Cold purple color. Warm and cool green. Warm green and its shades

A person is very sensitive to color, perceiving it as a comfort zone or, on the contrary, discomfort. Conventionally, colors are divided into cold and warm tones. It should be noted that the color temperature is determined only with the help of our associations.

Human perception of warm tones is connected intuitively with the sun, fire, burning sand, because the base in all cases is yellow. A warm shade evokes positive emotions, inner joy, a state of comfort and bliss. It all resembles the feeling of summer. And who among us does not like summer, hot sun, warm and golden sand, riot of various colors?

How to tell warm tones from cold tones

Distinguishing a warm tone from a cold one is quite simple. The fact is that everything around us is based on three basic colors. Warm tones are yellow and red, blue is cold. The rest of the palette is formed by mixing the base colors.

Due to the predominance of one color or another, unique shades are created. Therefore, the colors that occupy the honorable middle in this gradation, namely green and purple, can be both warm and cold.

Calm, warm tones have a therapeutic effect, help relieve stress and avoid depression.

But in nature, everything is much more complicated - it is simply impossible to meet a perfectly pure color. In reality, we see and use a range of shades that only emphasize the real depth and beauty of the main color, making us unique in it. It is the shades that help to correct the color within the cold-warmth.

It is interesting! An experiment is known when different groups of people were placed in rooms with the same temperature, but painted in red and blue. After a while, the people whose room was painted in the first began to complain about the coolness, and the second, in the red room, it was hot.

Warm colors

• Red.
• Orange.
• Yellow.
• Brown.

Popular shades of warm colors

Red:

• Marsala.
• Milling cutters.
• Sharlach.
• Lingonberry.
• Tango.
• Orange.
• Wine.
• Hollywood.

Orange:

• Apricot.
• Peach.
• Orange.
• Mandarin.
• Carrot.
• Copper.

• Custard.
• Pearl.
• Pale yellow.
• Cream.
• Citric.
• Straw.
• Canary.
• Sand.

Brown:

• Terracotta.
• Coffee.
• Chocolate.
• Chestnut.
• Nut.
• Golden brown.
• The color of coffee with milk.
• Champagne color.

Warm tones and shades are applied:

• In the decor.

The most popular for decorators are yellow and orange warm colors, which are used as colorful accents. Experts believe that these colors have magnetism, attract attention, make a solution interesting, and enliven an idea. And the combination of warm tones with cold ones creates interesting and unexpected solutions. For example, turquoise upholstery matches nicely with warm brown floors.

• In makeup.

Warm tones are allies of all women, because they have the ability to visually rejuvenate the image. This amazing ability of warm shades is used by make-up artists, removing from women for ten years.

A few tips:

1. If your skin seems pale, you can improve it with creams, powder, blush of a light golden hue, like a sun kiss. They will be invisible on the face, but will create a feeling of freshness.
2. Happy owners of delicate makeup are advised to use the entire line of shades of gold. will make the image complete and bright.
3. The secret of a perfect face is in a golden glow.

Modern makeup techniques can correct your face type with products based on gold or bronze. A few strokes of the brush on certain zones, and you can lift the eyelid, highlight the cheekbones, thin the nose, and plump the lips. This will 100% hit the desired image.

And remember that you need to match warm shades of clothes to warm tones in your makeup!

When choosing clothes

The man in red looks stylish and attracts attention. This color in clothes is chosen by strong, independent, courageous people. It is believed that optimists use a bright shade of red much more often than pessimists.

Wearing yellow clothes, you will feel lightness and sunny mood. At the same time, if you are facing a serious mental stress, then it is the yellow color that will relieve you of stress. This is the recommendation of a psychologist, listen to it!

If you are psychologically stable, you can highlight this with brown. Perfect for a business setting. Very elegant.

Used in the interior

The emotional load of apartment interiors in warm colors is varied and interesting. It's all about the color you choose. Red is suitable for creating a creative atmosphere, increasing appetite, attraction to the opposite sex.

