What is color theory?

(for dummies like you and me)

Okay, color theory... where should we start? Let's begin with the almighty color wheel, full of hues. A hue is simply a "pure color" or a color that has no white, black, or grey added to it.

We start with the 3 primary colors- Red, Blue, and Yellow, the building blocks of color; you mix these basic colors to get the following.

 

3 Secondary colors- Orange, Green, and Purple. They are what you get by mixing one primary with another (i.e; red+blue=purple).

The final colors on a color wheel are called Tertiary colors- Reddish purple, Reddish orange, Yellowish orange, Yellowish green, Bluish green, and Bluish purple, 6 in all. They are the product of a primary and a secondary (i.e; green+yellow= lime green, or yellowish green).

Now, of course you must be thinking, "Well, there are so many more colors than those!" Well, you sir are right! There's more! 

 How saturated a color is is how intense the hue is. This creates many more possibilities of colors. Then we introduce tints and shades. A tint is a color with white added to it, and a shade is with black.

End of part 1