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Colour - Resources for Artists

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Colour - Resources for Artists

 

This lens is assembling links to information and advice about colour and how to understand and analyse it as an artist.  Also listed are various books concerned with colour.

It will provide support for a project about Colour on Making A Mark in 2008.  This will include:
* lists of colours
* pigments and the issues they present for artists
* colour theory - and how different people explain it
* colourist painters.
* books about colour

At present, this is very much a work in progress. New links are being added added on a regular basis.  Please use the guestbook if you have any suggestions for additions to this lens

Create a bookmark or link to be able to check back to this site - see the "save and share" section in the left hand column.

Do you have a friend who is interested in colour in art?  If you do why not e-mail this lens to them - click on the e-mail icon in the left hand column

Notes: 1. The authors of all images and text in all links posted here own the copyright. 2. The ads are not of my choosing - see modules below for

ArtLex on Colour 

Colour - Produced by light of various wavelengths, and when light strikes an object and reflects back to the eyes.

An element of art with three properties: (1) hue or tint, the color name, e.g., red, yellow, blue, etc.: (2) intensity, the purity and strength of a color, e.g., bright red or dull red; and (3) value, the lightness or darkness of a color.

When the spectrum is organized as a color wheel, the colors are divided into groups called primary, secondary and intermediate (or tertiary) colors; analogous and complementary, and also as warm and cool colors.

For more information see ArtLex on Colour

List of Colors - on Wikipedia 

s.]]

The following is a partial list of colors with associated articles. See also color names and the list of color topics.

Note that a large percentage of the color swatches below are taken from computer-domain-specific naming schemes such as X11 or HTML4 (see also web colors). RGB values are given for each swatch, because such standards are defined in terms of the sRGB color space. It is not possible to accurately convert many of these swatches to CMYK values, because of the differing gamuts of the two spaces. But color management systems built in to operating systems and image editing software can attempt such conversions as accurately as possible.

The HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) values, also known as HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness), and Hex Triplets (for HTML Web colors) are also given in the following table. Colors which appear on the Web-safe color palette?which includes the sixteen named colors?are noted. (Those four named colors corresponding to the neutral grays can be rendered with any Hue value, which is effectively ignored.)

The appearance of actual color swatches displayed below will vary depending on many parameters, such as the properties of the display device, color management settings, and the viewing surround conditions.

Note also that color naming is fuzzy and arbitrary, and varies between people and cultures; no single swatch is adequately representative of any particular color name. Additionally, computer displays have somewhat limited gamut, so many colorful pigments cannot be represented on screen at all, and computer simulation of the natural world is at best a rough approximation.

Categories of Colour - on Wikipedia 

Click the links to see a huge range of colours associated with each colour category - plus links for each colour which explains it.
Category:Shades of blue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of blue
Category:Shades of cyan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of cyan
Category:Shades of green - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of green
Category:Shades of yellow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of yellow
Category:Shades of orange - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of orange
Category:Shades of red - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of red
Category:Shades of pink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of pink
Category:Shades of violet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of violet
Category:Shades of gray - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of gray
Category:Shades of white - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of white
Category:Shades of brown - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Category:Shades of brown
Traditional colors of Japan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The traditional colors of Japan are a collection of colors traditionally used in Japanese Literature, textiles such as kimono, and other Japanese arts and crafts.

