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 COLOR HARMONY

Harmony can be defined as a pleasing arrangement of parts, whether it be music, poetry, color, or even an ice cream sundae.

In visual experiences, harmony is something that is pleasing to the eye. It engages the viewer and it creates an inner sense of order, a balance in the visual experience. When something is not harmonious, it's either boring or chaotic. At one extreme is a visual experience that is so bland that the viewer is not engaged. The human brain will reject under-stimulating information. At the other extreme is a visual experience that is so overdone, so chaotic that the viewer can't stand to look at it. The human brain rejects what it can not organize, what it can not understand. The visual task requires that we present a logical structure. Color harmony delivers visual interest and a sense of order.

In summary, extreme unity leads to under-stimulation, extreme complexity leads to over-stimulation. Harmony is a dynamic equilibrium.

Some Formulas for Color Harmony

There are many theories for harmony. The following illustrations and descriptions present some basic formulas .

A color scheme based on analogous colors

Analogous colors are any three colors which are side by side on a 12 part color wheel, such as yellow-green, yellow, and yellow-orange. Usually one of the three colors predominates.

A color scheme based on complementary colors

Complementary colors are any two colors which are directly opposite each other, such as red and green and red-purple and yellow-green. In the illustration above, there are several variations of yellow-green in the leaves and several variations of red-purple in the orchid. These opposing colors create maximum contrast and maximum stability.

A color scheme based on nature

Nature provides a perfect departure point for color harmony. In the illustration above, red yellow and green create a harmonious design, regardless of whether this combination fits into a technical formula for color harmony.

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Color Context

How color behaves in relation to other colors and shapes is a complex area of color theory. Compare the contrast effects of different color backgrounds for the same red square.

Red appears more brilliant against a black background and somewhat duller against the white background. In contrast with orange, the red appears lifeless; in contrast with blue-green, it exhibits brilliance. Notice that the red square appears larger on black than on other background colors.

Different readings of the same color

If your computer has sufficient color stability and gamma correction (link to Color Blind Computers) you will see that the small purple rectangle on the left appears to have a red-purple tinge when compared to the small purple rectangle on the right. They are both the same color as seen in the illustration below. This demonstrates how three colors can be perceived as four colors.

Observing the effects colors have on each other is the starting point for understanding the relativity of color. The relationship of values, saturations and the warmth or coolness of respective hues can cause noticeable differences in our perception of color.

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Glossary Term: Color wheel
Color wheels show how visible colors are related. Primary, secondary, and intermediate colors are organized on a circular chart. Color wheels help artists remember how to mix and think about pigments.

Color wheels are based on color theory, which is based on the physics of light. There are two common types of color: additive color and subtractive color.

• Additive color refers to the mixing of colors of light. Example 1 shows how the light from red, green and blue flashlights would appear if shone on a dark wall. The three primaries in light are red, blue, and green. When all of the colors of the spectrum are combined, they add up to white light.
   

• The color wheels below are examples of subtractive color. Subtractive color refers to the mixing of colors of pigment, such as paint or the ink in your computer's printer. This type of color is what is used in the art and design world. When learning basic color theory, students typically use familiar colors like red, yellow, and blue. Printers' primaries—yellow, cyan, and magenta—are typically used by professional designers and printing presses. Example 2 illustrates subtractive color by showing how primary colors mix on a piece of white paper.

 

Here are some common color wheels based on subtractive color and familiar colors like red, blue and yellow:

 

Color wheel with primary and secondary colors	Color wheel with primary, secondary and intermediate (or tertiary) colors
Another color wheel with primary, secondary and intermediate (or tertiary) colors

It's easy to mix paints to make new colors. You can use the primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) plus black and white to get all of the colors of the rainbow.

Mixing Colors

The Color Wheel:
The Color Wheel shows the relationships between the colors.

The three primary colors are red, yellow, and blue; they are the only colors that cannot be made by mixing two other colors.

The three secondary colors are green, orange, and violet; they are each a mixture of two primary colors. Their hue is halfway between the two primary colors that were used to mix them. On the color wheel, the secondary colors are located between the colors they are made from.

