A monochromatic color scheme features two dominant hues. a. true b. false

The term “analogous” might be unfamiliar but the sight of an analogous color scheme is one you have definitely seen before. Analogous color schemes exist in the world all around us.

Before we look at examples of analogous color schemes and talk about why they work so well together, let's start with a definition.

An analogous color scheme is typically comprised of three colors that fall next to each other on the color wheel: the first is the dominant color, the second is the supporting color, and the third serves as an accent. Black, white, and gray can also be incorporated into any analogous color scheme. Additional colors can be used as long as they border each other on the color spectrum. Analogous color schemes occur heavily in nature and find frequent use in the traditional arts.

• Occurs in nature
• Comprised of neighboring colors
• Most commonly features three colors

To learn more about the different types of color schemes at your disposal as a filmmaker, be sure to read our articles on monochromatic, complementary, and triadic color schemes as well.

And be sure to download our free ebook How to Use Color in Film to further deepen your understanding of movie color design.

Analogous colors are commonly found in nature. Colors that neighbor each other on the color wheel have a comfortable, pleasant appearance when looked at side-by-side. Due to the high occurrence of analogous color scheme examples in real life, it only makes sense that analogous color schemes would be a popular color choice in traditional art forms as well.

Having an understanding of the way in which analogous color schemes function in traditional art will prove helpful and insightful when it comes to time to make use of analogous colors in your filmmaking career.

The following video offers an explanation and tutorial for using different analogous color schemes in the traditional arts.

Finding and choosing which colors to make up your analogous color scheme is an easy task. Simply refer to a traditional color wheel, pick your dominant color, and the other colors of your palette are already decided without you needing to do any extra work. Whichever dominant color you choose, your supporting colors will be found right next to it.

Using an analogous color scheme in a film can serve to replicate the natural world or can be used to convey a desired psychological effect. In the next section, we'll dive more into that concept.

The psychology of color can hold significant influence over a viewer’s response to an image. Certain colors can evoke particular subconscious reactions when utilized properly. To understand this subconscious relationship and learn how to make the best use of these psychological effects in storytelling, we need an understanding of color theory.

In this video, we look underneath the surface of one of cinema's most colorful directors: Wes Anderson. We explore how Anderson balances sad characters in a colorful world and how that juxtaposition creates a unique overall mood.

When utilizing colors for their psychological effects, a filmmaker can determine their own color associations as established within the film. Or they can rely on the pre-established associations for particular colors. Whether you realize it or not, certain colors evoke certain psychological responses in the human brain at a subconscious level.

These pre-determined associations have been reinforced throughout generations of storytelling for both the subconscious associations and for the thematic relevance. Refer to the helpful chart below for some of the most common responses associated with particular colors.

Analogous color schemes are usually pleasant and comfortable to look at. The colors on display in an analogous color scheme are harmonious and never clash with one other. This color pairing results in a unified image and is a great choice for when you want consistency on-screen without simplifying all the way down to a monochromatic color palette.

Let's take a tour of Stanley Kubrick's use of color, including his wondrous use of analogous colors.

The use of color in storytelling is boundless. It is true that there are plenty of films that disregard color as a creative choice. These are either filmmakers who don't value this facet of storytelling or opt instead for a color scheme that purely represents the real world and nothing more. 

But there are also countless examples of excellent films which make color a key element of their overall style and meaning. This tribute to color in storytelling showcases the power of meaningful color scheme choices.

It’s not just color grading that goes into a film’s color scheme but also the production design and other creative elements. Be sure to pay color the attention it deserves when making your own movies. 

Now that we know what an analogous color scheme is, let’s take a look at a few examples of analogous color palettes in films.

Children of Men is a great example of an analogous color palette providing a film with a unified look. In this case, that look is dark, dirty, and depressing, to reflect the reality of the film’s universe.

The color scheme of an overall film can change from scene to scene. This earlier scene from Children of Men still makes use of an analogous color scheme but uses a different color as the dominant focus of the palette. Notice how even the skin tones are tinted to match the color scheme of the scene.

Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic is another film that switches between different analogous color schemes depending on the scene. In Traffic, the different color tones distinguish the different locations and plotlines of the film, giving them their own distinctive flavor from one another.

Denis Villeneuve's color palette has show great variety within his films. His 2013 thriller Prisoners makes excellent use of an analogous color scheme to provide a unified, cold look for the film.

There are so many creative ways in which to use color in cinema. The different color palettes at your disposal are near-limitless. Explore more movie color palettes and explore the thematic and psychological effects of color in your own film projects, and continue learning about color theory with the rest of our articles on color schemes.

Now that we know the answer to the question, “what is an analogous color scheme?” you can further your education on color schemes by reading our article about cinematic color writ large. A knowledge of multiple types of color schemes is essential for any type of visual artist, and our guide to using color in film will round out your chromatic education.

Up Next: Color in Film →

In short, color is the visual byproduct of the spectrum of light as it is either transmitted through a transparent medium, or as it is absorbed and reflected off a surface. Color is the light wavelengths that the human eye receives and processes from a reflected source.

For the physics behind color, see the Primary Color Models page. This will REALLY help you understand how color works!

Color consists of three main integral parts:

1. hue
2. value
3. saturation (also called “chroma”)

Let’s start with “hue“

Hue is more specifically described by the dominant wavelength and is the first item we refer to (i.e. “yellow”) when adding in the three components of a color. Hue is also a term which describes a dimension of color we readily experience when we look at color, or its purest form; it essentially refers to a color having full saturation, as follows:

When discussing “pigment primaries” (CMY), no white, black, or gray is added when 100% pure.  (Full desaturation is equivalent to a muddy dark grey, as true black is not usually possible in the CMY combination.)

When discussing spectral “light primaries” (RGB), a pure hue equivalent to full saturation is determined by the ratio of the dominant wavelength to other wavelengths in the color.

Next, let’s look at the “value“

As is discussed on the “Elements: Value” page, value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. It indicates the quantity of light reflected. When referring to pigments, dark values with black added are called “shades” of the given hue name. Light values with white pigment added are called “tints” of the hue name.

Lastly, let’s look at “saturation,” or “chroma“

Saturation defines the brilliance and intensity of a color. When a pigment hue is “toned,” both white and black (grey) are added to the color to reduce the color’s saturation. In terms of the “additive” light color model, though, saturation works on a scale based on how much or how little other hues are represented in the color.

(NOTE: In the simple scale diagrams below, the first model indicates amount of black, white, or grey pigment added to the hue. The second model illustrates the same scale but explains the phenomenon based on light [spectral] properties.)

The HSV Color Scale

The scales above illustrate the value and saturation changes of a hue in the same way visually, although they explain what’s happening differently based on how pigment works vs. how light works. This is a fairly simple way of looking at it, but it still might not be completely clear. There is a more complex, 3-dimensional scale that allows us to look at how hue, saturation, and value intersect to create colors: the “HSV Scale.”

The HSV scale clearly stands for “Hue, Saturation, Value.” It does a better job at visually explaining the concept of light, and it is a very useful one to comprehend, as it is what most sophisticated digital color pickers are based on (including all Adobe software). Not only do graphic designers need to understand this color construct, but fine artists do as well since digital art and rendering has become such an integral part of art processes.

All Color Starts With Light

Regardless of the two Additive and Subtractive color models, all color is a result of how our eyes physically process light waves. So let’s start with the light Additive model to see how it filters into the Subtractive model and to see how hues, values and saturation interact to produce unique colors.

Hues

The three primary hues in light are red, green, and blue. Thus, that is why televisions, computer monitors, and other full-range, electronic color visual displays use a triad of red, green, and blue phosphors to produce all electronically communicated color.

As we mentioned before, in light, all three of these wavelengths added together at full strength produces pure white light. The absence of all three of these colors produces complete darkness, or black.

