yellows are also warm colours, whereas blues, purples and greens are cool. Colour is an extremely powerful tool for setting moods and feelings, and even just creating effective design – if your colours work well, your project ultimately looks more professional and more attractive.
Contents
- The Colour Wheel
– Primary
– Secondary
– Tertiary
– Complimentary Colours
– Split Complimentary Colours
– Triadic Colours
– Analogous Colours - Hue
- Value
- Saturation
- Using These Techniques in Procreate
- Further Reading
The Colour Wheel
The first thing which we’re going to look at is the colour wheel. This is a super important part of colour theory, and graphic design as a whole; a solid understanding of how the colour wheel works and how different shades work together, is a great basis to your colour theory knowledge.
In the graphic below, you can see that we have primary, secondary and tertiary colours. Each of these categories have different qualities:
Primary
Red, blue and yellow are the primary colours, which means that you can’t create these by mixing others. These three shades are the basis of all the others – by mixing different primary colours together, you can create any other shade in the world!
Secondary
Secondary colours are created by mixing two primary ones together. For example, red and yellow create orange, yellow and blue make green, and blue and red together, make purple.
Tertiary
These are created by mixing secondary and primary colours together. Tertiary colours usually appear as different shades or tones of their parent colours.
Complimentary Colours
Colours which are opposite each other are called complimentary colours, for example green and pink, or blue and orange. Complimentary colours are exactly what it says on the tin – they compliment each other, and go together well.
As you can see, complimentary colours are quite different from one another – this means that they create a high contrast in your artwork, in turn, making the colours stand out. Depending on your project, you may or may not want to use complimentary colours.
Split Complimentary Colours
These are similar to complimentary colours, but rather than using the shades which are exact opposites on the colour wheel, it uses one base colour and then two opposing ones – one colour either side of the complimentary (exact opposite) colour. Using this technique in your artwork is a little more understated than going for complimentary colour choices.
Triadic Colours
Triadic means triangular, and by using this technique, we choose colours which are evenly separated across the colour wheel – so that they appear as triangular points. This technique is particularly useful if you’re looking for accompanying colours to one main shade.
Analogous Colours
When we use colours which are next to each other on the colour wheel, we call them analogous. These are shades which are much more like one another. You can use different tints and tones of your selection of analogous shades.
Hue
We can split colours down into different elements, and when you adjust colours in your graphic design programmes such as Procreate or Photoshop, you often see the options hue, value, and saturation. Our first and foremost one is hue. Hue is a colour in its plainest form – so for example, a simple shade of red, green, blue, or orange. Think of it as the baseline colour before you make it lighter or darker.
Value
When we want to talk about how light or dark a colour is, we refer to this as value. If you take your pure colour, also known as the hue – and add different amounts of white to it, the colour will appear lighter. This is what we call tints.
If you go in the opposite direction, and want to make your hue darker, you can add varying amounts of black to create different tones.
All in all, these create the value of the colour.
Saturation
You may have used saturation tools in your graphic design or photo editing, to make an element appear black or white. Each colour has a certain level of saturation, and those which you see as hue, are colours in their purest form.
If a colour has a high amount of saturation, you’ll see that it’s bright and vibrant. If your colour has low levels of saturation, it’ll appear more muted – you may even be able to notice grey tones coming through.
A really quick way to turn an image or element black and white in Procreate, is to tap the magic wand icon, and then open the hue, saturation, brightness menu.
You can then use the saturation slider to change the amount of grey in your image. In the below example you can see my original image, and then a comparison with the saturation turned down to 0%.
Using These Techniques in Procreate
The Procreate colour menu has a few different ways in which you can choose your shades. See below for explanations of using each method.
Disc
This is the easiest way to choose your colours. The outside of the disc includes the hues, and the interior selection tool allows you to pick your level of saturation – you can see that black is towards the bottom and white towards the left side edge.
Classic
The Classic menu is the same as Disc, however you can use sliders to adjust your levels.
Harmony
Harmony is your very own colour wheel within Procreate! You’re able to select your harmony, for example; complementary, analogous, triadic – all of the methods which we’ve learned above.
Take some time to play with this tool to really get the hang of how each of the harmonies work – you’ll unlock a whole new world of colour.
Value
Sometimes you may have found the hexadecimal code of a colour – you can enter this here and Procreate will automatically find your shade.
Palettes
In this section, you can see all of your colour palettes and create your own.
Further Reading
Once you start learning about colour theory, it truly is a whole new world, and you can use this knowledge to enhance your own artwork. We’d advise taking some time to look at the below resources for further learning in the world of colour.
- Coolors – a really handy website which allows you to generate your own colour palettes – great if you’re in need of some inspiration.
- Adobe Colours – a comprehensive colour wheel and palette generator from Adobe. Select a harmony and come up with your own colour schemes.
- A Guide to Using Procreate’s Colour Palettes – an article from The Artistry which includes information on how to use and get the most out of Procreate’s colour palette function.
- All About Procreate’s Colour Adjustment Tools – learn how to use Procreate’s tools to adjust your colours in Procreate.
- 28 Best Colour Palettes – a hand-picked selection of some of the best colour palettes available for download from Creative Fabrica.
We hope that you enjoyed this article and gained some useful knowledge to further your understanding of colour theory. Let us know your favourite shades and harmonies to use in the comments.
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