We see color when light waves are reflected from an object. When light falls on an object, the wave spectrum that is reflected back is the color of the object. Some objects are black because instead of reflecting it absorbs all the colors! Black is basically the absence of color. Similarly, an object is white when it reflects all the colors.

Colors can be described in 3 different ways: Hue, Saturation, and Value or intensity.

Hue- Hue is another name for a color. It is the dominant color, for example, you might see the names Prussian Blue, Cadmium Blue, and cobalt blue on your Blue paint tube but on all of these the key name or the color is BLUE or the hue is BLUE!

Saturation- The saturation of a color is determined by how bright or dull a color looks. It can be determined by the amount of grey in a color. A highly saturated color will have mostly white mixed whereas a low saturation will have a more grey mix.

Value or Intensity- Value is determined by the darkness or lightness of a color. When you add black to a color it creates a shade whereas adding white creates a Tint. Depending on the amount of black or white you add the color gets a lighter value or darker value.

We are going to do an exercise next where we will get a RED hue and then create different values and Saturation. We will be using acrylic paint for this.

The colors we will use are RED, GREY, BLACK, and WHITE.

The first thing we will create is a value chart of red. We will make seven squares. The middle square will be pure Red, and on the left, we will have different tints of red by adding different amounts of black( remember Black is a very strong color, so a tiny drop goes a long way).

Check out this step-by-step video to check out how to make the value scale:

Next, we will create a Saturation chart with 7 boxes. We will start by mixing grey and red together. As we move to the right side of our chart we will keep adding tiny amounts of white until it’s mostly a mix of red and white( making it highly saturated).

If you need help creating the saturation scale, watch the video and follow along: