Artists, art instructors and the color industry use the labels intensity, saturation and chroma interchangeably. I choose to use the term
intensity when I'm referring to the character of a hue and saturation to indicate the amount of hue present in a color. It's only from preference that I use "intensity" rather than "chroma" when discussing saturation of hue.
Low intensity is the one component of color most difficult to read, yet reading it accurately means everything if we are to keep out paintings in tune. When we learn to identify a low intensity color by its hue name rather than calling it a layman's term (such as beige, olive green, teal, etc.), we inform ourselves as to colors we need to use to translate it.
To help you do this, I've developed a little set of wheels I call the Intensity Mate Package™, free for you to download from the
eStore.
I show you how to use these in this week's video lesson,
Reading & Translating Intensity. Whether or not you do the video lesson, you might find the little Intensity Mates helpful in identifying the hue of those low intensity colors you see in your plein air painting, your studio work or for just plain fun.
P.S. Here are the answers to the puzzle:
Red--Green--Violet--Yellow--Blue--Orange--Yellow Green--Red Violet--Blue Green--Red Orange--Blue Violet--Yellow Orange