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Read book reviews of Art Books about Colour
This site identifies leading art books about colour and includes art book reviews - for books about understanding colour, using colour, mixing colour.
It was created out of The Colour Project on Making A Mark and book reviews on the blogs of participating artists. It's linked to:
(1) Colour - Resources for Artists which is assembling links to information and advice about colour and how to understand and analyse it as an artist. This lens includes:
* lists of colours
* pigments and the issues they present for artists
* colour theory - and how different people explain it
* colourist painters.
* books about colour
(2)Colour science, systems and models - Resources for Artists. This is an introduction to the more technical and scientific aspects of colour.
New links are being added on a regular basis. Please use the guestbook if you have any suggestions for additions to this site.
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- Making A Mark - introduction to the Colour Project
- BOOKS: Learning About Colour
- Book Reviews: Learning About Colour
- BOOKS: Using Colour
- Books Reviews: Using Colour
- BOOKS: Mixing Colour
- Digital Art Books about Colour
- Book Reviews - Mixing Colour
- BOOKS: Colour Mixing 'Bibles'
- BOOKS: Pocket palettes
- Book Reviews - colour theory
- BOOKS: Colour theory
- The Colour Project - Other information sites
- Recent posts on Making A Mark
- Comments and Suggestions
Making A Mark - introduction to the Colour Project
- Making a Mark: Colour and Color - an online project
- This is a two month project about colour on my blog Making A Mark. It will include review of books on colour
Other bloggers are invited to participate in the project and in producing book reviews. - Making a Mark: Learning about Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #1
- Provides a synopsis of the books covered in Learning About Colour below. Indicates who each book is suitable for
- Making a Mark: Using Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #2
- Provides a synopsis of the books covered in Using Colour below. Indicates who each book is suitable for
- Making a Mark: What is Colour?
- I've come up with seven different ways of looking at and responding to the question "What is colour?"
* A scientific perspective - how we experience colour
* A materials perspective - pigments and dyes
* A classification perspective - naming chemical and paints
* A systems perspective - models for thinking about colour
* A behavioural perspective - mixing colours
* A cultural and symbolic perspective - in art history
* An experiential perspective - from representation to emotions - Making a Mark: Colour - a scientific perspective
- What is colour? How do we experience colour? This post will focus on the science of colour - in simple terms:
* The defining characteristics of colour
* How colour is made
* How we see and think about colour - Making a Mark: Book review: Multi Brand Color Chart for Pastels
- The Multi-Brand Color Chart for Pastels by Marie Meyer was published yesterday by Huechroval.
It contains a set of pages which analyze the colour of all the pastels tested - by hue, value and chroma (Intensity or saturation).
This is a very informative book prepared by somebody who has taken a great deal of care over its scope and the analysis undertaken. It deserves a place in the library of every serious pastel artist and I'm very happy to recommend it
BOOKS: Learning About Colour
Colour
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
This book provides a thorough grounding in colour theory as well as expert advice about putting the principles into practice. Beginning with an account of colour fundamentals and a history of colour theory, the author then explores in depth the four dimensions of colour and their application to compositions in various media. The final part of the book focuses on the psychological, symbolic and cultural aspects of colour.
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Color by Betty Edwards: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors
RECOMMENDED
This guide published in 2004 is by the best-selling author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It distills the enormous existing knowledge about colour theory into a practical method of working with colour to produce harmonious combinations.
This is a must-have primer for people wanting to learn more about colour by an author who focuses on making art theory and practice accessible.
Release Date: 09/23/2004
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What Every Artist Needs to Know About: Paints and Colors
Learn about the history of colour, how paints and colours are made, pigment characteristics, permanence and stability. Includes crucial information about how pigments perform in different media -- acrylics, oils, and watercolor.
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Painter's Guide to Color
RECOMMENDED
Provides an analysis of the painter's ideal palette and how it is organized with primary, secondary, and intermediate hues, the guide then explores value and intensity, complementary and analogous colors, the ways in which color can be used to evoke moods, express atmospheric conditions, and other essentials relating to color choice and usage. A range of master colorists' work is also included. A bound-in but conveniently removable color wheel is included with the book.
