This page explains the color schemes used by the Kaleidoscope.  If you’re wondering what descriptions like "3-tone split-complementary" means, it’s all here!

Color Schemes

If we were to arrange the visible colors into a disc it would look something like this:

This is the ‘red-yellow-blue’ (RYB) disc and represents the equally-weighted range of hues as viewed by our minds/brains*.  The angular position on this disc is called hue – it defines the basic common colors: of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and the shades in-between.

But this is not the full picture because as we move inward on this disc the colors merge and lose their ‘richness’.  A more accurate diagram would be this:

Here we see the bright colors around the rim turning to pastel shades, until finally becoming grey at the center of the disc.  This ‘richness’ of color is called saturation, with grey (at center) having zero saturation and the edge of the disc having full saturation.

This is also not the full picture because the colors can vary in brightness.  A fuller representation would be in 3-dimensions, such as this:

Here we see a cylinder with a few cross-sections, where the middle cross-section is the disc from the previous image.  The vertical position of this cylinder represents brightness or luminosity.  At the bottom is black (zero luminosity) and the top is white (full luminosity).

Certain hue, saturation and luminance combinations are known to be artistically pleasing.  Below is a description of those used on this site.

Monotone

The simplest combination isn’t really a color combination but a way of presenting variations of a single hue-color.   Basically we choose a hue (at random) and vary either its brightness or saturation.   Here are examples of varying brightness – also called scattering.

This shows scatterings of yellow, red, and green.

Another way of presenting monotone is to use the same brightness but different saturations (at different times), such as this:

This shows a single hue/saturation against a black background.  Alternatively we can use the inverse – black shapes on a colored background:

N-tone combinations

The next few sections describe combinations of 2, 3, and 4 hues.  To understand this, let’s take the first color disc and simplify it by showing only 12 fixed hues, which we’ll number like a clock from 0 to 11:

Hue combinations can then be referred to by numbers, with the first digit being an arbitrary position and the other numbers being offsets.  E.g. 0,4 might be red and yellow, because red is position 0 and yellow is position 4.  But it also can be orange and green because green (in position 6) is 4 positions after orange (in position 2).

The way it works is the first hue is selected at a random position and then the other hues are chosen relative to this first one.  Positions can be any fractional location on the wheel –  they don’t need to match the ‘clock’ locations.  But the distance between the hues will be at fixed angles.

2-tone, complementary:  0,6

The simplest 2-tone combination is the opposite or ‘complementary’ one.  It involves hues at opposite sides of the color wheel.  Common examples are red/green, orange/blue, and yellow/purple.

Examples

2-tone, 2-step analogous:  0,2

Analogous means ‘similar to’.  In this case the hues are two steps away from each other.

Examples

2-tone, 4-step analogous:  0,4

Examples

3-tone, triad:  0,4,8

The triad combination chooses hues in a triangular position on the wheel.

Examples

3-tone, mid-complementary:  0,3,6

Similar to 2-tone complementary but with a third hue in mid-position.

Examples

3-tone, split-complementary:  0,5,7

Similar to 2-tone complementary but with the opposing hue split into the two positions either side.

Examples

3-tone, analogous:  0,2,4

A 2-step analogous selection of 3 tones.

Examples

4-tone, square:  0,3,6,9

Chooses 4 hues in a square position on the wheel.

Examples

4-tone, rectangle:  0,2,6,8

Chooses 4 hues in a rectangular position on the wheel.  Gives more combinations than square.

Examples

4-tone, analogous:  0,2,4,6

A 2-step analogous selection of 4 tones.

Examples

The last of these examples is the color theme of this site!

Multi-tone

Any set of hues chosen at random from any location on the wheel.  So there will be no restrictions on hue but all colors chosen (at a specific time) will have the same pastel (saturation) value.

Multi-tone, 2-step:  0,2,4,6,8,10

Any set of hues chosen with the restriction that they are 2 steps apart.  The first hue will be chosen at a random position and that will then determine the positions of other hues allowed.  Thus 6 hues will be chosen.

Multi-tone, 1-step:  0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11

Like the above but with a 1-step restriction, allowing 12 hues to be chosen.  This looks similar to the unrestricted multi-tone but is subtly different and less random.

* Our eyes actually see colors according to a red-green-blue (RGB) format, and TVs and computer monitors output RGB.  But for some reason our minds convert this to RYB.