What is a line?

Contrast appears when distinct differences can be perceived between two compared effects or instances. Johannes Itten was one of the first people to identify and define strategies for successful colour

combinations. This book illustrates the seven concepts through the aesthetic use of electricity cables, symbolising the connections between each contrast and the travel from one to another.

Itten’s Seven Principles of Colour Contrast

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Contrast between different tones in an image is formed from the juxtaposition of light and dark values. This can be found in a monochromatic composition, particularly through chromatic colours, but also appears through adjacent placements of different achromatic colours. The combination of pure black placed with solid white is the most extreme example of tonal contrast.


Contrast of Tone


Juxtaposing different hues together creates contrast in an image, where the greater the distance between colours on the colour wheel, the greater the contrast. In the same way that black placed next to white is the extreme of tonal contrast, yellow/red/blue is the extreme instance of contrast of hue, while the intensity of contrast diminishes as the hues used move further away from the three primary colours.


Contrast of Hue


The term saturation relates to the degree of purity of a particular colour, so contrast of saturation is the contrast formed by juxtaposing dull and diluted colours with pure intense colours.


Contrast of Saturation


The placement of different amounts of colour next to eachother changes the way in which they are perceived. Contrast of extension, otherwise known as the contrast of proportion, is formed by assigning proportional field sizes in relation to the visual weight of a colour. Different colours may be assembled in areas or patches of any size to create contrast, although two factors are required to determine the force of a pure colour: its brilliance and its extent.


Contrast of Extension


Different hues can be seen and interpreted as having the sensation of different temperatures. There are colours which can be identified as cool, such as blues and lilacs, and colours which give the sense of warmth, such as reds and oranges. This cold-warm contrast contains elements which suggest nearness and distance, and bring about the idea of a gradient.

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Contrast of Temperature

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Two colours are considered to be complementary if when their pigments are mixed together, it yields a neutral grey-black, or where light of two colours mixed together yields white. These colours require one another and incite each other to maximum vividness when placed adjacent. Examples of complementary pairs of colours are red and green, yellow and violet, and blue and orange. Complementary contrast, when used in the correct proportions, gives the effect of a statically fixed image.

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Complementary Contrast

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Simultaneous contrast results almost from a trick of the human eye as a sensation which occurs in the eye of the viewer and as it is not objectively present, it cannot be photographed. It is formed when boundaries between colours perceptually vibrate. This illusion is best seen with the juxtaposition of neutral hues mixed with bright colours.

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Simultaneous Contrast

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What is a line?

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