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Artist's Color Manual: The Complete Guide to Working with Color
RECOMMENDED
The publishers state that the Collins Artist's Colour Manual is aimed at painters in particular and creative people in general, but will also appeal to designers, art students and educators and all those with a creative interest in the visual world.
The topics include colour identification, colour mixing, a comprehensive buyer's guide and interviews on the practical application of colour theory with practising artists.
Amazon Price: $27.50 (as of 12/03/2008)
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Book Reviews: Learning About Colour
- Making a Mark: Learning about Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #1
- * Colour by Edith Anderson Feisner
* Colour by Betty Edwards
* Painter's Guide to Color By Stephen Quiller
* Artist's Color Manual: The Complete Guide to Working with Color by Simon Jennings
* What Every Artist Needs to Know about Paints & Colors By David Pyle - handprint : watercolor books - Painter's Guide to Color by Stephen Quiller
- Quiller's newest book, Painter's Guide to Color, is both a new and old revision of Color Choices. New, in the expanded information on color schemes and color mixing (including Quiller's latest color mixing wheel, the important concepts "color families" and "mother color," and the geometrical method for planning color mixtures); old, in the information on color value and saturation (the use of neutral colors to showcase saturated accents) - themes handled better, I think, by Jeanne Dobie.
BOOKS: Using Colour
Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
A book about discovering your own personal colour sense.
With the help of his own "Quiller Wheel," (a special foldout wheel featuring 68 precisely placed colors), Quiller shows artists how they can develop their own unique color blends. He demonstrates how to use the wheel to interpret color relationships and mix colors more clearly. Then he explains, step by step, how to develop five structured color schemes, apply underlays and overlays, and use color in striking, unusual ways. It has a very useful section at the end which reviews the Master Colorists
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Color in Contemporary Painting: Integrating Practice and Theory
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Charles Le Clair, author of The Art of watercolor, takes an in-depth look at the many ways color can be used in various types of painting. Colour theories are outlined and the book's thesis is that the reader must become acquainted with colour principles to use it spontaneously.
The main emphasis of the book is the way contemporary artists actually use colour - with examples of work by Milton Avery, Janet Fish, Richard Diebenkorn, Hans Hofman, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Wolf Kahn, Robert Rauschenberg, Harriet Shorr, Frank Stella, Wayne Thiebaud, and other artists whose style and subject matter cover a wide spectrum
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Making Color Sing
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Everybody who has ever read this this best-selling book seems to recommend it. Jeanne Dobie stimulates new ways of thinking about colour and generating responses that unlock personal creativity. Readers are provided with sets iof exercises and are shown how the interplay of complementary hues can trigger vibrations; how the push and pull of warm and cool colors can create a feeling of space; how to disguise one color in a scene to accent another plus many more tips about colour
Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 12/03/2008)
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Color Right from the Start: Progressive Lessons in Seeing and Understanding Color
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Painting the Impressionist Landscape: Lessons in Interpreting Light and Color
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Books Reviews: Using Colour
- handprint : watercolor books
- Reviews of books about color science & "color theory"
- Making a Mark: Using Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #2
- * Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory by Stephen Quiller
* Color in Contemporary Painting: Integrating Practice and Theory by Charles LeClair
* Making Colour Sing by Jeanne Dobie AWS NWS
* Color Right from the Start: Progressive Lessons in Seeing and Understanding Color by Hilary Page
* Painting the Impressionist Landscape: Lessons in Interpreting Light and Color by Lois Griffel - handprint : watercolor books - Color Choices by Stephen Quiller
- Color Choices by Stephen Quiller - Far and away the best book to explain and use a mixing color wheel. Most discussions of color stay at the level of generic color labels: "yellow and blue make green." Quiller has made the extra effort to precisely position over three dozen pigments (such as hansa yellow or ultramarine blue) on his mixing color wheel, then explains how to use the wheel to select an abstract color scheme (complementary, analogous, triadic, etc.) for your work. In this way he brings together the color wheel, paint selection and color design as a unified approach to color.
