Visual impact of colours in various painting media: oil paint, watercolour, pastel, and digital art

Abstract

This study explores how different painting media – oil paint, watercolour, pastel and digital art – affect visual perception through colour manipulation. A total of 160 painting images, representing each medium, were used in a psychophysical experiment involving 10 colour emotion scales. These scales measured attributes including warm/cool, heavy/light, modern/classical, clean/dirty, passive/active, hard/soft, relaxing/tense, fresh/stale, feminine/masculine and like/dislike. Thirty observers with normal colour vision participated in the study. Principal component analysis revealed that among the 10 colour emotion scales, only the “like/dislike” scale showed a wide distribution of data points in the principal component plots. This dispersion indicates a significant effect of painting category on colour preference within the images. The experimental results also indicated that different painting categories were associated with distinct primary colour emotions that influenced liking. These findings highlight how painting medium/style shape the visual impact of colours, particularly in terms of preference.