Monday, September 22, 2008

A New Colour

The Depth Of Crayons

Red, blue and yellow are the primary colours.  The magic of these three can mix and combine together to create every colour of the rainbow, every colour imaginable, every Crayola crayon.  This week during Digital Media Production a lesson on colour was the topic of discussion.

In grade three I remember learning about the colour wheel.  And, now, eleven years later, not only am I learning about a circle of colour, but also I am learning about how to make the colours.  Through different saturations, tints and shades, colours are produced and explored.  With the use of technology, colours can be expanded and adapted to every object.  The colour systems for computers and digital media are RGB (red, green and blue) as well as CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black).  These colours are able to range from values of light and dark between 0-256, which means that with a combination of three or four colours the shades of pinks and purples and blues and oranges and greens are endless. 

Without colours our world would be bland and dark.  Certain colours are also associated with symbolism - red with love, blue with sadness, green with greed, purple with royalty.  These colours help give depth and feeling to life.  Colours animate and energize the world around us.  The more colours that are created through digital art draw the eye into the picture.  Even in black and white, a captivating photo of hues allows the mind to wander through the image. 

Picking out clothes, the changing of streetlights and eating a meal all incorporate colours into common life.  Created from adding whites (tints) and blacks (shades) into the original primary colours, colours can be mixed and matched into contrasting and clashing settings.  Within that box of crayons are a million possibilities.   

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