Colour Unpacked: How Artists Use Hue, Tone, and Saturation

Think about the last time a colour stopped you in your tracks — a blazing red poster, a calm blue room, a grey rainy sky that matched your mood. Colour is never just decoration. It carries information, triggers emotions, and guides your eye around an image. Before we go further, try this: close your eyes and imagine a painting of a forest. Now imagine it in deep, shadowy greens versus bright, almost neon yellow-greens. Does the forest feel the same? Colour changes everything — and artists choose every shade deliberately. Today you will learn the vocabulary and ideas that let you talk about colour the way a practising artist does.