Colour - comments on pigments, paints and purity 

Is a paint what it says on the tube or the pan? Do you know what pigments are in which paints? Do you know the relative proportions of pigments to fillers in paint?
handprint : watercolor hue purity
hue purity of watercolor paints

This page publishes my calculations of the hue purity of generic watercolor paint pigments, as explained in the section on hue purity and optimal colors.This page includes CIELAB coordinates, averaged across all paint brands, for the pigments discussed
Handprint - Watercolour pigments
Detailed comments on various watercolour pigments including:
pigment CI name, pigment chemical name, paint marketing name, manufacturer and comments on how the paint rates

This information is provided for the following hues:
Magenta, red, orange, earth, yellow, green, blue, purple, and black
Pigments and their Chemical and Artistic Properties
Lists of pigments and analysis by: origina and history: how the pigments if made; what its chemical properties are sundry artistic notes (eg in relation to lightfastness and glasing properties)
Royal Talens - Lake Pigments
Lake pigments are dyes that have been made insoluble for certain liquid binders or thinners.
Royal Talens - Historic Dyes and Pigments
Many colours have names that have historical origins. For various reasons, such as poor lightfastness, hazards to health and environment, animal mistreatment, bleeding or other undesired properties, the original raw materials are no longer used for producing the pigments for the artists' paint.
Royal Talens - Madder lake and Alizarin
Thanks to developments in the 20th century, we currently have pigments with a high lightfastness and practically the same colour and transparency properties as the original madder and alizarin. Royal Talens has replaced most of these traditional pigments by real pigments (LF I = +++). The traditional colour names have been kept.
Royal Talens - Magenta
The colour name Magenta refers to a red-pink colour and is for example, printer's red. Due to the poor lightfastness of the lake pigment derived from the dye the colour these days is usually made on the basis of the highly lightfast pigment Quinacridone.

Colour and understanding its application - by and for artists 

These books really help you understand colour better.
Book reviews will be appearing on my blog "Making A Mark" in 2008.

Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory

Amazon Price: $14.71 (as of 05/09/2008)

Making Color Sing

Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 05/09/2008)

Painting the Impressionist Landscape: Lessons in Interpreting Light and Color

Amazon Price: $19.47 (as of 05/09/2008)

Color by Betty Edwards: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors

Amazon Price: $12.03 (as of 05/09/2008)

Exploring Color

Amazon Price: $16.49 (as of 05/09/2008)

Color Theory on Wikipedia 

In the arts of painting, graphic design, color printing, television, web design, and photography, color theory or colour theory (UK spelling) is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impact of specific color combinations. Although color theory principles first appear in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti (c.1435) and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490), a tradition of "colory theory" begins in the 18th century, initially within a partisan controversy around Isaac Newton's theory of color (Opticks, 1704) and the nature of so-called primary colors. From there it developed as an independent artistic tradition with only superficial reference to colorimetry and vision science.

Colour 

Color or colourSee American and British English spelling differences. is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue, black, etc. Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light energy versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects, materials, light sources, etc., based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra.

Typically, only features of the composition of light that are detectable by humans (wavelength spectrum from 400 nm to 700 nm, roughly) are included, thereby objectively relating the psychological phenomenon of color to its physical specification.

Because perception of color stems from the varying sensitivity of different types of cone cells in the retina to different parts of the spectrum, colors may be defined and quantified by the degree to which they stimulate these cells. These physical or physiological quantifications of color, however, do not fully explain the psychophysical perception of color appearance.

The science of color is sometimes called chromatics. It includes the perception of color by the human eye and brain, the origin of color in materials, color theory in art, and the physics of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range (that is, what we commonly refer to simply as Light).

How we experience colour - an overview 

handprint : colormaking attributes
This page addresses a single issue: how can we describe color experience? Because color occurs in the mind but is a response to light in the world, separate color descriptions are necessary for the external, physical light stimulus and the subjective color perception.
handprint : basic forms of color
This page and the next describe the "new testament" view of color perception in context with other colors and in more natural viewing situations. In modern terms, color is a context judgment of surfaces under light in space.

"Theory of Colours" by Goethe - on Wikipedia 

Theory of Colours (original German title, Zur Farbenlehre) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1810. The work comprises three sections: i) a didactic section in which Goethe presents his own observations, ii) a polemic section in which he makes his case against Newton, and iii) an historical section. It contains some of the earliest and most accurate descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.

