In the past two or three weeks of Design class, we've had several related projects that we've worked on. Three of them have focused on color saturation and varying the hue range and luminosity.
Saturation refers to how pure the color is, in a sense. As a color becomes less and less saturated, it turns into more of a gray and appears duller. Highly saturated colors would be like the colors straight out of the rainbow that are bright (not in the sense of light and dark, but in how intense the color is).
Hue range deals with how close the colors are to one another. If we look at the color wheel, a medium hue range would indicate a few colors next to each other, like yellow, orange, and red. These are known as analogous colors. A narrower version of this would be simply yellow and orange. A broad hue range can either be complementary colors (across from one another on the wheel) or triadic colors (3 colors equally distanced from one another, like the three primary colors). Monochromatic colors would be, in a sense, an extremely narrow hue range in that only one color is used (only white and black added).
Lastly, luminosity simply refers to the value of a color - how dark or light it is. Luminosity can also have a broad or narrow range (covering white to black, or staying more in the lighter values without much variation, etc.)
Using these three elements of saturation, hue range, and luminosity, we were assigned various projects.
Chromatic Grays
We were to make two versions of one composition, one with a broad hue range and luminosity, and one with a medium hue range and narrow luminosity. However, both were to use chromatic grays - colors that are so desaturated and close to gray that it can be hard to tell what specific color it is.
We got assigned this project a day or two after the earthquake in Turkey, which was hard news to watch even from here in the States. Knowing that parts of the country I knew and loved were in ruins and seeing the number of lives lost climb higher each day was heartbreaking, and was constantly on my mind that week especially. This first composition was inspired by that.
Muted Colors
The second project was based on using muted colors, which are between chromatic grays and prismatic (full saturation) colors. The first was to have a medium hue range and broad luminosity, while the second needed to have a broad hue range and narrow luminosity. This one was inspired by the beginning of the sunrise and silhouettes of the trees that we see on the way back to our dorm from the gym around 7 am. It seems like every morning, the sky is beautiful in a new way.
Prismatic Colors
Finally, we were assigned the same project but with prismatic colors, with a medium hue range and luminosity in one, and a broad hue range and medium luminosity in the second. This one was honestly just inspired by watching a friend playing a video game. I couldn't think of what to draw, but some of the effects in the game just had a bunch of circles floating around when someone got hit, and I thought "ooh circles!" So... I painted circles.
Bridge Colors
Our most recent project didn't deal with color saturation, but rather with "bridging" two colors that contrast one another. To do this, we started with a color palette based on one color, with a complementary color that immediately draws all the attention. Then we picked on side of the color wheel to connect the two and added a few of those in-between colors to bridge the color anomaly to the rest. Then we created a composition using these 10 colors (the 9 squares plus the background color). We also painted the background color over the whole composition and worked on top of that, which had a neat effect. I think it made the bright colors painted on top look even brighter in contrast.
Even with how repetitive these can seem as it's similar projects with slight variations, they've been really helpful to experiment and see how colors work together to have different effects.
Also, I have a few prints of my tulip garden painting still for sale! They are 5 x 5 inches and $15. Email me at artworkbylaura1@gmail.com if you're interested!