You need positive, movement, joy, which means that the combination of orange is your ideal choice.

A yellow interior will give you the feeling of home, comfort, tranquility.

Brown color will create a feeling of fundamental, solidity, security.

It is interesting! Objects that have calm warm shades visually seem much closer. Amazing feature, isn't it?

Of all the warm colors, the most joyful and elegant is definitely orange. The main association with this color is orange, juicy and invigorating in taste and color. In fact, orange is the warmest color in this category and just goes well with other colors.

In which all colors interact according to a certain scheme will help you make the final decision on the combination and compatibility of shades. And you will understand that in order to do this with taste, you do not need to receive a special education.

The most successful combinations of orange

With white (different shades) - a very bright and joyful combination.

Orange and black are unmistakable for almost everyone.

The combination of orange with shades of green is unexpected, but stylish and sophisticated.

In life, there are often situations when you need to muffle or, conversely, emphasize a color. In this case, there are a great many who come to the rescue in a palette of warm tones. The main thing is the ability to correctly find the use of this beauty and live in harmony with yourself, enjoying and bathing in warm colors. The assertion of specialists who call for learning to use cold and warm colors of flowers for good is true, and then negative mood and poor health will forever recede.

What is color temperature and what does it affect? The concept of warm and cold colors in coloristics differs from that generally accepted in the study of the exact sciences, it determines not the real physical properties, but the perception of it by a person, the effect on well-being and mood. Although this knowledge is subjective, it has been tested by many years of practice in areas such as art, design or color therapy. Stylists and makeup artists, in addition to color temperature, work with the color temperature. Color temperature and hue are often confused, so let's break them down separately.

Color temperature.

It has long been known about the psychological effects of color on humans and some animals, especially if large areas are painted. Therefore, it is important to distinguish between warm and cold colors when choosing colors for interiors.

This experience is supported by research. It turned out that cold colors decrease, and warm ones increase blood circulation. For example, a room was painted in a certain color and people were asked to determine the temperature. In the rooms painted in blue and green, people felt the temperature 2-3 degrees lower than in the room painted in red and orange. It is not accidental that the designation in everyday life is cold in blue, hot in red on taps with water, thermometers, and other objects. These everyday designations further reinforce the temperature-color associations in the mind. Reinforce associations and natural phenomena. The sky, ice, water, have blue shades. Sun, fire, sand are orange.

How to tell if a color is warm or cold?

Color temperature is easy to determine with. It can be absolute and relative.

Absolute color temperature.

Divide the color wheel into two halves. The warmest color, orange, is located at the upper pole. It is considered the warmest because it does not have cold shades; later we will consider this property in more detail. At the bottom pole is the coldest color - blue. On the sides of the color wheel are temperature-neutral colors - green and magenta. Both are formed by a mixture of cold and warm colors, green - yellow and blue, magenta - red and blue. All colors of the upper half are considered warm, and the lower half are considered cold.

Achromatic colors: white, black and gray are neutral.

Relative temperature. Cold and warm shades of colors.

Understanding relative temperature is important when working with multiple colors and color palettes. It helps, for example, to convey space and volume in an image or surface using color.

Apart from orange and blue, all colors can be both warm and cold relative to others. Using the color wheel, it is as easy to determine as absolute temperature. Warmth decreases as you approach the lower pole and blue, for example, red or yellow will be colder than orange, and lemon or magenta will be colder than red and yellow. The same principle works for increasing warmth: cyan and violet will be warmer than blue, turquoise and magenta will be even warmer. Temperature gradations are especially evident in palettes and.

The color can be warm or cold not only in relation to other colors, but also to its own shades.

Cold and warm shades of colors.

