Basically a color family such as Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Violet, and Orange. We can break these down further into Yellow-Green, Red-Orange, etc. Every color belongs to a color family, thus, every color has a “hue.”

The brightness or INTENSITY of a color. We also sometimes use the word SATURATED. Cadmium Red Light (for instance) straight from the tube is an example of high-chroma, saturated color. A low chroma color is generally a more NEUTRAL color such as a grey or earth tone color.

Degree of lightness or darkness of a color. The color (hue) is not important in this definition, only how light or dark the color is relative to white and black. (Think of a black and white photo of your painting).

The true color of an object, as opposed to the way it may appear in certain lighting conditions, at a distance, or in contrast with other colors.

When two (or more) objects are near each other, the color of each may be reflected on the other. Imagine an orange next to a white pitcher. The side of the pitcher may take on (reflect) some of the orange color.

Every color is either WARM or COOL. This can be confusing to new painters in particular because color can be in a warm hue family but be cool relative to another color in their family. For example, Quinachridone Red is in the family of Red (warm) but it is a cool color relative to Cadmium Red Light.

See color temperature charts on GAMBLIN website below.

Colors opposite each other on the color wheel. 

Three to four colors next to each other on the color wheel. Another way to darken or lighten a color is to add an analogous color.