Much of the pleasure from viewing a painting is derived from the color harmony used in it. This harmony is basically an orderly relationship of colors, just as a musical harmony is an orderly relationship of notes.

Color harmonies are commonly described using a color wheel. These wheels show the relationship of the hues. There are five major types of color harmonies you need to know about. They are: balanced, complementary, analogous, hybrid analogous, and complementary. Balanced harmonies use colors evenly spaced around the color wheel. The number of colors is usually three (a triad) or four (a tetrad). For example, this painting of the gondolier uses a balanced primary harmony that consists of the three primaries blue, red and a dull yellow.

In this course unit

In this course you will learn all about the different types of color harmonies. Each harmony is described using a series of color charts together with an example of its use.

• Balanced Color Harmonies
• Primary Harmony
• Adulterated Primary Harmony
• Secondary Harmony
• Tertiary Harmony
• Tetrad Harmony
• Complementary Color Harmonies
• Basic Complementary Harmony
• Split Complementary Harmony
• Double Split Complementary Harmony
• Analogous Color Harmonies
• Analogous (Narrow Range) Harmony
• Analogous (Wide Range) Harmony
• Shared Primary Harmony
• Hybrid Analogous and Complementary Color Harmonies
• Analogous with Complementary Accent (Narrow Range) Harmony
• Analogous with Complementary Accent (Wide Range) Harmony
• Shared Primary with Complementary Accent Harmony

Total number of assignments: 9

Total number of pages: 33