Its influence extends primarily to the art world, especially among the Pre-Raphaelites. J. M. W. Turner studied it comprehensively, and referenced it in the titles of several paintings (Bockemuhl, 1991). Wassily Kandinsky considered Goethe's theory, "one of the most important works." .

Although Goethe's work was never well received by physicists, a number of philosophers and physicists have been known to have concerned themselves with it, including Arthur Schopenhauer, Kurt Gödel, Werner Heisenberg, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Hermann von Helmholtz. Mitchell Feigenbaum had even convinced himself that 'Goethe had been right about colour!' (Ribe & Steinle, 2002 ).

In his book, Goethe provides a general exposition of how colour is perceived in a variety of circumstances, and considers Isaac Newton's observations to be special casesPhysics Today July 2002. Goethe's concern was not so much with the analytic measurement of colour phenomenon, as with the qualities of how phenomena are perceived. Science has come to understand the distinction between the optical spectrum, as observed by Newton, and the phenomenon of human colour perception as presented by Goethe.

Colorfulness - on Wikipedia 

In colorimetry and color theory, colorfulness, chroma, and saturation are related concepts referring to the intensity of a specific color. Though this general concept is intuitive, terms such as chroma, saturation, purity, and intensity are often used without great precision, and even when well-defined depend greatly on the specific color model in use. More technically,

; colorfulness : is the perceived difference between the color of some stimulus and gray,

; chroma : is the colorfulness of a stimulus relative to the brightness of a stimulus that appears white under similar viewing conditions,

; saturation : is the colorfulness of a stimulus relative to its own brightness.Mark D. Fairchild. ?Color Appearance Models: CIECAM02 and Beyond?. Slides from a tutorial at the IS&T/SID 12th Color Imaging Conference. 9 November 2004. Retrieved 19 September 2007.

A highly colorful stimulus is vivid and intense, while a less colorful stimulus appears more muted, closer to gray. With no colorfulness at all, a color is a ?neutral? gray. With three attributes?colorfulness (or chroma or saturation), lightness (or brightness), and hue?any color can be described.

Image:Surfing in Hawaii.jpg|Original image

Image:Surfing in Hawaii (retouched).jpg|Contrast and saturation increased

Colour - Theory 

Theory of Colours

Amazon Price: $19.80 (as of 05/09/2008)
List Price: $30.00

Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition

Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 05/09/2008)
List Price: $15.00

Colour

Amazon Price: $21.60 (as of 05/09/2008)
List Price: $24.00

Colour

Amazon Price: (as of 05/09/2008)
List Price: $35.05

Digital Colour in Graphic Design

Amazon Price: $64.95 (as of 05/09/2008)
List Price: $64.95

Hue - on Wikipedia 

are cyclically rotated with time.]]

Hue is one of the three main attributes of perceived color, in addition to lightness and chroma (or colorfulness). Hue is also one of the three dimensions in some colorspaces along with saturation, and brightness (also known as lightness or value). Hue is that aspect of a color described with names such as "red", "yellow", etc.

Usually, colors with the same hue are distinguished with adjectives referring to their lightness and/or chroma, such as with "light blue", "pastel blue", "vivid blue". Notable exceptions include brown, which is a dark orange,C J Bartleson, "Brown". Color Research and Application, 1 : 4, p 181-191 (1976). and pink, a light red with reduced chroma.

In painting color theory, a hue refers to a pure color?one without tint or shade (added white or black pigment, respectively). A hue is an element of the color wheel.

Complementary Colour - on Wikipedia 

Complementary colors are pairs of colors that are of ?opposite? hue in some color model. The exact hue ?complementary? to a given hue depends on the model in question, and perceptually uniform, additive, and subtractive color models, for example, have differing complements for any given color.

RYB Color Model on Wikipedia 

RYB (an abbreviation of red-yellow-blue) is a historical set of subtractive primary colors. It is primarily used in art and design education, particularly painting. It predates modern scientific color theory.

