Color harmony is the most important means of artistic expression in painting, along with composition, drawing, perspective, chiaroscuro, texture, etc. The term "harmony" comes from Greek word chamonia, which means consonance, agreement, the opposite of chaos and is a philosophical and aesthetic category meaning “ high level ordered diversity, optimal mutual correspondence of the various in the composition of the whole, meeting the aesthetic criteria of perfection and beauty.” Color harmony in painting is the consistency of colors among themselves as a result of the found proportionality of the areas of colors, their balance and consonance, based on finding the unique shade of each color. There is an obvious relationship between the different colors of the painting, each color balancing or highlighting the other and two colors together influencing the third. Changing one color leads to the destruction of the coloristic, color harmony of the work of art and makes it necessary to change all other colors.

Color harmony in the structure of a painting also has a meaningful validity and reveals the author’s creative intent. For example, Van Gogh wrote: “In my painting “Night Cafe” I tried to show that a cafe is a place where you can die, go crazy or commit a crime. In a word, I tried, by juxtaposing the contrasts of soft pink with blood red and wine red, soft green and veronese with yellow-green and hard blue-green, to reproduce the atmosphere of hellish inferno, the color of pale sulfur, to convey the demonic power of a tavern - a trap.” . Various researchers dealt with the problems of color harmony - Newton, Adams, Mansell, Brückx, Betzold, Ostwald, V. Shugaev and others. Normative theories of color harmony are not directly used in painting, but by artists working in painting, design, decorative and applied arts , it is necessary to know the range of scientific problems of the theory color harmonies, which can contribute to a more thoughtful and rational approach to solving practical problems of color harmony. Physicists and artists have always sought to bring all the diversity of colors of the visible world into a system and, through systematization, determine the patterns of harmonious combinations of color tones. The first attempt to bring colors into the system was made by Isaac Newton.

Newton's color system is a color wheel made up of seven colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Later, purple colors, which are not in the spectrum, were added to the spectral colors, obtained by mixing the two extreme colors of the spectrum - red and violet. The colors of the red-yellow part of the circle were called warm, and the colors of the bluish-blue part of the circle were called cold. This was the first attempt at “color harmonization.” In 1865, artist Rudolph Adams invented an “apparatus for determining harmonious color combinations” - the “chromatic accordion.” Adams' color accordion consisted of color wheel, divided into 24 sectors, and each sector was divided into 6 degrees of lightness. Five templates were made for the color wheel, in which 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 holes were symmetrically cut according to the size of the sectors. By moving the templates with holes, it was possible to obtain different color combinations, which Adams called "symmetrical chords". At the same time, Adams believed that these “chords” may not necessarily turn out to be harmonious, but they are the basis for choosing various harmonious combinations of color tones (ill. 1).

Adams formulated the basic principles of color harmony as follows:

1. In harmony, at least the initial elements of the variety of color areas should be noticeable; red, yellow and blue. If they were indistinguishable, as it would be in black, gray or white, then there would be unity without diversity, that is, a quantitative relationship of colors.
2. A variety of tones should also be achieved through a variety of light and dark and through changes in color.
3. The tones should be in balance so that none of them stands out. This moment embraces qualitative relationships and constitutes color rhythm.
4. In large combinations, the colors should follow each other in order so that a natural connection in the degree of their relationship takes place, as in a spectrum or rainbow. The progression of tones expresses the movement of the melody of color unity.
5. Pure colors should be used sparingly because of their brightness and only in those parts to which the eye should be primarily directed."