Difficulties often arise with determining the temperature of the shade. Concepts such as cold red or warm red have become firmly established, but not everyone understands the same thing. First, the relative temperature of the hue is often confused with the temperature of the color. Secondly, subjectivity: there is no precise definition of where red begins and ends. Meanwhile, the ability to identify cold and warm tones is important when working with a person's appearance, for example, determining color types and selecting individual color palettes. This skill can be developed through experience and understanding of a simple principle.

Any color other than orange can be warm, neutral or cool. How to determine the temperature of a hue using the color wheel?

We take any color and define its borders. Then we find the approximate center. Shades of color on the orange side will be warm. On the blue side, they are cold. Intermediate colors without admixtures of warm or cold are called local or neutral.

Let's start with green. It is formed by warm yellow and cold blue colors. A cool or warm green hue results from the overweight of blue or yellow. Moving up to yellow, we get warm shades, down to blue - cold.

The same principle applies when defining other colors, such as yellow. Approaching orange, the color warms up. Going down, yellow takes on a greenish, lemon, cold hue. Neutral yellow has no obvious greenish or orange tint.

Orange stands out. It is the warmest and the only color that does not have cold shades. In addition, it spreads warmth to the environment. The surrounding colors: yellow-orange and orange-red are also exceptionally warm.

Red. The same principle applies here: the upper shades, highlighted in yellow, are warm, the lower ones on the purple side are cold.

Magenta itself is neutral, just like green, it is formed by a mixture of cool and warm colors. A large proportion of red makes it warm, blue - cold. From the point of view of use in warm or cold colors, this is a rather complex color. Differences between warm magenta and cold red, or cold magenta from violet are difficult to distinguish. Local magenta is also difficult to pick out.

The same difficulty in defining boundaries applies to purple. When red is added, it warms, blue - colder.

The difficulty in determining the temperature of a shade is that there are no precise and generally accepted distinctions where the warm shade of one color ends and the cold shade of another begins. Local shades have no clear boundaries either. Usually, when we are dealing with the basic colors: red, blue, yellow and green, this division is intuitively understandable, experience helps to distinguish between other colors.

Blue is the coldest color of the entire palette, it is the opposite of orange. But if orange makes neighboring colors extremely warm and does not have cold shades, then blue does not have similar properties. You can conditionally highlight a warm blue color. Some people think that blue, by definition, cannot be warm, but a warm range of colors can contain blue, if you choose the right shade. Its cold, they are also local shades are located in the middle, and warm along the edges: on one side blue is highlighted with yellow, on the other red. These shades will be warmer than a relatively cool blue.

Blue-green colors stand out separately. Here, warmth-coldness is conditional and depends on whether to allocate them into a separate group with their own local color or to be considered as part of green and blue shades.

So, we come to the influence on the color temperature of lightness and saturation. Up to this point, we have considered the properties of warmth-coldness on pure colors and one parameter - tone. But this is not enough, since most often you have to deal with complex colors in which there is an admixture of achromatic ones, that is, take into account all three parameters. Lightness changes with the addition of white and black, saturation - with the addition of gray.

Temperature of achromatic colors.

The clean ones are neutral. However, in nature it is difficult to find absolutely neutral gray, white or black, they always have an advantage in one direction. So, a cold or warm white color is obtained from an admixture of other tones. Yellow-red makes it warm, blue - cold. The same applies to gray and black.

Mixed color temperature.

For clarity, it will be convenient here to return to and look at its vertical cut. The cold and warm poles of the color wheel are located along the edges, neutral colors in the center. Moving from the extreme temperature characteristics to the middle, the color approaches the opposite pole and thereby neutralizes. In other words, when you decrease the saturation, increase or decrease the lightness, the color will mix with the neutral achromatic and become neutral itself.

Warm group - reds, yellows, become less warm, their diluted shades seem colder.

Dilution with gray and black color will most quickly change the character of light yellow and lemon shades, they appear greenish and cold.

Orange does not acquire cold shades, but becomes neutral. With dilution, it quickly ceases to be recognizable and turns brown.

Blues and purples with the addition of white and gray lose their cold properties and seem warmer.