- Making a Mark: Analogous Colours
- Stephen Quiller has a brilliant section in Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory on analogous colours - which so often get a brief, basic and cursory coverage in other art books. I'm not going to try and explain it all to you here - I'm recommending you to go buy the book! By way of a taster, he covers:
* the full range of the analogous colour scheme
* using dominant and subordinate colour
* accent colours paired with neutrals and semi-neutrals
* analogous colours used in different colour-keys and intensities
Charles Le Clair has an interesting commentary on the use of analogous colour in contemporary art in Color in Contemporary Painting: Integrating Practice and Theory
BOOKS: Mixing Colour
Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green
I bought the original "Blue and Yellow don't make Green" a very long time ago. It opened my eyes to the chemical constituents of paint and influenced my buying decisions from then on. The book also influenced a lot of manufacturers practices as to the how artists' paint was formulated!
This revised edition of the original Blue & Yellow Don't Make Green--the first major breakaway from the traditional concepts of the three primary colors: red, blue and yellow--contains more than 80 pages of new information on the transparency and makeup of colors and includes many new color mixing swatches.
Amazon Price: $17.81 (as of 12/03/2008)
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How to Mix and Use Colour
34 popular colors are shown in terms of their mixing possibilities with 10 other colors. The characteristics and properties of each color are discussed, and color mixes are used and shown in actual paintings on the opposing pages. No matter what medium readers work in, they'll find comprehensive palette choices just for them. The book includes detailed instructions for: - Oils- Watercolor- Gouache- Ink- Soft Pastel- Oil Pastel- Acrylic- Egg Tempera
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Transparent Watercolor Wheel
With its unique fold-out color wheel, this book takes the guesswork out of mixing watercolors. By following the author's clear-cut guidelines, artists can avoid dull, muddy paintings and instead achieve glowing, luminous color in all their watercolors.
See also http://www.kosvanec.com/controllingtranswc.html
Amazon Price: (as of 12/03/2008)
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Choosing and Mixing Colours for Painting
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COLOUR, HOW TO SEE IT, HOW TO PAINT IT
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Digital Art Books about Colour
- The Principles of Harmony and ... - Google Book Search
- The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours
By Michel Eugène Chevreul, Charles Martel
A digital version of the original book which became the bible of Impressionist Painters
Book Reviews - Mixing Colour
- handprint : watercolor books - Transparent Watercolor Wheel by Jim Kosvanec
- Bruce McEvoy's review of
Transparent Watercolor Wheel by Jim Kosvanec
Retrieved from http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/book3.html#kosvanec - handprint : watercolor books
- Bruce McEvoy's review of
Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green (Second Edition) by Michael Wilcox
Retrieved from http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/book3.html#wilcox
BOOKS: Colour Mixing 'Bibles'
books from Amazon
Colour Mixing Bible
Mixing colors accurately is an art unto itself. This visual directory takes all the guesswork out of mixing colors with scores of tips of mixing with oils, acrylics, watercolors, inks, pastels, and more. Hundreds of color illustrations make everything simple. It also starts with a simple explanation about the science of colour
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Watercolour Artist's Colour Mixing Bible
Publisher: A visual guide to over 2000 mixes and glaze effects. This easy-to-use directory explains colour theory and demonstrates a range of mixing techniques. It features over 50 specially selected colours that, when used together with a basic palette, afford the artist more than 1000 mixing options. Each is shown as a variegated mix straight from the palette as well as with wet-on-wet additions on the paper. The special colours are also demonstrated as glazes over the 18 standard palette colours, giving another 1000 options. It provides up-to-date information on colour-fast and environmentally-friendly pigments. Inspirational examples show how to use a wide range of colour mixes to great effect.