Adams's theory of harmonious color combinations was valuable for the practice of painting. Albert Henry Mansell's theory of color harmony was also directly related to the practice of painting. Mansell identified three types of harmonious combinations of color tones: monochromatic harmonies - built on one color tone of varying lightness, or saturation; the harmony of two neighboring colors of the color wheel, built on the proximity and kinship of colors; harmonies built on the principle of contrast between colors lying opposite each other in the color wheel. Mansell believed that color harmony would be more perfect if the artist took into account the relationships of colors in saturation and the ratio of areas of color planes. The German physiologist Brücke also considered colors lying within small intervals of the color wheel to be harmonious due to their similarity in color tone. In the theory of harmonic combinations of color tones, Brücke was the first to identify triads of colors, which he considered harmonious, along with paired combinations of various colors. Brücke considered red, blue and yellow, as well as red, green and yellow, to be harmonious triads of colors. In his opinion, colors of small intervals can be added to these three colors. Betzold, like Brücke, built a theory of color harmonies on the differences in colors within small and large intervals of the color wheel. He believed that a harmonious combination of color tones is obtained only when, for example, in a twelve-member circle, the colors are four tones behind each other, i.e. there should be an interval of three tones between them. Non-harmonic color combinations, according to Brücke, are obtained when the interval between colors is only one color tone. Betzold was the first to point out the need to see the difference in the use of color and harmonious combinations of colors in painting and decorative arts. Popular in the 19th century. There was a theory of color harmony by W. Ostwald, who tried to find mathematical patterns of color harmony from the geometric relationships of the arrangement of colors within the color wheel. Ostwald believed that all colors that contain an equal mixture of white or black are harmonious, and of those that do not contain such a mixture, the most harmonious are those that stand apart from each other in the color wheel at an equal number of intervals. Of interest is his doctrine of achromatic harmony, in which the author found a mathematical relationship between the change in the lightness of the achromatic color and the threshold sensitivity of the eye. Ostwald proved that when lightness changes, the threshold sensitivity of the eye changes according to the law of the geometric mean value. Of great interest to artists working in the field of decorative and applied arts and design is the theory of harmonic combinations of color tones, developed by V. M. Shugaev. The theory of harmonic combinations of color tones by V. M. Shugaev is based on the theories of Mansell and Bezold and is based on combinations of colors on the color wheel. According to the author, the basis of the circle is made up of four colors: yellow, red, blue and green on the principle of kinship and contrast. V. M. Shugaev systematized different kinds harmonious combinations of color tones and brought them to the main four types:

1. combinations of related colors;
2. combinations of related and contrasting colors;
3. combinations of contrasting colors;
4. combinations of colors that are neutral in relation to kinship and contrast.

The author calculated 120 possible harmonious color combinations for a 16-member circle with three intermediate colors and three intervals between the main colors. V. M. Shugaev believed that harmonious color combinations can be obtained in three cases: 1) if the harmonized colors contain an equal number of main colors; 2) if the colors have the same lightness; 3) if the colors have the same saturation. The last two factors play a significant role in the harmonization of colors, but are not the main ones, but only enhance the mutual influence of colors, providing a closer harmonious connection between them. Conversely, the more different colors differ from one another in lightness, saturation and hue, the more difficult they are to harmonize. The exception is additional colors. The harmony of complementary colors is confirmed by numerous examples in painting and decorative arts. V. M. Shugaev defined color harmony as follows: “Color harmony is color balance, color balance. Here, color balance (primarily two colors) is understood as such a ratio and such qualities of them in which they do not seem alien to one another and none of them predominates unduly.” “Harmonic combinations include those that give the impression of coloristic integrity, the relationship between colors, color balance, color unity.”

“Colors, mutually influencing each other, conditioning each other, turn into a kind of unity called color and expressed by harmony,” wrote I. Itten.

Contrast - when comparing two or more colors with each other, clearly defined differences are found. When these differences reach their limit, we speak of diametrical or polar contrast. So, for example, the oppositions big-small, white-black, cold-warm in their extreme manifestations represent polar contrasts10.

Color harmony

When people talk about color harmony, they are evaluating the impressions of two or more colors interacting. Paintings and observations of the subjective color preferences of various people indicate ambiguous ideas about harmony and disharmony. As a rule, the assessment of harmony or dissonance is caused by the feeling of pleasant-unpleasant or attractive-unattractive. Such judgments are based on personal opinion and are not objective.

The concept of color harmony must be removed from the area of subjective feelings and transferred to the area of objective laws.

Harmony is balance, symmetry of forces.

Physiologist Ewald Hering made the following remark: “Medium or neutral gray color corresponds to the state of the optical substance in which dissimilation - the expenditure of forces expended on the perception of color, and assimilation - their restoration - are balanced. This means that the average grey colour creates a state of balance in the eyes.” Hering proved that the eye and brain require medium gray, otherwise, in its absence, they lose calm.