As you can see, using the color wheel, it is easy to distinguish cold from warm shades. Difficulties arise with the definition of blue-red and blue-green shades, it all depends on which color is considered local. Complex and mixed colors are more difficult than pure colors in defining warmth-coldness. Here it is necessary to distinguish between nuances and see how the same tone changes along with lightness and saturation.

Sometimes people find it difficult to say a cold or warm shade of a color In front of them. Knowing everything about color temperature is important, as this will not only help us to decide with its own temperature of natural colors, but also in the future to choose clothes suitable for us, the colors of which will decorate us, make our face more fresh, rested, and us even more beautiful!

What you need to know about color

Between these six colors (red - orange - yellow - green - blue - violet) there are intermediate colors that combine the qualities of their neighbors. Between red and orange is red-orange, between orange and yellow - yellow-orange, between yellow and green - yellow-green, between green and blue - aqua (blue-green), between blue and purple - blue-violet, and between violet and red - red-violet.

One of them is the color temperature, that is, colors are divided into warm and cold. It is common practice to split the color wheel in half along the border between red and green (image below), but sometimes you can also find a division of the circle between yellow and purple. In any case, we subconsciously perceive all colors close to yellow as warm. All colors close to blue seem cold to us. Therefore, they are the landmarks of "warmth" or "coldness" of some color.

See for yourself: if you remove all the so-called cold colors on one side of the dividing line, then half of the color wheel looks warm to us.

And if you remove all the warm colors, then the remaining half looks cold.

How do we understand which color is warm and which is cold? Subconsciously, all colors that either clearly contain yellow in the composition, or are approached on the color wheel, we perceive as warm.
Anything that reminds us of blue or is close to it seems cold to us.

Let's take three shades of red: scarlet, berry, and crimson.

Scarlet seems to be the warmest of them, berry is already colder, and raspberry is perceived as cold.

Let's expand the color wheel into more shades, distributing them in terms of warmth relative to each other (from the center of the main color, warmer shades go to one side, and colder ones to the other). For example, from pure yellow (the main color) towards orange, its warmer shades (yellow-orange) go, and towards green - more and more colder (yellow-green, that is, lemon).
Warmer shades go from the center of pure red towards yellow (red with an admixture of orange, the neighboring color), and towards purple - colder ones (red with an admixture of violet), etc.

Find our scarlet, berry and crimson on this more detailed color wheel.
So we will see that scarlet is closer to yellow than the other two colors, and crimson is farther than all three from it, but closer to blue.

Therefore, scarlet seems to us warmer, and crimson - colder.
Thus, we subconsciously compare colors with yellow and blue. It is these two colors that are responsible for the warmth and coldness of each shade. Let's see why.

Tone and undertone

The point is that each color has a tone and subtone.
Hue is the main color that is immediately visible (chroma, that is, chromium, the color itself), and subtone is what makes the color warm or cold, that is, the color additive.

Each color (red, yellow, green, blue, etc. along the rainbow) has a great variety of shades. These shades are formed by mixing this color with another color (or colors). It is this other color that is the undertone.

If you add yellow to any color, it will make it warmer, and if you add blue, it will become colder.

For example, let's take yellow. He is a priori perceived as warm (this is his tone), but it also has cold shades, lemon, for example. It is also yellow (warm tone), but it has a cold tint ( subtone- added blue to yellow). Adding blue makes any color (tone) colder, and adding yellow warmer. If you add blue to yellow, then it becomes greenish (lemon), and this shade is already perceived as cold, since it has a cold (blue) undertone.

Let's take a look at the picture below.
Egg yolk color: yellow (warm tone) + yellow ( warm undertone) = warm shade of yellow.
Lemon color: yellow (warm tone) + blue ( cold undertone) = cold shade of yellow.
Khaki green: green (neutral tone) + yellow ( warm undertone) = warm shade of green.
Emerald green: green (neutral tone) + blue ( cold undertone) = cold shade of green.
Aqua blue: blue (cool tone) + yellow ( warm undertone), since a mixture of yellow and blue gives such a blue-greenish tint = warm shade of blue.
Azure blue: blue (cold tone) + blue ( cold subtone) = cold shade of blue.