Subtractive Colour - on Wikipedia 

, a French pioneer of color photography. The overlapping, subtractive yellow, cyan and red (magenta) image elements can clearly be seen.]]

A subtractive color model explains the mixing of paints, dyes, inks, and natural colorants to create a range of colors, where each such color is caused by the mixture absorbing some wavelengths of light and reflecting others. The color that an opaque object appears to have is based on what parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are reflected by it, or by what parts of the spectrum are not absorbed.

Subtractive color systems start with white light. Colored inks, paints or films placed between the viewer and the light source or reflective surface (such as white paper) subtract wavelengths from this white, and make a color.

Conversely, additive color systems start with no light (black). Light sources add wavelengths to make a color. In either an additive or a subtractive system, three primary colors are needed to match humans' trichromatic color vision (caused by the three types of cone cells in the eye).

Additive Color - on Wikipedia 

An additive color model involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort. The additive reproduction process usually uses red, green and blue light to produce the other colors. See also RGB color model. Combining one of these additive primary colors with another in equal amounts produces the additive secondary colors cyan, magenta, and yellow. Combining all three primary lights (colors) in equal intensities produces white. Varying the luminosity of each light (color) eventually reveals the full gamut of those three lights (colors). Computer monitors and televisions are the most common application of additive color.

Results obtained when mixing additive colors are often counterintuitive for people accustomed to the more everyday subtractive color system of pigments, dyes, inks and other substances which present color to the eye by reflection rather than emission. For example, in subtractive color systems green is a combination of yellow and blue, in additive color, red + green = yellow and no simple combination will yield green. It should be noted that additive color is a result of the way the eye detects color, and is not a property of light. There is a vast difference between yellow light, with a wavelength of approximately 580 nm, and a mixture of red and green light. However, both stimulate our eyes in a similar manner, so we do not detect that difference. (see eye (cytology), color vision.)

James Clerk Maxwell is credited as being the father of additive color. He had the photographer Thomas Sutton photograph a tartan ribbon three times, first with a red, then green, then blue color filter over the lens. The three images were developed and then projected onto a screen with three different projectors, each equipped with the corresponding red, green, or blue color filter used to take its image. When brought into register, the three images formed a full color image, thus demonstrating the principles of additive color.

Colour Models - The Primary Colour Scheme (RYB - Red, Yellow, Blue) 

handprint : do "primary" colors exist?
For the past 400 years, the drug of choice to combat the headachy symptoms of color complexity and substance uncertainty has been the primary color scheme.

The painter's three primary colors are the foundation of academic "color theory" (which is not really a theory), and some art school graduates develop a rigid attachment to primary colors and the formulaic approach to color mixing that goes with them. So it seems surprising to ask ... do "primary" colors exist? Even more surprising to learn that the answer is - no!

Colour Models - The RGB (Red, Green, Blue) Colour System 

The RGB (CMY) Color Model - Color Models - Technical Guides
March 21, 2001 - The Red, Green, Blue additive color model and its association with the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow subtractive color model.

Colour - Value / Saturation / Intensity 

Color Saturation and Intensity: Art Studio Chalkboard
Color has value. This is the darkness or lightness of a particular color. We can divide these value changes into SHADES and TINTS.

Shades are the relative darkness of a color and Tints are the relative lightness of a color. These divisions are created by darkening or lightening the PURE HUE. This is the base color at its full INTENSITY.

It is important to note Intensity of a color here because a value of, lets say, red can be the same as a medium TONE of that same color. A Tone can be the same value, but can be grayed in such a way that it is not at the highest degree of Intensity. The Pure Hue has the highest SATURATION of color. This is illustrated in the middle ring of the Color Wheel above. The outer ring of TINTS illustrates what happens to a Pure Hue when white is added. The center section of SHADES shows the effect of black on the Pure Hue.
Click the link to read on plus see the charts
Value (colorimetry) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Value (colorimetry) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Value is a measure of where a particular color lies along the lightness-darkness axis. A color's value is its amplitude. Various color models have an explicit term which places the color on a scale from utter black to pure white. The HSV color model and Munsell color model have an explicit value, while the HSL color model calls this parameter lightness instead.

