Varieties of the color blue may differ in hue, chroma (also called saturation, intensity, or colorfulness), or lightness (or value, tone, or brightness), or in two or three of these qualities. Variations in value are also called tints and shades, a tint being a blue or other hue mixed with white, a shade being mixed with black. A large selection of these various colors is shown below.
In this section, the term tint is used in its technical sense as used in color theory, meaning a blueish color mixed with white or light gray.
Shown in the right is the color periwinkle, or periwinkle blue. Another name for this color is lavender blue. The color is a mixture of white and blue. It is named after the Periwinkle flower and is also commonly referred to as a tone of light blue.
The web color powder blue is shown on the right.
The first recorded use of powder blue as a color name in English was in 1774.
The web color light blue is displayed in the color box at right. Variations of this color are known as sky blue, baby blue, or angel blue. Within the X11 color system, with a hue code of 194, this color is closer to cyan than to blue.
Blue is the colour between violet and green on the optical spectrum of visible light. Human eyes perceive blue when observing light with a wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometres. Blues with a higher frequency and thus a shorter wavelength gradually look more violet, while those with a lower frequency and a longer wavelength gradually appear more green. Pure blue, in the middle, has a wavelength of 470 nanometres. In painting and traditional colour theory, blue is one of the three primary colours of pigments, along with red and yellow, which can be mixed to form a wide gamut of colours. Red and blue mixed together form violet, blue and yellow together form green. Blue is also a primary colour in the RGB colour model, used to create all the colours on the screen of a television or computer monitor.
The modern English word blue comes from Middle English bleu or blewe, from the Old French bleu, a word of Germanic origin, related to the Old High German word blao. The clear sky and the deep sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the blue wavelengths are scattered more widely by the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and more blue comes to our eyes. Rayleigh scattering also explains blue eyes; there is no blue pigment in blue eyes. Distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called atmospheric perspective.
Blue was an adventure travel magazine, founded in 1997 by Amy Schrier, with David Carson as the original design consultant. Its focus was on global adventure travel. It was published in New York and is now out of print; its last issue was February–March 2000.
The cover of its first issue was included in a list of the Top 40 magazine covers of the last 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors. In 1999 Life magazine listed it in the Best Magazine Photos of the Year. The New York Times characterized it as "not your father's National Geographic."
Blue Gender (Japanese: ブルージェンダー, Hepburn: Burū Jendā) is a 26-episode anime created, co-directed and co-written by Ryōsuke Takahashi (of Armored Trooper Votoms and Gasaraki fame) broadcast in Japan from 1999-2000. Blue Gender was created by the Japanese animation studio, AIC and is distributed in the United States by Funimation Entertainment. In 2003, Blue Gender was released on American television as part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, though it had originally been planned for Toonami, and was thus edited to remove its graphic violence, nudity, and sex scenes (however, its airing on Colours TV and Funimation Channel in the United States). There is also a compilation movie (Blue Gender: The Warrior) available on DVD with an alternative ending. The series was also shown on the Sci Fi Channel in the UK in 2002-2003. The Blue Gender series is set in the 2030s, in which Earth has been overrun by the Blue, which are mutated insect-like creatures containing a newly evolved B-cell that recently appeared in several humans, including the main protagonist, Yuji Kaido, that kill and harvest humans for food. Most of the surviving human race has moved to Second Earth, a huge space station that orbits the planet. The series mostly focuses on Yuji and Marlene's relationship as they work together to reach Second Earth and their participation in military combat operations against the Blue.
The Silverwing Book Series is a series of books by Kenneth Oppel featuring the adventures of a young bat, Shade. The books are commonly assigned in the curriculum of upper elementary and middle school grades in Canada.
The great war between the birds and the beasts happened approximately 65 million years before the story (at the end of the dinosaurs). The bats, seeing themselves as being both, but neither, refrained from fighting. At the end of the war, the two warring factions banished the bats. They could not see the sun again because they refrained. The war is based upon a fable by Aesop called "The Birds, the Beasts and the Bat."
In color theory, a tint is the mixture of a color with white, which increases lightness, and a shade is the mixture of a color with black, which reduces lightness. A tone is produced either by the mixture of a color with gray, or by both tinting and shading. Mixing a color with any neutral color (including black, gray and white) reduces the chroma, or colorfulness, while the hue remains unchanged.
In common language, the term "shade" can be generalized to furthermore encompass any varieties of a particular color, whether technically they are shades, tints, tones, or slightly different hues; while the term "tint" can be generalized to refer to the any lighter or darker variation of a color (e.g. Tinted windows).
When mixing colored light (additive color models), the achromatic mixture of spectrally balanced red, green and blue (RGB) is always white, not gray or black. When we mix colorants, such as the pigments in paint mixtures, a color is produced which is always darker and lower in chroma, or saturation, than the parent colors. This moves the mixed color toward a neutral color—a gray or near-black. Lights are made brighter or dimmer by adjusting their brightness, or energy level; in painting, lightness is adjusted through mixture with white, black or a color's complement.
Living Colour is an American rock band from New York City, formed in 1984. Stylistically, the band's music is a creative fusion influenced by heavy metal, punk rock, funk, jazz, hip hop and alternative rock. Their lyrics range from personal to political.
Living Colour rose to fame with their debut album Vivid in 1988. Although the band scored a number of hits, they are best remembered for their signature song "Cult of Personality", which won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1990. They were also named Best New Artist at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards. After disbanding in 1995, Living Colour reunited in late 2000.
English-born guitarist Vernon Reid had formed a number of bands, and after a few years, he formed Living Colour in New York in 1984. Reid assembled a number of bands under the name Living Colour from 1984 to 1986. They grew out of the Black Rock Coalition, a non-profit organization founded by (among others) Reid for black musicians interested in playing rock music. Reid was well known on the downtown New York jazz scenes because of his tenure in Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society.
So here I am
Just a man with his empty hands
Right here I'd go down on my knees
And offer submission
If it made my grey skies blue
So hear my call
Well, it won't make no difference at all
Right here I would speak any vow
And promise I'd give
If it made my grey skies blue
I know that I have a habit
Of taking things too hard
How often you've almost got mad about that
Well, I know what you mean
When you say things are never as bad as they seem
Although I don't really think
That you are truly right
Every word I'll deny
If I get through this night
So here I am
Just a man with his empty hands
Right here I'd go down on my knees
And offer submission
If it made my grey skies blue
So hear my call
Well, it won't make no difference at all
Right here I would speak any vow
And promise I'd give
If it made my grey skies blue
Sometimes I wonder
Why we try to plan anything at all
It never works out
And life goes on its own secret ways
When I feel like I'm losing my grip
I remind you still saying
"Those days won't last forever,
I swear you'll be back under skies of blue"
Well, I know what you mean
When you say life is not as unfair as it seems
Although I don't really think
That you are truly right
Every word I'll deny
If I get through this night
So here I am
Just a man with his empty hands
Right here I'd go down on my knees
And offer submission
If it made my grey skies blue
So hear my call
Well, it won't make no difference at all
Right here I would speak any vow
And promise I'd give