HARMonious color

Harmony is a balance which is said to be pleasing to the eye, but really it is the pleasing to the mind. Harmony is achieved, in the sense of color, when there is a balance that lets our minds organize what is going on (Morton). Being visually unbalanced doesn’t just refer to complicated compositions, but also refers to compositions that lack enough information to be engaging. In our activity we have to creating nine compositions with the first row of three consisting of tints, tones, and shades. The second row of three will consist of compositions using a hue to complimentary scale. And lastly the third row of three will consist of compositions using analogous colors to my choice hue, red.

So lets talk about color harmony and interactions. Our eyes enjoy contrast, just like light and dark balance each other complimentary colors balance each other. These colors do this because they are colors that do not share any of the same colors, therefore they are distinguished from each other without a reasonable doubt. Contrast is harmonious because it shows the most stability (Morton). When colors are closely analogous they seem to be stable because they share a common hue. But there is a point where this can be extremely boring and then harmony is broken because of lack of a organized and stimulating composition. In doing the first row of compositions it’s important to understand that contrast is needed to stimulate the composition in being harmonious. The second row follows the same guidelines that contrast and stimulation should be exemplified. The difference is that this time it is using the complements and not the contrast of white and black. Then the last row, being free to use analogous colors, has to have carefully picked colors so that the row doesn’t fall into the realm of being inharmonious due to the lack of interesting combinations.

Why does this matter? Quite honestly I was just trying to write a blog before I had to do my compositions just to have it done with. But in my quest to “just to whatever” I have found that practicing color combinations before I put them down permanently is important so that I achieve consistent harmony.


Citation:
Morton, J.L. “COLOR THEORY” Color Matters is a registered trademark of J.L. Morton. Graphics and Text: Copyright (c) 1995-2008 http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html