colour theory

Seven contrasts 

Contrast of Tone:

Contrast is where light and dark areas meet. The eye is very sensitive to strong contrast and it can be a useful tool to draw attention to important areas of a drawing or painting. Where contrast is strong, the subject will stand out, where it is weak the subject will blend into the background. This is especially important when a picture is viewed from a distance and the detail provides fewer clues for the eye.

Contrast of Hue:

Formed by the juxtaposing of different hues. The greater the distance between hues on a colour wheel, the greater the contrast.

Contrast of Saturation:

Formed by the juxtaposing of light and dark values and their relative saturations- deferinciating colour by it's saturation- defining the "bluest blue" etc.

Contrast of Extension:

Formed by assigning proportional field sizes in relation.

How much of something we can see by how we read it- spacial.

How we divide space and colour in composition defines how much/less of the colour we can see from points of contrast.

Contrast of Temperature:

Formed by juxtaposing hues that can be "warm" or "cold".

When flat colours are placed side-by-side, they give an illusion of a gradient transition between the tints and shades.

Complementary Contrast:

Juxtaposing complementary colours from a colour wheel or perceptual opposities (as far away as they can be on the colour wheel).

Simultaneous Contrast:

he terms "simultaneous contrast" and "successive contrast" refer to visual effects in which the appearance of a patch of light (the "test field") is affected by other light patches ("inducing fields") that are nearby in space and time, respectively. The names are somewhat misleading since both simultaneous and successive contrast involve inducing fields that are close in both time and space.