Ultimate Guide to Colors Part. 02 [Colors & Intro to Lights & Shadows]

Hello dear visitor, and Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to the Colors Tutorial | Part 02.

First of all, we'd like to thank Kayla for her wonderful color tutorial and the permission to modify it and republish here. We suggest visiting Kayla's page for more educational stuff.

In this part we’re going to show you how colors work with each other, and introduce how reflection and shadows work.

First off, there are 3 levels of colors:

1. Primary;
2. Secondary;
3. Tertiary;

The primary colors are:

1. Red;
2. Yellow;
3. Blue;

The primary colors cannot be created by mixing other colors because they are the “default” colors.

The secondary colors are:

1. Orange;
2. Green;
3. Purple;

The secondary colors are created by mixing the primary colors.

The third level is the tertiary as we mentioned. The tertiary level includes every other color not mentioned above. They can be mixed by either level.

Normally when you're trying to figure out what colors will look well together to create a color scheme, you need to think about what TYPE of a scheme you're willing to create.

There are 6 types of color schemes:

1. Monochromatic;

(a Single color that varies in a saturation and tone.)

2. Analogous;

(Colors that are adjacent (next to) each other on the color wheel.)

3. Complimentary;

(Opposites on the color wheel.)

4. Split Complimentary;

(a Variation of the basic complimentary. Uses one main color, and it's opposite, and the opposites adjacent.)

5. Triadic;

(Uses 3 colors that are equally spaced around the color wheel.)

6. Tetradic (Double Complementary);

(Two pairs of complimentaries are used.)

Now, when we're at the lights & shadows, we need to mention there are 3 primary tones:

1. Highlight;

(This is where the light source is the strongest and the brightest.)

2. Middle;

(It's not the darkest shadow, or the lightest highlight, just that in-between-transitional-stuff. It's the most colored and detailed part.)

3. Shadow;

(The darkest part, no/little light gets here.)

That’s it, you’re done. Congratulations! :)

If you missed our first part, click here: Tones, Hues, & Saturation

And you can also continue with our next part: Lights & Shadows Continued

Or the final one: Putting It All Together