ANNOUNCEMENT:

Join us tomorrow, January 18, at 2 p.m. Eastern for my monthly live chat!  This one will be about the difference between notan and a value study.  This is going to be a lot of fun!

Here's an update on a post I did four years ago. 

A lot of artists talk about notes of color, but for decades now I've been thinking about color in a different way that for me makes its behavior more meaningful.   It occurred to me that any single color is a chord rather than a note.  

Music is made from single notes, but what gives it depth is chords.  A chord, as you know, is two or more notes.  Every color had three notes - hue, value, and saturation. Then couldn't we accurately say that every single color we perceive is a chord rather than a note?  

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.  It can shift in value or in saturation of the same hue and new chords are formed

Look at the four chords of blue in the middle of this color wheel: 

Number 1 shifts hue in number 2 but it's still blue.  Then the saturation shifts in number 3, and the value shifts in number 4.  The are all still blue

Staying with the hue blue, in the three colors below, the hue blue (one note) at middle value (another note) and high saturation (a third note) shifts its value in the second example (forming a new chord), and in the third, shifts its saturation (another new chord).  

So we have three blue chords don't we? They are certainly not all the same note.

LET'S DO SOME MORE

Here are two yellow and two orange chords I found in these jonquils.  

TRY THIS:

Name the three notes in the color chords I have circled in each of the photos below: 

Light and Shadow: The one thing that lets our eyes see.
Visual Movement: What our eyes do when images are visible.
Seeing Beyond the Image: The possibilities beyond just describing what our eyes see.
Freeing the Artist Within (Curiosity): Finding our individual interpretation to what our eyes are seeing. 
Composing:  Finding ways to put together all that we discover.
Drawing:  Searching the potential of images.
The Craft:  Continually forging our skills to visually communicate what we continue to discover with our eyes, mind and soul.

And the eighth:

The Art:  The results when all the above are working together.