What does warm and cold color mean?

If we catch a yellow undertone, then we can confidently say that this is a warm shade of any color.

For example, olive is perceived as a warm color, as it clearly adds yellow to green. There is a yellow (warm) undertone.
But bottle green is perceived as cold, because blue is added to green, and this is visible (this is a slightly bluish green). There is a cold blue undertone.

Why you need to distinguish between warm and cold shades

Expand your possibilities, do not be afraid to experiment, add new colors to your life, let it be painted with a variety of wonderful colors!

For those who are painfully trying to determine whether their exterior colors are warm or cold, I have prepared a surprise: in the next article I will give VERY DETAILED recommendations, how to finally determine your exterior temperature.

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Preview photo: colorpalettes.net

The practical application of the gradation of colors and shades, the selection of color compositions and groups are always faced with the fact that the human eye and partly the psyche divides colors into warm and cold. And although in modern colorimetry, the science of the energy of color, the concept of color temperature has long been used, photographers and designers traditionally use an intuitive method based on a table of cold and warm colors.

It is especially important to use color schemes correctly when planning the interior of an apartment or office, clothing or makeup. Warm and cool colors can equally easily add expressiveness to a palette or make a color composition dull and uninteresting.

Artistic division of color, tones and halftones

In the visual arts, the attribution of a particular color to warm or cold is largely based on the psychology of a person's perception of a particular color composition. Most often, a person divides colors based on the degree of comfort from what he sees:

• Winter with its gray-blue sky, lack of greenery and an abundance of white and gray is always associated with cold, respectively, blue, blue, white, purple fall into the cold palette;
• Summer colors and shades are always psychologically associated with the feeling of warmth, which means that all summer color sets will be classified as warm;
• There is also a tactile perception of heat, the higher the energy pressure of a color, the colder its perception is.

In a chart or table of cold and warm colors, there is a formal division into a warm and cold spectrum. Today, this is the most common and more understandable division into cold and warm colors.

Important! Instead of the complex determination of color temperature, it is easier and faster to use a system of formal separation of colors of different shades, designed in the form of a pie chart.

At first glance, such a division oversimplifies the situation; in fact, it is a big step forward. Try to explain to any paint seller, customer, designer that colors with a temperature of 8000 o K should prevail in the interior of an apartment. Complete nonsense, but it is quite possible to find a common language if you use color codification by name or numerical index and division into cold and warm. With its help, it is possible to relatively accurately translate what we see or perceive as cold and warm. That is, in fact, an analogue of the language of color is obtained.

Mutual influence, how cold and warm shades change the perception of color

In reality, the situation is somewhat more complicated. In colorimetry, where precise definitions such as wavelength and color temperature are primarily used, the chart above does not fit a little into the system of dividing colors into warm and cold colors.

There are only two reasons for the discrepancy:

• Firstly, each color can give a whole range of shades, from warm and neutral to deep cold;
• Secondly, in the perception of a person there is no monochrome color, he always sees a composition of several colors and many shades.

For example, you can analyze green, the easiest way to do this is using the diagram below.

In the central part of the range, green remains absolutely neutral, any, even the smallest shift towards yellow or blue, translates it into the category of warm or cold.

If desired, in the same way, you can easily convert any color to a warmer or more neutral. If you try to make a correction not using a related color range, but using a color from more distant sectors, the result will be a very complex shade of a neutral type. Such a system has long been used for the most simplified color perception correction. You can use a tabular version or a circular one, it doesn't matter, the principle of correction is the same.

The mutual influence leads to the fact that obviously cold colors, under the influence of the warm ones present in the composition, can soften and become less radical.

