Floristic Dialog Colour Vocabulary
Updated as of Monday, January 10th | Compiled by Hitomi Gilliam
The following vocabulary info is based on my book ‘A FRESH LOOK AT JUDGING FLORAL DESIGN’
From the COLOUR section of the ELEMENTS OF DESIGN.
The vocabulary was made to be as easily digestible as possible for easy use and reference.
COLOUR is the visual hue caused by differing qualities of reflected or projected rays of light.
Let’ start with verbiage within the COLOUR PROPERTIES
That’s vocabulary of Colour… words to distinguish and define colors, their characteristics and how color is perceived.
COLOUR is 100% science, which become the most important tool or element for composing ART!!
HUE: Name of colour at its most saturated intensity. There are 12 hues in a typical artist’s color wheel.
These vocabulary allows us to talk the universal language within the ART world. How we implement colour with flowers may be different to painters who mixes pigment to arrive at colours… but in order to describe what we create with colourful flowers, we need to use the common language for our art to be understood.
CHROMA: The degree of intensity or saturation of a colour.
SATURATION: The level or measure of pure unadulterated hue or colour… its vividness!! Black, white or grey are not in saturated colours.
VALUE: The degree of purity of colour as determined by the amount of white or black that has or has not been added to a colour
TINT: Value to which white has been added to a colour, creating a pastel.
TONE: Value to which grey has been added to a colour, making it muted.
SHADE: Value to which black has been added to a colour, making it darker.
GRAY SCALE: A tonal gradient scale, encompassing variations, ranging from black to white. Grey scale values are also referred to as achromatic, or without colour. Any value on the grey scale can be applied to any hue in order to produce a tint, tone or shade of that hue.
BROWN SCALE: A tonal gradient scale, encompassing variations, ranging from dark black brown to white.
The value of knowing the COLOUR WHEEL…
It is referenced almost always in a colour discussion… so it would seem that one should know about it. Whether you choose to use it as a reference guide, or not… it is a learning tool directly inspired by Nature…
The Rainbow. Rainbow colour order is ROYGBIV
RED – ORANGE – YELLOW – GREEN – BLUE – INDIGO – VIOLET
The most frequently used version of a COLOUR WHEEL is the 12-color Birren Wheel. It is arranged in a way that shows the relationships in the color world… it is a circular version of a Rainbow.
The 12 colors are:
RED
RED ORANGE
ORANGE
YELLOW ORANGE
YELLOW
YELLOW GREEN
GREEN
BLUE GREEN
BLUE
BLUE VIOLET
VIOLET
RED VIOLET
It is an expanded version of ROYGBIV
It is designed to understand the source of colours based on the basic 3 hues.
PRIMARY COLOURS: The Primary hues – Red, Blue and Yellow are positioned equidistantly on the colour wheel. They are the basic core or primary colours that create all of the other colours.
SECONDARY COLOURS: Mixing equal parts of two primary colours creates a secondary colour. The 3 secondary colours are Orange, Green and Violet, are are positioned equidistantly between the primary colours on the colour wheel.
TERTIARY COLOURS or INTERMEDIATE COLOURS: Mixing a secondary colour with an adjacent colour creates a tertiary colour. The 6 tertiary colours are Red Orange, Yellow Orange, Yellow Green, Blue Green, Blue Violet, and Red Violet. They are situated between the primary and secondary colours on the colour wheel.
In all the arts where colour is considered as pigments, colour tool… the colour wheel which clearly illustrate how different colours are created helps the artists mix the colours to arrive at the precise hue of differing values, tints, tones and shades.
Colour as floral artists use it, is a given…. Our medium possesses colour, so we don’t always use the aspect that other artists use based on the colour wheel. It is a general scientific guide to understand the order of colour transition from hue to hue according to the Rainbow.