Hey everybody, so today we're going to be looking at the seven color contrasts as defined by Johannes Itten. I know a little bit about this and I can maybe explain a little bit about this because this is only a one minute video, so we're going to see what they say. Now let me set this up a little bit. So first of all, we need to understand what contrast is. So contrast is essentially when you have at least two things and they are different from each other and we're trying to define what are...
maybe identify what are those differences and what elements of those things are creating that difference. So with color contrast there's different elements to color. We know about hue and saturation and value these different aspects of color and when we talk about contrast then we want to understand well these two colors in in which ways are they contrasting and Johannes Itten developed In his studies and in his work, he developed these seven different color contrasts that we can think about when we think about color. And we can identify and we can also use and utilize when we're working with color.
So let's watch this video and see what they have to say about these seven color contrasts. so contrast of hue uh so we have a yellow hue and a red hue simply put you just have some hues and they contrast with each other now as far as i understand johanna sitting said that there needs to be or maybe somebody else said this uh that there needs to be at least three colors to have uh to illustrate the contrast of hue but I mean, I think just the general idea is that you have hues. So what is a hue?
A hue is essentially the family of colors on one portion of the color wheel, if we think about it, or on the color spectrum, if we think about it that way, that correlate with each other based on their basic color. position or their their basic makeup uh it's kind of like if you were to say a red hue people would know what you're talking about because you're essentially identifying that he was red so this is contrast of light and dark let's go back a second So, essentially how light a color is or how dark a color is can create that contrast. And they are actually illustrating this with one color and just tinting it with white and shading it with black. And you see those differences there.
And you can see at the 75, plus 75 white, plus 75 black, that's where you're finding the highest amount of contrast there. So it's contrast of light and dark, or you can also think of it as contrast of value. Or dark light contrast.
So contrast of saturation. This is an okay way of looking at it, but basically just keep your eyes on that bottom row. That blue is getting less and less...
saturated with that blue color. What that means is basically it's less intensely blue, and it's more and more gray. Saturation is, generally speaking, the less saturated something is, the more gray it becomes. So this is just an example of that. So actually, you know what, let's go back.
So the contrast there is, if you were to take, so again, this isn't a great layout, it's okay. But if you were to take that pure blue and that furthest to the right gray blue, and put them next to each other, you'd have a significant contrast of saturation there. Complementary contrast.
So they did a lot there with that visual. These are your primary colors yellow red and blue and Specifically when we're talking about mixing pigment, these are your primary colors. And they create secondary colors. So you see yellow and blue make green. Yellow and red make orange.
And blue and red make violet. And so on a color wheel, basically this is creating a color wheel. So let's go back a second here. It's going kind of fast.
Okay, so this is essentially like a basic color wheel without that sort of the tertiary colors You have your primary colors your secondary colors and then in between those would be tertiaries like yellow orange red orange red violet blue violet blue-green and yellow-green. But you see across the way from each color is its complement. So you have blue and orange are complementary colors, you have green and red as complementary colors, and you have yellow and violet as complementary colors.
And when we see them like this we can actually see... actually, well, I was going to dive into that. I'm not going to dive into that. We're just going to look at this as they kind of get extracted out.
And so these are your complements. You have yellow and violet, blue and orange, red and green. And so when they get combined, they create essentially a desaturated tone, a gray and a neutral.
And when you're actually dealing with pigments, it's very hard to get like each of these neutrals to look the same. So like the like they are here on the screen, yellow and violet mixed together, hard to get to look exactly the same as if you mix blue and orange together. But theoretically this is what you get. So this is a contrast of...
or complementary contrast. And really, the grey part of it is an aspect of it, but really the main thing is that when yellow and violet are up against each other, when any complementary colors are up against each other, they contrast with each other strongly, very strongly. The same gray appears lighter or darker based on its background. So this is simultaneous contrast. This is kind of an element of that.
The way I've heard it explained is the idea that when you have... So actually, what this actually makes me think of is more so value contrast and stuff. But simultaneous contrast, as far as I understand it, is that when you have a color on top of gray... that gray makes up for the complement that's not there.
So you get this simultaneous contrast that happens against the gray. So like if you had blue against gray, you'd get this sort of orange-toned gray, but it'd be optical. You'd be perceiving it that way.
So I'm not sure if this is exactly how I would explain that. So cool colors and warm colors, I think we understand these to a certain extent. It's actually interesting that some warm colors can be on a cool side of that warm color, and some can be on a warm side of that color.
So you can actually have these contrasts even within the same hue. But yes, cool and warm contrast is definitely a thing. So because the violet is more red than the blue, it's considered warmer against the blue. And because it's more blue than the orange, it's considered cooler than the warm. So that's kind of what I was describing a little bit.
So cool-warm contrast. Orange appears stronger. So this is a contrast of portion or I've heard it called a contrast of extension. So this has to do with color balance. And I think really just has to do with kind of that the intensity of that color against the other color and what needs to be more balanced.
So that was by Sarah Ogilvy. And that was entertaining. That was pretty good. I'm interested to see. So what's funny about this is that everything I've found on Itten's color contrasts, there's always been something that's contradicted something else I've seen.
So it's kind of interesting because I think that... Ultimately, I'm going to switch my camera angle here. Ultimately, I would like to know what Itten himself actually wrote about all these things and the examples he used.
And so that's really kind of where I'm going to be going next with this. Because I find the... contradictions or sort of like hazy explanations of these things of some of them where one example doesn't exactly line up with another example of something so I need to get this all straight in my head because it's an interesting topic and I just I want to make sure I'm I'm giving it giving it that sort of What am I trying to say? Giving it the true representation. So you can go check out Sarah Ogilvie on YouTube.
She's got a channel on there. So hopefully that was interesting and helpful. Maybe I'll watch another video on this and we'll be able to learn a little bit more about these things.
So thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.