Two or more colors are harmonious if their mixture is a neutral gray.

All other color combinations that do not give us gray become expressive or disharmonious in nature. In painting, there are many works with one-sided expressive intonation, and their color composition, from the point of view of the above, is not harmonious. These works are irritating and overstimulating with their emphatically persistent use of one dominant color. There is no need to say that color compositions must necessarily be harmonious, and when Seurat says that art is harmony, he confuses artistic means and the goals of art.

The basic principle of harmony comes from the physiological law of complementary colors. In his work on color, Goethe wrote about harmony and integrity this way: “When the eye contemplates a color, it immediately comes into an active state and, by its nature, inevitably and unconsciously immediately creates another color, which, in combination with a given color, contains the entire color circle . Each individual color, due to the specificity of perception, forces the eye to strive for universality. And then, in order to achieve this, the eye, for the purpose of self-satisfaction, searches next to each color for some colorless empty space into which it could produce the missing color. This shows the basic rule of color harmony.”

Color theorist Wilhelm Ostwald also touched upon issues of color harmony. In his book on the basics of color, he wrote: “Experience teaches that some combinations of certain colors are pleasant, others are unpleasant or do not evoke emotion. The question arises, what determines this impression? To this we can answer that those colors are pleasant, between which there is a natural connection, that is, order. We call color combinations, the impression of which we are pleased, harmonious. So the basic law could be formulated as follows: Harmony = Order.

We can draw a general conclusion that all pairs of complementary colors, all combinations of three colors in the twelve-part color wheel, which are connected to each other through equilateral or isosceles triangles, squares and rectangles, are harmonious.

Yellow-red-blue form the main harmonious triad here. If these colors in the twelve-part color wheel system are combined with each other, we get an equilateral triangle. In this triad, each color is presented with utmost strength and intensity, and each of them appears here in its typically generic qualities, that is, yellow acts on the viewer as yellow, red as red and blue as blue. The eye does not require additional additional colors, and their mixture gives a dark black-gray color.

Yellow, red-violet and blue-violet colors are united by the shape of an isosceles triangle. The harmonious consonance of yellow, red-orange, purple and blue-green are united by a square. The rectangle gives a harmonized combination of yellow-orange, red-violet, blue-violet and yellow-green.

A bunch of geometric shapes, consisting of an equilateral and isosceles triangle, square and rectangle, can be placed at any point on the color wheel. These shapes can be rotated within the circle, thus replacing a triangle consisting of yellow, red and blue with a triangle combining yellow-orange, red-violet and blue-green or red-orange, blue-violet and yellow-green.

The same experiment can be done with others. geometric shapes. Further development of this topic can be found in the section devoted to the harmony of color harmonies.

Types of color harmonies and principles of their construction

We are starting a series of lectures on color harmony, without which it is impossible to achieve the unity of human color and the color of clothing. Before presenting the material, I will immediately add on my own behalf that our task, as researchers and practitioners of color type, is complicated by the fact that we need to know the laws of harmony in general, see the harmony of a person’s color and be able to combine the color of the herderob, if I can say so about it, and the color of a person into a single, coloristically and stylistically harmonious whole.

Many would argue that harmony is subjective. However, the laws of color harmony have been known since antiquity; they exist as objective reality within the framework of subjective human perception, well studied and tested in practice. And even if we mentally disagree with some particular case of harmony, our eyes will still demand a balance of power.

I will try to quote as much as possible in these chapters useful material, without skimping on volume, since this is very important, and it is better to assimilate the postulates of harmony slowly but surely. We will figure it out together, myself included, based on the works of authoritative experts.

Today I will start with a large volume of lyrics for starters, there will be few pictures today, read the text.

Below I quote the work of Valentin Zheleznyakov, “Color and Contrast,” already mentioned in previous chapters on contrast.

In the era of Greco-Roman antiquity, color became the subject of attention and reflection of philosophers, but the views of color philosophers can be called more artistic than scientific, because their worldview was based on aesthetic and even ethical prerequisites. Ancient philosophers considered it obligatory to classify colors - to distinguish main and derivative ones, but they approached this mainly from a mythological position. In their opinion, the main colors should correspond to the main elements (air, fire, earth and water - white, red, black and yellow). Nevertheless, Aristotle already knew the phenomenon of color induction, simultaneous and sequential color contrast, and many other phenomena, which were then used as the basis for physiological optics. But the most important thing is the doctrine of color harmony.

