Other artists talk a lot about notes of color, but for some time now I've been thinking about color in a different way. Visually, this light bulb moment of mine makes color behavior more meaningful. It
occurred to me that any single color is a chord rather than a note. WHAT THE HECK IS DIANNE TALKING ABOUT?
Musicians deal with single notes, but what gives their music depth is chords. A chord, as you know, is two or more notes. Every color we see or mix had three notes - hue, value, and
saturation (also called intensity and chroma). Then why don't we say that every single color we perceive is a chord! In music, any chord can shift a single note and a new chord is created. Color behaves the same way. A hue can shift to a new location on the
color wheel and change the chord of that color. For example, as shown below, the same value and saturation of the hue blue (1) can shift a bit towards green at the same value and same saturation, and becomes a new color (2), greenish blue. The same is
true if that color (2) stays the same hue and value, but shifts in saturation (3), or as in (4), stays the same hue and saturation but shifts to a darker value.
Below I've shown an example of another color note change for Red: The top chord is composed of hue: red, saturation: high, and value: middle. Change the chord by adding white to that red, and the hue stays the same, but the value and
saturation change. Change this by adding the same value of green and the hue and value stay the same, but the saturation changes. We have three chords formed from the hue red. Here are some of the chords I found in these jonquils, based on the primary hue yellow. I indicate the number on the traditional value scale where each of these registers. Name the three notes in the color chords I have circled in each of the photos below: Enjoy a harmonious weekend!
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Happy Painting,
Dianne
dianne@diannemize.com
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