The market not controlled by the government: the black market

Very clear and easy to understand: in black and white

Special honours for a special or important person: the red carpet

To feel sad: to feel blue

Complicated official procedures and forms: red tape

The OK to start something: the green light

Having money: in the black

By surprise, unexpectedly: out of the blue

Jealous of someone else's good fortune: green with envy

Something that is not true but causes no harm: a white lie

Owing money, in debt: be in the red


Color: effect produced on the eye and its associated nerves by light waves of different wavelength or frequency. Light transmitted from an object to the eye stimulates the different color cones of the retina, thus making possible perception of various colors in the object.


The color wheel: the color wheel shows the primary colors, secondary colors, and the tertiary colors. It shows how colors are related. On a color wheel, each secondary color is between the primary colors that are used to make it.

Red, yellow and blue are the primary colors. Primary colors are the most basic colors. You can't make them by mixing any other colors. Orange, green and purple are the secondary colors. A secondary color is made by mixing two primary colors. For instance, if you mix red and yellow, you get orange.

Kinds of color wheels: three common color wheels are the artist's wheel, the subtractive wheel, and the additive wheel.

  • The artist's color wheel. This color wheel uses red, yellow, and blue as primary colors. This is used for mixing paints.

  • The subtractive color wheel. This color wheel uses the printing inks cyan, magenta, and yellow as primary colors. Note: Because cyan, magenta, and yellow inks do not combine to make black, the printing process adds black as a fourth ink.

  • Additive Color. This color wheel displays the additive colors used for projected light. When mixed together the additive primaries form white. The primaries are red, green and blue. These colors are extremely bright because light that is projected can be far more intense than printed color.


Value: value refers to te ligthness or darkness of a color.


Value, Tints and Shades: you cand find the values or a color by making its tints and shades. The light values are made by mixing color with white while the dark values are the ones which are made by mixing a color with black.


Analogous Colors: the analogous colors are tone ones which are sit next to each other on the color wheel. They tend to look pleasant together because they are closely related.


Mood: Colors are ofthen associated with moods. For example, we say "green with envy", "a blue mood".


Natural Color: artists use colors to create a variety of desired effects. For example: if the artists try to paint a building that appears to be far away, they could grayed the colors in other to create this effect.

Color Effects: when small dots of pure color are applied close together, the viewer's eyes mix te colors. Notice that each dot of pure color the artist has used looks bright, but when your eye mixes them they are subdued, almost neutral.


Black and White: Black is not a color; a black object absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflect non of them to the eyes. Whiste is a color, it reflects all the colors of the visible light spectrum to the eyes.

Color and Fend Shui: The Fend Shui divides colors in two, the ones which are cool and the ones which are warms. The cool colors have YIN energy, they are the purples, blues and freen; the black is the most YIN color. On the other hand, the warms colors hace YANG energy and they are the yellows, oranges and reds; and the hottes and most powerful YANG color is the red.