Ancient color aesthetics became the same foundation for all European art of the Renaissance as ancient philosophy was for the science of the Enlightenment. Harmony was considered a universal principle of the universe and was applied to many different phenomena: to the structure of the Cosmos, to the social structure, to architecture, to the relationship of colors and numbers, to music, the human soul, etc. In the very general view harmony meant the principle of a higher, “divine” order, established not by man, but by higher powers, but, despite this, such an order should be completely accessible to human understanding, since it is based on reason. This, by the way, is the difference between the Western concept of harmony and the Eastern one, in which there are always elements of mysticism and unknowability.

Here are some provisions of ancient harmony in relation to color:

1. Communication, combination individual elements systems with each other. Harmony is a connecting principle. This is expressed in color unity of color tone, when all the colors are brought together as if by a common patina, each paint is either whitened (in the background), or blackened, or softened by mixing another paint. Apelles, according to Pliny, having completed the painting, covered it with something like a grayish varnish in order to bind all the colors into a harmonious unity.

2. The unity of opposites, when certain opposite principles are present, called contrasts. In monochromes, this is the contrast of light and dark, chromatic and colorless (for example, purple with white, red with black), saturated colors with low-saturated ones. Or are they contrasts in color tone - a comparison of red and green, yellow and blue, etc., i.e. connection of additional, complementary colors.

3. Only something connected with a measure can be harmonious., and the measure is human sensations and feelings. According to Aristotle, every sensation is a determination of relationships. The brightness and strength of the color should be neither too strong nor too weak. Bright colors and sharp contrasts were considered barbarism, worthy of “some Persians” (the original enemies of Hellas). A civilized Greek values beauty more than wealth; the subtlety of art pleases him more than the high cost of material.

4. The concept of measure is relative, it means the ratio of the measured quantity to the unit of measurement, therefore it includes such definitions as proportionality, proportions, relationships. Aristotle believed that in “beautiful” colors the proportions in which the primary colors are taken are not accidental: “Those colors in which the most correct proportionality is observed, like sound harmonies, seem the most pleasant. Such are dark red and violet... and some others of the same kind, of which there are few for the reason that musical harmonic consonances are few.”

The entire practice of ancient applied art is based on the principle that mixedness in color is more valued than purity.

5. The harmonic system is stable because it is balanced. The Universe is eternal because it is harmoniously arranged; the opposing forces in it cancel each other out, creating a stable balance. If in the picture the figures are dressed in bright cloaks, then these relatively saturated spots occupy no more than one-fifth or one-sixth of the entire picture in area. The remaining colors are low-saturated. Light to dark is taken in approximately the same ratio. Thanks to this proportional system, an overall balance of color composition is achieved: strong, but short pulses of bright and pure colors are balanced by longer, but weak fields of dark and mixed ones.

6. A sign of harmony is its clarity, the obviousness of the law of its construction, simplicity and logic both as a whole and in parts. The classic color composition does not pose difficult tasks for the viewer; comparisons of close or opposite colors are preferred in it and comparisons in the middle interval are almost never used as a color dominant, since there is no obvious connection or opposition in them (more on this will be said using the example of color circle).

7. Harmony always reflects the sublime. According to Aristotle, “mimesis” is a reflection of reality in the forms of reality itself; art only imitates nature, but does not reproduce the ugly and ugly - this is not the task of art.

8. Harmony is conformity and expediency, as well as order. This principle expresses in the most general form the attitude of ancient aesthetics to the world: the goal of human cultural activity is to transform the formless and ugly world of chaos into a beautiful and ordered cosmos. Any harmonious color composition is so organized and orderly that it is easily comprehended by the human mind and lends itself to logical interpretation.

From this listing of the main features of ancient color harmony, it is clear that many of them have not lost their meaning to this day.

The German poet Wolfgang Goethe wrote: “Everything that I have done as a poet does not fill me with special pride. Wonderful poets lived at the same time as me, even better ones lived before me and, of course, will live after me. But what am I in my age? the only one who knows the truth about the difficult science of colors - I cannot help but attach importance to this, it gives me a sense of superiority over many."

