ELEMENTS OF ART & PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN Elements of Art: 1. COLOR Color (hue) is one of the elements of art. Artists use color in many different ways. The colors we see are light waves absorbed or reflected by everything around us. In nature, a rainbow is white light that is broken apart by the moisture in the air. People discovered that white light can be broken apart using tools like prisms or spectroscopes. The colors of the visible light spectrum are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. White light consists of all of the colors mixed together. The color of an object depends on how it absorbs and/or reflects light. If an object absorbs all of the light wavelengths, it will appear black. If it reflects all of them, it will appear white. If an object absorbs all wavelengths except red, for example, it will look red. Color has three properties: 1. Hue – the name of a color, such as red, blue, or yellow. 2. Value – the lightness or darkness of a color. 3. Intensity – the brightness or dullness of a color. Colors are arranged in a circular format on a color wheel. Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors. Violet, green and orange are the secondary colors. Artists make use of different types of color schemes to create different effects.  Complementary – colors opposite of one another on the color wheel  Monochromatic – different values of a single color  Analogous – colors that are side by side on a color wheel and share a hue  Warm – red, yellow, orange  Cool – blue, green, violet