The Colour Theory notes

How do we know that what we see, what we perceive with our eyes is colour? 

Colour is an entire spectrum that is the impact of how we perceive colour;  we see colour through, 

Physical - Physiological - Psychological 

We first have the physical colour, and we then see the colour with our eyes, which we then immediately categorise colours into temperature and moods or even to determine what material it is made from, we need to interpret.

Physical amounts of colour can be measured through wave length with in white light. White light is made from five colours, each colour has its' own wave length. Different light has different properties as it travels through space. It refracts as it hits our eye lens, this is when the physical properties of the colour take effect.

Our eyes have two receptors that receive the colour information;

Rods - This conveys shades of black, white and grey

Cones - This allows the brain to perceive colour and there are three types of cones,
Type 1 - is sensitive to red-orange colours 

Type 2 - sensitive to blue
Type 3 - sensitive to green

When a single cone is stimulated, the brain interprets colour. However if both the green and red cones are stimulated, our perception changes to 'yellow', this creates another interpretation. 

Through this interpretation our eyes can be 'fooled' as we can actually only see three main colours, it is the light that reflects from objects that feed us this information. This only works with in certain conditions, if you were to walk into a dark room, you couldn't see colour however just because you can't see it does not mean that it is not there, it is the light that tells us what colour it is. 

If we were to see colour with in a red light, compared to white light, it would effect the colour, but how can we actually tell what is the correct colour? We can only really base it on the white light that we perceive colour with everyday of our lives. 

Different people conceive colours differently to another, we are trained to perceive colour, we are not born with it.  If a person is colour blind, colour is immediately interpreted differently, depending on how much the person is affect, their view on the world is engulfed with shades of pink and grey.

The idea of colour itself cannot be determined 

Post renaissance interpreted that a level of science and art can be merged together.

Johannes Itten researched into colour by relation of ink and pigment in industrial printing. He created a basis of colour with in a wheel diagram.  In Ittens theory Colour is based on the physical mixing of Pigment, pior to screen based colour and an advancement in technology. 

There are three primary colours, Blue, Red and Yellow, these are called primary colours as we cannot make these colours by mixing the other colours together. From the primary colours we have secondary colours that are made from mixing two of the primary colours together, we get green, orange and purple. Interestingly the secondary colours become one of the primary colours complimentary colour, a colour which contrasts against the primary. We can find the complimentary colour of a primary colour by looking at the wheel. For instance if we look at the colour red, and look directly opposite, we see that blue and yellow make green, green being the red's complimentary colour.
We then have neutral greys which are created when mixing all of the primary colours together in certain amounts, you cancel the colours out.