For example, below is a photo of the interior of a room in blue-orange colors.

According to the diagram, the presence of orange in the interior causes the blue to change from neutral to a warmer and lighter shade.

Orange also changes, but not in the way you would expect in theory. It is the only color that stays warm at all times. The reason lies in the fact that its closest neighbors, yellow and red, always give only warm shades to the base color.

Therefore, orange can soften most of the blue decor without resorting to standard balancing when it is required that the interior has the same number of colors at the same temperature.

Light and dark colors

In practice, when combining warm and cold shades, besides the diagram, it is necessary to take into account the white and black balance. White consists of all seven basic colors, which in turn can be obtained by combining yellow, blue and red. If you look at the diagram, it becomes obvious that each of blue, red and yellow is equidistant from the other two. The remaining four of the seven base shades can be used along with other shades, including their warm and cold combinations.

As the intensity increases, any color degenerates into a cool white, and darkening makes any shade or mid-tone only fainter and warmer. Monochrome colors get warmer with decreasing intensity and colder with increasing intensity.

Therefore, three methods are used to control the warmth of the palette:

• Adding a small amount of a neighboring shade in the spectral distribution to the base color. To change perception, it is enough to shift the scale by only 2% of the length;
• Shade the subject with a cooler or hotter background. In this case, the border between the two color zones will be visually perceived as warmer, even if the composition is dominated by “icy” shades;
• Changing the color intensity, if it is necessary to make the overall plan warmer, then simply reduce the brightness of the lighting.

All of the above options for controlling the picture up to this point have meant illuminating the object with pure white light, without any tones. But light has its own warmth, or rather, temperature, brightness, and color purity.

Features of plotting the temperature of the color range

In order to correctly assess how cold the interior, building facade, clothing details, or even facial makeup will end up, you will need to take into account the characteristics of the light falling on the object. The chameleon effect is well known, when things change noticeably, become colder, or vice versa when changing a light source, for example, from an LED lamp to natural lighting.

Colour temperature

Ordinary objects, interior details or clothing, project reflected light onto the human organs of vision, part of the light flux is absorbed, and all that remains falls on the retina. The bright and warm sunlight after illuminating the deep blue saturated façade suddenly turns cold. The reason lies in the change in the structure of the spectrum. In essence, warm light is white radiation that absorbs the colder part of the spectrum. On the other hand, with increasing intensity, light, even passed through a filter of any color, degenerates into a stream of cold white color.

To avoid confusion in defining warm and cool colors for light sources, the concept of temperature is used.

The graph shows a conditional comparison of the flux density versus the temperature of light for the sky under various conditions:

1. Summer cloudless sky, warm color of low intensity, conditional temperature of light flux 8000 о К;
2. Cloudy summer sky, stream temperature T = 6000 o K, gray-blue color;
3. The color of the sky in summer noon, a blue stream with a temperature of 5400 ° K;
4. Crimson warm sky at the time of sunset, the temperature of the stream is T = 3400 o K.

With different light flux density, namely, it is characterized by temperature, the human eye sees and distinguishes between warm and cold light in different ways.

It turns out that the higher the temperature of the light flux, the colder any object illuminated by it will seem.

Therefore, in addition to the midtones and shades present in the color, the presence of a background with an accent in the cold or warm part of the spectrum, the third factor that determines the warmth of an image or interior is the temperature of the light source.

The table shows how a particular light source can affect the balance of a landscape or interior. For example, the facade of a house, painted with light blue paint, will look cold white on a summer day; under a cloudy sky, the color will turn to blue. At sunset, the walls of the house will become warmer with a gray tint, and under the moonlight, the color will turn to cold white.

Correct selection of lighting, warm and cold undertones

In practice, the problem of the distribution of light intensity at different temperatures for complex compositions of one and a half dozen colors and hundreds of shades is calculated by special programs designed to balance the image to a neutral state.