Mixing Adjacent Primaries = Secondary Hues

Making Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow

Although additive and subtractive color models are considered their own unique entities for screen vs. print purposes, the hues CMY do not exist in a vacuum. They are produced as secondary colors when RGB light hues are mixed, as follows:

1. Blue + Red light –> Magenta
2. Red + Green light –> Yellow
3. Green + Blue light –> Cyan

Overview of Hues

The colors on the outermost perimeter of the color circle are the”hues,” which are colors in their purest form. This process can continue filling in colors around the wheel. The next level colors, the tertiary colors, are those colors between the secondary and primary colors.

Saturation

Saturation is also referred to as “intensity” and “chroma.” It refers to the dominance of hue in the color. On the outer edge of the hue wheel are the ‘pure’ hues. As you move into the center of the wheel, the hue we are using to describe the color dominates less and less. When you reach the center of the wheel, no hue dominates. These colors directly on the central axis are considered desaturated.

Naturally, the opposite of the image above is to saturate color. The first example below describes the general direction color must move on the color circle to become more saturated (towards the outside). The second example depicts how a single color looks completely saturated, having no other hues present in the color.

Value

Now let’s add “value” to the HSV scale. Value is the dimension of  lightness/darkness.  In terms of a spectral definition of color, value describes the overall intensity or strength of the light. If hue can be thought of as a dimension going around a wheel, then value is a linear axis running through the middle of the wheel, as seen below:

To better visualize even more, look at the example below showing a full color range for a single hue:

Now, if you imagine that each hue was also represented as a slice like the one above, we would have a solid, upside-down cone of colors. The example above can be considered a slice of the cone. Notice how the right-most edge of this cone slice shows the greatest amount of the dominant red hue (least amount of other competing hues), and how as you go down vertically, it gets darker in “value.” Also notice that as we travel from right to left in the cone, the hue becomes less dominant and eventually becomes completely desaturated along the vertical center of the cone. This vertical center axis of complete desaturation is referred to as grayscale. See how this slice below translates into some isolated color swatches:

Color Pickers

With this explanation, it might be much easier to then understand how modern color pickers work. There are many types of color pickers, but this example will focus on the common Adobe software interface picker, continuing to use the red hue as the example below. By the way, relate the similarity of our cone-shaped red slice above to the “Select Color” window below to better visualize how this works.

In Figure-1 below, first notice the center vertical slider. This is where we select the hue. It is currently set to the lowest selection and corresponds to the “H:0” radio button value on the right. The “H” indicates “Hue,” and the zero value describes which numerical hue assignment we have selected. Below it, you will see that “Red” is set to “255,” or the fullest level of light represented on a computer (0 = lowest). Notice that Blue and Green are set to zero, indicating that Red is at its fullest level of saturation.

Next, notice where the picker circle is in the “Select Color” window. It is located at the top-right, indicating where on the scale you want the saturation to fall. As we said, the sample is equivalent to the purest red hue with full saturation, and it corresponds to the outermost edge of the color wheel. The “S:100%” on the right describes the level of saturation in the color we have selected, and the “B:100%” corresponds to the brightness, or value.

As a side note, notice that under the CMYK levels that Yellow and Magenta are basically equally represented at their fullest capacities. This supports how in the Subtractive Color Model, red is a secondary color of yellow and magenta.

Now, as a means of comparison, look at the next model. Do you see the difference?

In case you don’t see the difference, it is in the Hue number setting and where the slider is located. This is essentially the same hue as in the previous Figure-1, except that the setting has gone from 0 to 360. This is because we are basing it on the HSV cone model as illustrated earlier, and the hues at the top of the upside-down cone are in a full 360-degree circle. Thus, we have completed the circle by starting at the zero-level red and moving through the full visible spectrum to the same 360-level red.

To get a more complete picture of how this works, lets look at the RGB equivalent of  “cyan”, which is directly across from it on the color wheel, and is thus red’s complementary hue.

Notice that in Figure-3 that the hue setting is “180,” or located at 180-degrees on the color circle, half of 360. This is what numerically indicates the cyan is red’s complement. Also, you’ll notice that it is the secondary RGB color produced by mixing equal parts Blue and Green, where Blue=255, and Green=255. As a quick reminder of the basic color wheel to help you visualize, here is how cyan relates to red:

<< Previous Lesson | Next Lesson >>