Goethe fundamentally and ideologically disagreed with Newton's position and believed that he had to fight his “delusions.” He looked for the principle of color harmonization not in physical laws, but in the laws of color vision, and we must give him his due, he was right in many respects; No wonder he is considered the founder of physiological optics and the science of psychological impact colors.

Goethe worked on his “Doctrine of Color” from 1790 to 1810, i.e. twenty years, and the main value of this work lies in the formulation of subtle psychological states associated with the perception of contrasting color combinations. Goethe describes in his book the phenomena of color induction - luminance, chromatic, simultaneous and sequential - and proves that colors arising from sequential or simultaneous contrast are not random. All these colors seem to be inherent in our organ of vision. The contrasting color appears as the opposite of the inducing color, i.e. imposed on the eye, just as inhalation alternates with exhalation, and any compression entails expansion. This reveals the universal law of the integrity of psychological being, the unity of opposites and unity in diversity.

Each pair of contrasting colors already contains the entire color wheel, since their sum is White color- can be decomposed into all imaginable colors and, as it were, contains them in potency. From this follows the most important law of the activity of the organ of vision - the law required shift impressions. “When the eye is offered something dark, it demands light; it demands something dark when it is presented with something light, and it demonstrates its vitality, its right to grasp an object by generating from itself something opposite to the object.”

Goethe's experiments with colored shadows showed that diametrically opposite (complementary) colors are precisely those that mutually evoke each other in the viewer's mind. Yellow requires blue-violet, orange requires cyan, and magenta requires green, and vice versa. Goethe also built a color circle (ill. 13), but the sequence of colors in it is not a closed spectrum, like Newton’s, but a round dance of three pairs of colors. And these pairs are additional, i.e. half generated by the human eye and only half independent of man. The most harmonious colors are those that are located opposite, at the ends of the diameters of the color wheel, they call each other and together form integrity and completeness, similar to the completeness of the color wheel. Harmony, according to Goethe, is not an objective reality, but a product of human consciousness.

According to Goethe, in addition to harmonic combinations, there are “characteristic” and “characterless”. The first includes pairs of colors located in the color wheel through one color, and the second - pairs of neighboring colors. Harmonic color, according to Goethe, arises when “all neighboring colors are brought into balance with each other.” But harmony, Goethe believes, despite all its perfection, should not be the artist’s ultimate goal, because what is harmonious always has “something universal and complete, and in this sense devoid of specificity.” This unusually subtle remark echoes what Arnheim subsequently said about the entropic nature of the process of image perception and the fact that images harmonized in all respects often lack expressiveness and expression.

Goethe's book contains several very subtle definitions of color. For example, in painting there is a technique of shifting all the colors to any one color, as if the picture was viewed through colored glass, for example yellow. Goethe calls this coloring false. “This false tone arose from instinct, from a lack of understanding of what should be done, so that instead of integrity they created homogeneity.” Such color glaze, often considered a sign of good taste in color cinema, does not deserve such a respectful attitude and that there are other, more advanced ways of obtaining color harmony, which, however, require more work and a higher visual culture.

Harmony is a philosophical and aesthetic category, meaning integrity, unity, natural coherence of all parts and elements of the form, i.e. this is a high level of orderliness of diversity and the correspondence of parts within the whole, meeting the aesthetic criteria of perfection and beauty.

Color harmony is a combination of individual colors or color sets that form an organic whole and evoke an aesthetic experience.

Color harmony in design is a certain combination of colors, taking into account all their main characteristics, such as

Color tone;

Lightness;

Saturation;

The sizes occupied by these colors on a plane, their relative position in space, which leads to color unity and has the most favorable aesthetic effect on a person.

Signs of color harmony:

1) Connection and smoothness. Connecting factors can be: monochrome, achromaticity, unifying mixtures or patinas (mixture of white, gray, black), a shift to some color tone, gamma.

2) Unity of opposites, or contrast. Types of contrast: by brightness (dark-light, black-white, etc.), by saturation (pure and mixed), by color tone (additional or contrasting combinations).

3) Measure. Those. in a composition brought to harmony there is nothing to add or remove.