The question arises, why complicate the problem of colors so much, if everything is decided by the correct choice of composition, corrected for the temperature of the light source. In fact, it is very easy to control the viewer's attention with the help of warm and cold colors.

The human eye is designed so that regardless of the lighting conditions and color content, it sees warm colors best. This is easy to explain. Of the three basic colors, yellow and red are referred to as warm, and only one blue is referred to as cold. The difference is twofold. That is why we see well in the twilight when the room is illuminated with red light and practically go blind when the room is illuminated with violet or cold blue.

A good example of the different perception of warm and cold colors is the screen of a modern monitor, in which at least 5-6 different modes are built, from night with a low temperature of light to office with a maximum backlight intensity.

The color system is widely used in photography, especially in advertising. For example, to draw attention to new models of autumn clothes, the image is placed on a cold white background. If things are of a dull green, brown, honey-yellow color, then the eye perceives a warm spot much faster than if it is a blue or purple wardrobe item.

Warm and cool colors are the main tools for drawing attention to food images. If it is necessary to emphasize the freshness of the fruit, they will be made cold and placed against a warm background. For a hamburger or grilled chicken, the situation is exactly the opposite: yellow and brown on a white background.

In a similar way, you can change facial features in a photo. If a cold light with a high flow temperature is selected for lighting, the face ages, neutral - it looks more realistic.

Similar technologies are used for interior decoration. To freshen up the interior in warm colors, you can not drag the fabric on sofas and chairs, but install higher-temperature LED lamps or replace the colored wallpaper with white. In addition, to balance the overall background, to make it neutral, you will have to add pieces of furniture with neutral shades to the decor of the room.

Conclusion

When choosing items for the interior of warm and cold shades, it should be borne in mind that the human eye always adjusts to the warmth of the colors of the environment. Warmer light is more comfortable for our eyes, regardless of the temperature of the light flux. Therefore, the cold light of LED, halogen or fluorescent luminaires is often replaced with older incandescent lamps or more modern LEDs with yellow light. Psychologists say that this is a psychological dependence, and after a month or two the eye adapts to light with a high flow temperature, as it once got used to an incandescent lamp.

Color in painting is a very important and complex concept. This follows from the physical nature of light and from the structure of the human vision system, from the process of color perception. It has long been known that there are no two people who see the same objects and landscapes in the same way, but with all the richness of colors, there are general principles in the color sensations of artists.

Dividing the painterly palette into warm colors and cold colors is one such concept.

Splitting the spectrum

The great physicist Isaac Newton (1643-1727) was the first to figure out the color composition of sunlight. The beam, passing through a glass prism, decomposed into seven basic shades. Subsequently, scientific developments led to the creation of a color wheel of twelve primary colors, from which, by mixing, you can get that color variety that surrounds us, that richness of shades that has long inspired painters. This color wheel is named after the Swiss artist and scientist Johannes Itten (1888-1967).

It is customary to divide the color spectrum and the color wheel into two parts - from green to red are warm, from blue to purple - cold. Green is considered by some to be a cold color, while others allocate a special concept for it - neutral.

This division is understandable to everyone, everyone agrees with it, but the objectivity of the reasons for such a division has been argued for a long time, putting forward their own versions.

The main criterion is temperature associations

Of course, the first thing that can be accepted when discussing the origin of the division into warm colors and cold colors is natural associations. Yellow, red, orange are the colors of the sun, fire. It is not for nothing that there is a phrase in Russian that explains the heating of the metal: red-hot. Such temperature changes in color can be seen in a fire or in a fireplace, although some gases during combustion can turn into seemingly cold colors: how not to remember the bluish combustion of domestic gas fuel. Nevertheless, bluish and bluish colors evoke logical sensations of coolness: this is the color of the sky, water, ice, snow.

Day-night, summer-winter

The "temperature" of the color is clearly connected with the time of day: the rising sun, warming the world, paints the sky in a blazing range: red, pink, orange shades, and the coolness of the night is felt more clearly in the bluish moonlight, which gives the natural environment a muted and dull color, although the evening dawn - sunset - can also flare up with a hot gamut.