The six tertiary colors (red-orange, red-violet, yellow-green, yellow-orange, blue-green and blue-violet) are made by mixing a primary color with an adjacent secondary color. On the color wheel, the tertiary colors are located between the primary and secondary colors they are made from.

Black, white and gray are not true colors (or hues). They are considered to be neutral, achromatic colors.

Value refers to how light or dark a color appears. To make a color lighter in value, white is added. A light color is called a tint of the original hue. For example, pink is a tint of red. To make a color darker in value, black is added. A dark color is called a shade of the original hue. Maroon is a shade of red.  

Making Colors Lighter or Darker

 

To make a color lighter in value, add white. The more white you add, the lighter the color will get. This is called a tint of the original color.

To make a color darker (this is called a shade of the original color), add a small amount of black. If you add too much black, your color will be almost black. Another way to darken a color is to mix in some of the complementary color (the opposite color on a color wheel - see below). This produces a rich, dark color (richer than just adding black). Some pairs of complementary colors are: blue/orange, green/red, yellow/purple, black/white.

 

 

Perspective Drawing

If you look along a straight road, the parallel sides of the road appear meet at a point in the distance. This point is called the vanishing point and has been used to add realism to art since the 1400's in Florence, Italy.

Suppose you want to draw a railroad track that vanishes into the distance. The rays from the points a given distance from the eye along the lines of the tracks are projected to the eye. The angle formed by these rays decreases with increasing distance from the eye. The picture below shows an overhead view of an observer (camera or eye) looking down the the track.

The next picture shows a side view. The observer's eye or camera is above the ground.

Draw these pictures on graph paper and try to figure out where the points would fall on the plane of the drawing. Can you draw the railroad track?  

To draw in perspective, draw a horizon line and draw a vanishing point anywhere on the horizon. Lines which are parallel in real life are drawn to intersect at the vanishing point.

Distant figures appear smaller but have the same shape and proportions as they would close up. In geometry, we would say that the figures are similar.

The picture below shows a long hallway with a window in the left wall. The window is a trapezoid. Can you use your knowledge of geometry to draw another window further down the hallway? An entire row of windows? To start with the simplest problem, assume the window tops are all at the same height in the hallway and assume the window bottoms are all at the same level in the hallway.

 

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This is just an example of how to use the two-point perspective method in a drawing

1. Setup your drawing area and draw a horizon line either with the Line tool or the Pen tool. Constrain the line with the Shift key so it is perfectly horizontal. 2. Click View > Snap To Point, then use either the Pen or Line tool to draw the first guide from the left. The left point of this line will be the left vanishing point. Its position is arbitrary and of your own choosing but it lays on the horizon line. By enabling "Snap To Point", you can snap any number of additional lines to this vanishing point. 3. Similarly, create the first right hand guide. The right point of this line will be the right vanishing point. 4. Continue roughing out the drawing in this fashion as a series of guide lines. At this stage you can easily adjust the endpoint of any line while preserving the ends that converge into the vanishing points. By roughing out the drawing this way, you can make changes until the desired form begins to take shape. 5. When you are satisfied that you have enough guide lines for your drawing, click Edit > Select > All, then click the Guides layer in the Layers panel to send all the lines to the Guides layer. Next click View > Snap To Guides to enable snapping to these guides. 6. With "Snap To Guides" enabled, you can build your drawing piece by piece, aligning the objects to these guides as you go. You can always make new guide lines on any layer and send them to the Guides layer where they become guide objects. 7. Here's a closer look at the finished drawing with the guides.

 

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Perspective Basics

A thorough understanding of the principles of perspective is essential to creating an accurate and visually appealing piece of art. The impression that the perspective techniques in the preceding tutorial make on a viewer are so strong that once mastered, the illusion of 3 dimensional depth remains even though the visual trickery involved in the process has been revealed. Additionally, a lay person with no technical understanding of the principles of perspective has an intuitive negative reaction to a piece of art if something is amiss.