4) Proportionality, or the relationship of parts (objects or phenomena) between themselves and the whole. In gamma, this is a similar relationship between brightness, saturation and color tones. Let's consider the ratio of the areas of color spots:

1 part light field - 3-4 parts dark field;

1 part pure color - 4-5 parts muted;

1 part chromatic - 3-4 parts achromatic.

5) Equilibrium. The colors in the composition must be balanced.

6) Clarity and ease of perception.

7) Beautiful, the pursuit of beauty. Psychologically negative colors and dissonances are unacceptable.

8) Sublime, i.e. perfect color combination.

9) Organisation, order and rationality.

Picture for variety and reflection from the same site:

So, today we mentioned the concept of color, but we will look at color and scale in more detail later. In the next lecture, we will consider the general provisions of Itten’s theory of harmony, and then, first briefly, and then in detail in 1 lecture on the type of harmony, we will consider how the relationships of color harmony are solved practically on the color wheel.

Homework will be of a philosophical nature, please speak out in the comments: what is color harmony for you, on what basis do you conclude what is harmonious and what is not, and what is beautiful for you and what is not?

Contemplation by the human eye of the colors of the surrounding world begins from the moment of its birth and carries a significant semantic load. The brain receives over 80% of information through visual perception, and it is from this that the idea of space and reality as a whole is formed.

The beginning of the beginning: why harmony is necessary

The nature of planet Earth is full of extraordinary places, a variety of colors and bright colors which amaze the imagination. The richness and depth of the hidden corners of the globe have always excited the souls of designers, artists and simply connoisseurs of beauty. That is why nature has become the basis for choosing a palette and a source of emotional inspiration for creative people.

The designer’s task is to, taking as a basis the consonance and unconstrained beauty of nature, to create something no less beautiful, but already with a touch of individuality. In order to accomplish this task brilliantly, it is necessary to understand the principle of interaction of colors and shades, the features of visual perception, and the impact of certain combinations on the human subconscious. For this purpose, a palette of color harmony was created.

General classification of flowers in the world

The first systematics was made by Isaac Newton, who divided a light ray into seven colors using a prism. Now these shades are considered to be the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, purple. Newton combined colors into a schematic circle in an attempt to create the first palette.

The modern color harmony classifies shades according to two criteria:

1. Achromatic - white and black, as well as all varieties of gray, gradually gaining saturation on the way from white to black.

2. Chromatic - all other spectrum) and their shades, rich and rich.

Separation of colors in gamut

The chromatic group of the spectrum is usually subdivided in more detail:

Primary (red, yellow, blue). They are basic in creating further colors and their variations.
Secondary, or composite (orange, green, purple). Extracted by mixing primary colors.
Mixed. These include all other colors created by combining various shades.

In the latter variety, neutral colors are highlighted as a separate item - black, white and gray.

Groups of harmonic combinations

The harmony of colors is expressed by four types of combinations, identified on the basis of combining a palette of primary and secondary shades:

The effect of flowers on humans

Shades have not only an aesthetic effect on the human body, but also a pronounced psychological and physiological effect. Let's look at the main colors that affect the human body:

Red. It is an stimulating shade, raises vitality, increases heart rate, and stimulates the brain and liver. However, all this has a negative impact on nervous system and limited in case of allergies and aggression.
Orange. Gives a boost of activity and optimism, has a positive effect on the nervous system and gastrointestinal tract, and increases appetite.
Yellow. Strengthens the nerves, is beneficial for depression, has a great effect on intellectual abilities and memory, and helps cleanse the intestines and liver.
Green. It is beneficial for the eyes and heart, has a general calming effect on the body and psyche, and lowers blood pressure.
Blue and blue. These colors are soothing and peaceful, having a positive effect on the nervous system, eliminating the feeling of powerlessness and pain in the body.
Violet. Has a positive effect on internal organs, helps with insomnia and migraines.

Spring and summer colors in the "seasons concept"

The classification according to the “concept of seasons” was inspired by the harmonious shades of nature itself. After all, where else if not here can you find the most unexpected combinations directly related to seasonal changes. There are spring, summer, autumn and winter groups. In each palette there is one predominant color that actively dominates the others in brightness or volume.

