Colour

Colours affect one another. The same red looks different next to green and next to orange.

The painter’s colour wheel is built on three primary colours: red, yellow and blue. Mix two of them and you get the secondary colours orange, green and violet. Colours opposite one another on the wheel are called complementary colours, and they intensify each other when placed side by side.

Pigments have a history of their own. Ultramarine was made from lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and cost more than gold, which is why the Virgin so often wears a blue mantle. New synthetic colours and paint in tubes made Impressionism possible, and van Gogh and Matisse let colour express feeling rather than reality.

• Looking at art
• Perspective and depth
• Light and shadow
• Composition
• Subjects and symbols
• Techniques and materials
• Buildings and objects