COLOR 101: A LESSON IN COLOR:

A QUICK LESSON IN COLOR 101: For us gardeners, we can use the artist's pallet to think of color: There are six pure hues. They are the colors that contain no white, black or gray. Three are primary colors--red, yellow and blue.  They can't be produced by any of the other hues.  Three are secondary hues--green, orange and violet--and they result from various mixtures of the primary hues--thus, the name secondary.   That basic wheel, consisting of those 6 hues, can be expanded to make a more complex wheel of colors--actually an infinite amount!  VALUE is the relative lightness or darkness of a color. If you add white, it will be lighter than the original hue, and that's called a TINT. If you add black, it becomes darker, and that's called a SHADE. SATURATION, or intensity, is just one of the attributes of color. It describes the brightness or the dullness of a particular hue.  When gray is added to a pure hue, it becomes less saturated. One side of the wheel is warm--red, orange and yellow. These colors tend to be stimulating and dynamic; they advance visually. The other side are cool colors--green, blue and violet. Cool colors make us feel calm or have a quieting effect; cool colors recede. When planning floral arrangements, it's fun to use this knowledge in creating color schemes that feature some of these thoughts on color. The arrangement I did yesterday emphasized a single color--pink. By adding white, there are many different pink tints, as well as different saturations--by adding gray to the pure pink hue.  It would be considered to be a harmonious arrangement--centered on one hue (pink) and includes various tints, shades, and variations in saturation found in the hue, close together on the wheel.