Autumn and winter shades in seasonal theory

Autumn in the palette. Perhaps this time of year can be called the richest in variety of shades. The harmony of colors is reflected in the rich harvest of mushrooms, berries and fruits, as well as color-changing foliage. The primary color is red, accompanying colors are reddish-brown, corn, orange, peach, blue, pine, olive, coffee, plum.
Winter. Memories of this time paint us monochrome landscapes, quiet and hidden nature under a blanket of snow. And on this almost white canvas, bloody rowan berries, spruce needles and a frosty sky stand out. The colors of the season, although cool, are distinct and pure, without any additions. The dominant color in the palette is blue; snow-white, turquoise, blood red, black, dark blue, intense brown, beige, and blue are also present.

Summing up

Despite the fact that beauty natural shades it seems complete and does not need modification; there is no need to thoroughly transfer it to an object artificially designed by man - be it interior design or the creation of an author's item. Blatant copying and transfer of pure natural tones into a world artificially created by human hands looks ridiculous, and the harmonious relationship of natural shades is violated.

To prevent this from happening, you need to learn how to harmoniously mix natural and artificially formed shades into a palette. It is important to have innate taste and the ability to correctly match colors to each other to create perfect interior, painting or external image. All the above diagrams and notes will help a creative person with this.

Chapter 06. Twelve-part color wheel

Chapter 07. Seven types of color contrasts

Chapter 08. Color contrast

Chapter 09. Contrast of light and dark

Chapter 10. Contrast of cold and warm

Chapter 11. Contrast of Complementary Colors

Chapter 12. Simultaneous contrast

Chapter 13. Saturation Contrast

Chapter 14. Contrast in area of color spots

Chapter 15. Mixing colors

Chapter 16.

Chapter 17. Color harmonies

Chapter 18. Shape and color

Chapter 19. Spatial effect of color

Chapter 20. Theory of color impressions

Chapter 21. Theory of color expressiveness

Chapter 22. Composition

Afterword

Color harmony

For most, color combinations, colloquially called “harmonious,” usually consist of colors that are similar in nature or different colors that are similar in lightness. Basically, these combinations do not have strong contrast. As a rule, the assessment of harmony or dissonance is caused by the feeling of pleasant-unpleasant or attractive-unattractive. Such judgments are based on personal opinion and are not objective.

The concept of color harmony must be removed from the area of subjective feelings and transferred to the area of objective laws.

Harmony is balance, symmetry of forces.

Studying the physiological side of color vision brings us closer to solving this problem. So, if we look at a green square for a while and then close our eyes, a red square will appear in our eyes. And vice versa, observing the red square, we will get its “return” - green. These experiments can be performed with all colors, and they confirm that the color image that appears in the eyes is always based on a color complementary to what is actually seen. The eyes require or produce additional colors. And this is a natural need to achieve balance. This phenomenon can be called sequential contrast.

Another experiment is that we superimpose a smaller gray square of similar lightness onto a colored square. On yellow, this gray square will appear light purple to us, on orange - bluish-gray, on red - greenish-gray, on green - reddish-gray, on blue - orange-gray and on violet - yellowish-gray (Fig. 31- 36). Each color causes gray to take on its complementary shade. Pure colors also tend to color other chromatic colors with their complementary color. This phenomenon is called simultaneous contrast.

Sequential and simultaneous contrasts indicate that the eye receives satisfaction and a sense of balance only on the basis of the law of complementary colors. Let's look at this from the other side.

The physicist Rumford was the first to publish in 1797 in Nicholson's Journal his hypothesis that colors are harmonious if their mixture produces white. As a physicist, he began by studying spectral colors. In the section on the physics of color, it was already said that if any spectral color, say red, is removed from the color spectrum, and the remaining colored light rays - yellow, orange, violet, blue and green - are collected together using a lens, then the sum of these residual colors will be green, that is, we will get a color complementary to the one removed. According to the laws of physics, a color mixed with its complementary color forms the total sum of all colors, that is, white, and the pigment mixture in this case will give a gray-black color.

Physiologist Ewald Hering made the following remark: “Medium or neutral gray color corresponds to the state of the optical substance in which dissimilation - the expenditure of forces expended on the perception of color, and assimilation - their restoration - are balanced. This means that the medium gray color creates a state of balance in the eyes.”

Hering proved that the eye and brain require medium gray, otherwise, in its absence, they lose calm. If we see a white square on a black background and then look in the other direction, we will see a black square as an afterimage. If we look at a black square on a white background, the afterimage will be white. We observe in the eyes the desire to restore a state of balance. But if we look at a medium-gray square on a medium-gray background, then no afterimage will appear in the eyes that differs from the medium-gray color. This means that medium gray corresponds to the state of balance required by our vision.

Processes occurring in visual perception cause corresponding mental sensations. In this case, harmony in our visual apparatus indicates a psychophysical state of equilibrium, in which dissimilation and assimilation of the visual substance are the same. Neutral gray corresponds to this condition. I can get the same gray color from black and white or from two complementary colors if they contain the three primary colors - yellow, red and blue in proper proportion. Specifically, each pair of complementary colors includes all three primary colors:

red - green = red - (yellow and blue);
blue - orange = blue - (yellow and red);
yellow - violet = yellow - (red and blue).

Thus, it can be said that if a group of two or more colors contains yellow, red and blue in appropriate proportions, then the mixture of these colors will be grey.

Yellow, red and blue represent the overall color summation. The eye requires this general color connection to satisfy it, and only in this case does the perception of color achieve a harmonious balance.

Two or more colors are harmonious if their mixture is a neutral gray.

These works are irritating and overstimulating with their emphatically persistent use of one dominant color. There is no need to say that color compositions must necessarily be harmonious, and when Seurat says that art is harmony, he confuses artistic means and the goals of art.

It is easy to see that not only the arrangement of colors relative to each other is of great importance, but also their quantitative ratio, as well as the degree of their purity and lightness.

In order to determine all possible harmonious combinations, it is necessary to find a system of order that includes all their options. The simpler the order, the more obvious or self-evident the harmony will be. We have found two systems that can provide this order: color wheels, connecting colors of equal saturation, and triangles for colors, representing mixtures of a particular color with white or black. Color circles allow us to determine harmonious combinations of different colors, triangles - color-tonal harmony.”

When Ostwald states that “...we call colors, the impression of which we are pleased, harmonious,” he is expressing his purely subjective idea of harmony. But the concept of color harmony must be moved from the area of subjective attitude to the area of objective laws.

When Ostwald says: “Harmony = Order,” proposing color circles for different colors of the same saturation and color-tonal triangles as a system of order, he does not take into account the physiological laws of afterimage and simultaneity.

An extremely important basis for any aesthetic color theory is the color wheel, as it provides a system for the arrangement of colors. Since the colorist works with color pigments, the color order of the circle must be built according to the laws of pigment color mixtures. This means that diametrically opposite colors should be complementary, that is, giving a gray color when mixed. Yes, in my color wheel Blue colour stands against orange, and a mixture of these colors gives us gray.

While in the Ostwald color wheel blue is placed opposite yellow and their pigment mixture produces green. This basic difference in construction means that the Ostwald color wheel cannot be used in either painting or applied arts.

The definition of harmony lays the foundation for a harmonious color composition. For the latter, the quantitative ratio of colors is very important. Based on the lightness of the primary colors, Goethe derived the following formula for their quantitative relationship:

yellow: red: blue = 3: 6: 8

The connection of all these figures in the twelve-part color wheel is illustrated in Figure 2. Yellow-red-blue here form the main harmonious triad. If these colors in the twelve-part color wheel system are combined with each other, we get an equilateral triangle. In this triad, each color is presented with utmost strength and intensity, and each of them appears here in its typically generic qualities, that is, yellow acts on the viewer as yellow, red as red and blue as blue. The eye does not require additional additional colors, and their mixture gives a dark black-gray color.

A bunch of geometric shapes, consisting of an equilateral and isosceles triangle, square and rectangle, can be placed at any point on the color wheel. These shapes can be rotated within the circle, thus replacing the triangle consisting of yellow, red and blue with a triangle combining yellow-orange, red-violet and blue-green or red-orange, blue-violet and yellow-green .

The same experiment can be carried out with other geometric figures. Further development of this topic can be found in the section devoted to the harmony of color harmonies.