08 - Colour
Good job on completing the first semester of The 52! In this next semester, we will look into Colour Theory. You can now shoot again in colour, although you won’t need your camera for this first assignment.
The Colour Wheel
Before we begin discussing colours and how to use them we should become familiar with the colour wheel. The colour wheel is a great visual representation of the entire colour palette available to you as a creative.
All colour schemes used to stylise an image are individual segments taken from the colour wheel and combined in different ways.
Below is a list of some common colour schemes:
Analogous - adjacent colours
Complementary - opposite colours
Monochromatic - one colour with varying amounts of saturation
Split-Complementary - one base colour vs two base colours that are adjacent to the base colour complementary
Triad - three base colours that are evenly spaced
Square / Rectangular - four base colours that are evenly spaced (square) or adjacent to a complementary pair (rectangular)
It can be tricky to describe colours and colour schemes in words, so I recommend you have a quick read of these articles before proceeding.
https://drawpaintacademy.com/color-schemes/
https://medium.com/@pixelmagazine/color-theory-for-photographers-an-introduction-ae23296fda6d
https://iso.500px.com/color-theory-photographers-introduction-color-wheel/
Palette cleanser
To have an appreciation of the colour wheel is a good start, but for practical use colour palettes need to be extracted from the colour wheel so they can be used as a template for your creative project.
Adobe has an online interactive colour wheel that can be used for that exact purpose. The link can be found here:
https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel
As an example, I have taken the famous "Kime Lime" colour and made my own palettes using the colour wheel and schemes mentioned above.
Kime Lime - base colour #BFFF00 added into colour C (base colour)
Kime Rhyme - Lime with Analogous scheme.
Kime Prime - Lime with Complementary scheme
Kime Time - Lime with Square scheme
Kime Sublime - Lime with Split Complementary scheme
Kime Crime - Lime with Triad scheme
The Kime Kollection
For this week's assignment: make a colour palette for each member of MWMD+S
Pick a base colour that you think matches each member of MWMD+S
Design a colour palette using the Adobe colour wheel based on each base colour and make a colour palette that best represents each person
Present these colour palettes to the group via Whatsapp without any prior explanation
Ask the group to vote on which colour palette they believe best matches each person
You will be rated based on the number of correct guesses
Before you pick:
Make sure you are comfortable with using the Adobe Color wheel. Ask me any questions if you are unsure.
Hint:
Have fun.
Reading Material:
https://drawpaintacademy.com/color-schemes/
https://medium.com/@pixelmagazine/color-theory-for-photographers-an-introduction-ae23296fda6d
https://iso.500px.com/color-theory-photographers-introduction-color-wheel/