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Acrylic Artists Colour Mixing Bible
Publisher: A visual guide to over 2000 mixes and glaze effects. This easy-to-use directory explains colour theory and demonstrates a range of mixing techniques. It features over 50 specially selected colours that, when used together with a basic palette, afford the artist more than 1000 mixing options. Each is shown as a pure mixture straight from the palette as well as with added white to produce a vast number of tint variations. The special colours are also demonstrated as glazes over the 18 standard palette colours, giving another 1000 options. It provides up-to-date information on colour-fast and environmentally-friendly pigments. Inspirational examples show how to use a wide range of colour mixes to great effect.
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BOOKS: Pocket palettes
books on Amazon
The Watercolor Painter's Pocket Palette
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The Oil Painter's Pocket Palette
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The Colored Pencil Artist's Pocket Palette
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Flower Painters Pocket Palette (Flower Painter's Pocket Palette)
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Flower Painter's Pocket Palette Book 2 (Flower Painter's Pocket Palette)
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Book Reviews - colour theory
- handprint : watercolor books - Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction by John Gage
- Bruce McEvoy's review of
Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction by John Gage
Retrieved from
http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/book3.html#top - handprint : watercolor books - Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Bruce McEvoy's review of
Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Retrieved from http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/book3.html#goethe - handprint : watercolor books - Interaction of Color by Josef Albers
- Bruce McEvoy's review of
Interaction of Color by Josef Albers
Retrieved from http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/book3.html#albers
BOOKS: Colour theory
books and Amazon
Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction
Color is fundamental to life and art yet so diverse that it has seldom been studied in a comprehensive way. This ground-breaking analysis of color in Western culture from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century is a John Gage triumph. With originality and erudition, he describes the first theories of color articulated by philosophers from Democritus to Aristotle and the subsequent attempts by the Romans and their Renaissance disciples to organize color systematically or endow it with symbolic power. The place of color in religion, Newton's analysis of the spectrum, Goethe's color theory, and the theories and practices that have attempted to unite color and music are among the intriguing topics this award-winning book illuminates.With a large classified bibliography, discursive footnotes, and an exhaustive index, Color and Culture is an invaluable resource for artists, historians of art and culture, psychologists, linguists, and anyone fascinated by this most inescapable and evocative element of our perceptions.
Amazon Price: $36.00 (as of 12/03/2008)
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Theory of Colours
In this classic of speculative science, the author of Faust provides a unique perspective on the nature of color. Although not scientifically accurate in light of current knowledge, it offers an invaluable exploration of color, art, aesthetics, and philosophy, marked by inimitable prose and stimulating ideas.
Amazon Price: $22.63 (as of 12/03/2008)
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Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition
osef Albers's Interaction of Color is a masterwork in twentieth-century art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers's unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience.
Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers.
This new paperback edition presents a significantly expanded selection of more than thirty color studies alongside Albers's original unabridged text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds. Now available in a larger format and with enhanced production values, this expanded edition celebrates the unique authority of Albers's contribution to color theory and brings the artist's iconic study to an eager new generation of readers.
Amazon Price: $10.88 (as of 12/03/2008)
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The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color
In this book, the world's foremost color theorist examines two different approaches to understanding the art of color. Subjective feelings and objective color principles are described in detail and clarified by color reproductions.
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The Elements of Color
This is the most complete document of one of the landmarks of modern education in art - the famous Basic Course at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. Itten was the teacher who organized it at the invitation of Walter Gropius. First published in 1963 when Itten was still alive, the book has been revised and updated by Itten's widow, Anneliese Itten, and includes new material from the basic course at the Bauhaus, as well as visual examples and descriptions of the refinements made by Itten in later course in Berlin and Zurich.
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The Colour Project - Other information sites
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Colour - Resources for Artists
-
What is colour? Do you know or do you want to learn more about colour and its use as an artist? This site provides links to information and advice about colour and how to understand and analyse it - and then use it as an artist. It includes: * l...
-
Colour science, systems and models - Resources for Artists
-
If you want to understand more about the science of colour, how it works and how people think (or thought) it works then this is the site for you. It is closely linked to: (1) a project about Colour on Making A Mark in June/July 2008 - and book revi...
Recent posts on Making A Mark
blog posts in the last week
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