It is interesting that before the onset of cold weather, in the pre-winter, the warm colors of summer flash brightly in the fiery colors of autumn, to be replaced by the bluish and bluish color of snow, ice and cold sky.

Bottom line: the defining meaning of the concept of color "temperature" has an emotional component, which makes it more subjective, although agreement with the generally accepted division into warm colors and cold colors among all objects dealing with color characteristics is global.

Close - far away

Since the Renaissance, a well-developed theory of aerial perspective has emerged, which is based on another emotional and psychological characteristic of warm and cold colors: an object painted in a cold color seems to be located farther than yellow, red, orange or their shades. Not even a landscape, but just a table containing warm and cold colors can give an idea of ​​this.

It is clearly seen how one of the titans of the Renaissance Titian Vecellio (1488-1576) uses this property of color in the painting "Bacchus and Ariadne".

The master clearly divides the color space diagonally into two parts in full accordance with Itten's color wheel, which will appear after four and a half centuries. Cold and warm shades of colors are used to build the vast space of the painting. Warm colors dominate in the foreground, the bluish whitened colors of the sky, the sea and the earth receding into the distance are in the background, and on the border there is the green of the trees, which according to all theories is considered neutral, and the cold drapery in the main character and the warm color of the cloak in the central character make the color scheme is refined and harmonious.

Everything is relative

It is necessary to understand that the “warmth” of colors in painting is not an absolute concept, that is, it cannot be measured, and this property can only be correctly evaluated in comparison with another color.

The use of spectral, unambiguously warm or definitely cold colors is an exotic thing in painting, paintings from planes that are significant in terms of area, painted with the same color scheme, are rather conceptual, for example, an abstract painting by Mark Rothko.

In more traditional painting, the relationship of colors different in "temperature" occurs at the level of a combination of small strokes, due to optical mixing, making neighboring colors warmer or colder. It is impossible to understand which colors are warm and which are cold, considering the areas of the pictorial space containing them separately from the environment.

Shade is more expensive than color

One of the most obvious qualities of high artistic skill is the ability to see and apply on the canvas those millions of shades that are contained in every element of the nature around us. The ability to distinguish warm notes in cold colors and vice versa gives a special expressiveness to the image. It is important to mention here the principle of color modeling of volume: if light colored with a warm color falls on an object, the shadow should be cold and vice versa. Not all painters agree with him, but this law is applied very widely.

Some researchers say that the expression "warm and cold colors" is incorrect. The table shows colors that are very rarely used without mixing with other shades, and for a more accurate definition of colors, you should say "warmer" or "colder". For example, Prussian blue and ultramarine are shades of the blue sector from the colder part of the color wheel, and each of these colors will be clearly colder than any shade of red, but even a novice artist will say that azure is warmer than ultramarine.

The use of complex color combinations and shades obtained by mixing, allows you to enrich the palette, even if it contains predominantly neutral colors. So, you can make the green color, warm or cold, to the desired "temperature" by adding the necessary paint from the blue or red colors to it.

Saturation and purity

In the process of creating paintings, artists take into account some of the properties of sensations of warmth or coolness in color. So, in order to "raise the temperature" in the desired area of ​​the painting space, an experienced painter uses less pure and less saturated shades that will approach achromatic white or gray. Accordingly, the purest and richest shades are colder.

This definition goes back to the issues of psychology: we consider colder everything that looks stricter, more correct, laconic, more symmetrical, more logical, etc. The more sincere and warm always contains some kind of incorrectness, incompleteness, incompleteness. This is how one can characterize not only painting, but also architecture, design, printing and other similar branches of art.

Theory is just a help

The historical experience of those masters of the past who used warm and cold colors in painting shows the importance of this aspect of color perception. Knowledge about him, but only in combination with experience and talent, helps in creativity and contemporary artists.