What Is Color Theory?

Does color really have a theory? What is color theory? Color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations. Color constantly changes, where is always being seen in relation to the colors it surrounded by. However sometimes it is impossible to see a color by itself and have any interactions from its surroundings. Our eyes look for the big picture before it narrow things down. Also, it is amazing how our eyes can translate so many colors and shading t once in our brains. For an example with the first image the green that is placed in the diagram looks as if there are two different set of greens whereas they are the same, its just that the image is placed in different background colors.

Ironically it is said that color is understood through experience where we train our eyes to understand color and activate to view the difference between colors. Once we have the knowledge of knowing the difference between colors then we can compare and contrast what is different about the colors and understand how colors interact or how one color become another by mixing two or three colors to get the third or forth color.

With the second picture it was originally made by Josef Albers who is also the author of Interaction of Theory, uses this image of what we think of as transparency. This image is also an example of how colors can be deceiving and an excerise of what it is to train the eye. In this image it appears to looks like there are four different colors being shaded in each square, manipulating our eye to think that the colors are different. The transparency is actually different blocks of color that is vaguely different from its other surroundings. In the end one must refer to color as unconditional and that it will always have relation to its surroundings.