Get To Know The Psychology Of Colour
Evidence of man's fascination with colour can be traced back to the early cave paintings of Neolithic Man. Using colours to represent different moods and emotions has always been a useful way of getting a message across.
However, many societies have different ways of interpreting colour. For example, black is the colour of death in western countries but, in China, the colour of death is white. We tend to take clues from our surroundings to find the meaning behind the colours. Below are a few common held beliefs on the psychology of colour:
'Happy colours' are represented as yellow or orange, this is primarily because they're the colours of the sun, and it's widely understood that the sun has an uplifting effect on us
Green is thought of as a restful and can represent growth and life, it's the colour of natural world.
Brown is the constant, it's seen as reliable and reassuring, being the colour of earth.
Red is an attention grabber and being the colour of fire, heat it commands respect. This is why it's used on traffic lights to represent the command STOP.
Blue can be seen in the sky and seas, it has a reassuring effect and also represents distance. Blues are commonly used as background colours because of their ability to recede when placed next to hotter colours.
However, this is a parred down view on the subject, as not many colours are actually 'pure' but include traces of others within them. A yellow, for example, can contain traces of blue, in which case it'll also have some of the characteristics of blue. On the other side of the coin, yellow also can be tinged with red, so making it a slightly more forceful colour than pure yellow. How these colour react to each other and how to manipulate them, is an important part of painting.
The appearance of any colour is dependant on the context in which it is seen. The way a colour is seen is effected by the colours next to it and on which it is placed. For instance, yellow will seem washed out and pale next to white, but strong and bright next to black. Colour also represents tone and can be attributed to groups. Lemon yellows, golden yellows, oranges and yellow earth colours can be substituted for one another in mixtures or used to shade each other when describing form. In addition, many colours will have an undertone, that is to say they have some element of another colour within their mix. For instance, red may range from having pronounced yellow undertones to blue.
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