Any good technical illustration starts with well executed line art. If you are working from any type of reference other than a CAD output in the desired angle, you will need to have a strong fundamental understanding of the principles of perspective drawing. This page will cover the various types of perspective angles you will encounter. In the tutorial lessons that follow this page, you will be given the tools needed to map out a perspective grid in any situation. From this grid, you will be able to create realistic three dimensional drawings from flat or "Off Angle" reference.

The three photos below demonstrate the difference between 1 Point, 2 Point, and 3 Point Perspective. Fig. 1 is an example of 1 Point perspective. All of the major Vanishing Points for the buildings in the foreground of Fig. 1 converge at one central location on the horizon line. The angle of view or Point Of View (POV) in Fig. 1 is referred to as Normal View perspective. In Fig. 2 the vanishing points for the two opposing faces of the center foreground building project towards two different vanishing points on the horizon line. In Fig. 3 we see that the horizontal building elements project to the left and right horizon and the vertical building elements project to a central vanishing point in the sky. This upper vanishing point is called the Zenith. If one were looking down on the object from a Bird's Eye perspective, the vanishing point below the horizon and would be called the Nadir.

Deconstructing "Perspective" from Photography

In the next three diagrams, you will see the same three photographs with Vanishing Point trajectory lines (blue) and Horizon Lines (magenta) traced over the subject matter. Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 are both examples of Normal View perspective. A Normal View angle places the Horizon Line at a natural height as if the viewer was looking straight forward without tilting the head/camera up or down. In these two examples, you will notice that all of the vertical features of the buildings are straight up and down.

Fig. 6 is an example of a Worm's Eye perspective. In Fig. 6 the head/camera is tilted upward placing the Horizon below the picture. The perspective when the view is tilted in an upward direction, creates a third vanishing point at the Zenith. All of the vertical building features will converge at this upper vanishing point. If we were looking down on a subject, the viewing angle would be a Bird's Eye View and the vertical details would converge at the Nadir.

This technique of tracing parallel lines to their convergence point would be used to construct a Perspective Grid from exiting photographic material. Each convergence point will represent the exact location of the Horizon, Zenith, or Nadir in that photograph.

The Illusion of Depth

In the preceding photographic examples you will notice that as an object recedes towards a Vanishing Point (infinity) it appears to get smaller. This phenomenon is due to the fact that the "viewer" is at a steeper angle of view when looking an object that is in close proximity as opposed to an object of the same size that is farther away and therefor, viewed at a shallower angle. The "Picture Plane" shown in the example below represents the point where the observer perceives perspective.

In the physical world, the "picture plane" (as shown below) represents the point at which the observer perceives perspective as interpreted by the lens of the eye. In the world of illustration, the "picture plane" is actually the flat surface of the paper or computer screen, and the perception of 3 dimensional depth or perspective is an artificial illusion.

Drawing in Perspective

The following diagram Fig. 7 is a sample of the typical reference material you might expect to receive on a technical illustration project. All of the major plan and elevation views are represented here as well as an Isometric view. From this reference, we will construct a variety of perspective views in the tutorials that follow this page.

In the following six examples, you will see a perspective grid and our subject in various aspects discussed in the previous paragraph. Fig. 8 is a Normal View 1 Point Perspective drawing. Fig. 9 is a Worm's Eye View 1 Point Perspective drawing. Fig. 10 is a Bird's Eye 1 Point Perspective drawing. Fig. 11 is a Bird's Eye or High 3/4 View 2 Point Perspective drawing. Fig. 12 is a Bird's Eye 3 Point Perspective drawing. If you were to extend the vertical vanishing point lines downward, they would converge at the Nadir Station point.

2 Point vs 3 Point Perspective

Perspective vs Isometric Drawing

By now you may have noticed that perspective drawing techniques differ from other types of commonly seen technical imagry. In Fig. 13 you have three examples of 3/4 view illustrations that are not in perspective view. They are classified as Isometric, Dimetric, and Trimetric drawings. In these types of illustrations all parallel lines remain parallel and therefor, never converge at a single point. Although they can be very useful for conveying technical information, they lack the quality of realism when compared to the perspective view drawing example in Fig. 14.