In the HSV and Munsell color models, a color with a low value is nearly black, while one with a high value is the pure color.

The image shows three "colors" in the Munsell color model. Each color differs in value from top to bottom in equal perception steps. The right column undergoes a dramatic change in perceived color.

In subtractive color, i.e. paints, value changes can be achieved by adding black or white to the color.
Grayscale and Planar Values: Art Studio Chalkboard
As light hits a plane it creates a value. This is the relative degree of light or shadow on the form. Value changes as a plane is in less or more direct influence of the light source.

Color Models - Hue, Saturation, Value/Lightness - on Wikipedia 

HSL and HSV are two related representations of points in an RGB color space, which attempt to describe perceptual color relationships more accurately than RGB, while remaining computationally simple. HSL stands for hue, saturation, lightness, while HSV stands for hue, saturation, value.

HSI and HSB are alternative names for these concepts, using intensity and brightness; their definitions are less standardized, but they are typically interpreted as synonymous with HSL.

Both HSL and HSV describe colors as points in a cylinder whose central axis ranges from black at the bottom to white at the top with neutral colors between them, where angle around the axis corresponds to ?hue?, distance from the axis corresponds to ?saturation?, and distance along the axis corresponds to ?lightness?, ?value?, or ?brightness?.

The two representations are similar in purpose, but differ somewhat in approach. Both are mathematically cylindrical, but while HSV (hue, saturation, value) can be thought of conceptually as an inverted cone of colors (with a black point at the bottom, and fully-saturated colors around a circle at the top), HSL conceptually represents a double-cone or sphere (with white at the top, black at the bottom, and the fully-saturated colors around the edge of a horizontal cross-section with middle gray at its center). Note that while ?hue? in HSL and HSV refers to the same attribute, their definitions of ?saturation? differ dramatically.

Because HSL and HSV are simple transformations of device-dependent RGB, the color defined by a (h, s, l) or (h, s, v) triplet depends on the particular color of red, green, and blue ?primaries? used. Each unique RGB device therefore has unique HSL and HSV spaces to accompany it. An (h, s, l) or (h, s, v) triplet can however become definite when it is tied to a particular RGB color space, such as sRGB.

Both models were first formally described in 1978 by Alvy Ray Smith, though the concept of describing colors by these three dimensions, or equivalents such as hue, chroma, and tint, was introduced much earlier.

Color Models - The Munsell System - on Wikipedia 

In colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three color dimensions, hue, value (lightness), and chroma (color purity or colorfulness). It was created by Professor Albert H. Munsell in the first decade of the 20th century.

Several earlier color order systems had placed colors into a three dimensional color solid of one form or another, but Munsell was the first to separate hue, value, and chroma into perceptually uniform and independent dimensions, and was the first to systematically illustrate the colors in three dimensional space.Kuehni (2002), p 21 Munsell's system, and particularly the later renotations, is based on rigorous measurements of human subjects' visual responses to color, putting it on a firm experimental scientific basis. Because of this basis in human visual perception, Munsell's system has outlasted its contemporary color models, and though it has been superseded for some uses by models such as CIELAB (L*a*b*) and CIECAM02, it is still in wide use today. Landa (2005), pp 437?438,

Colour Models - Munsell Colour System 

"Munsell modeled his system as an orb around whose equator runs a band of colors. The axis of the orb is a scale of neutral gray values with white as the north pole and black as the south pole. Extending horizontally from the axis at each gray value is a gradation of color progressing from neutral gray to full saturation. With these three defining aspects, any of thousands of colors could be fully described. Munsell named these aspects, or qualities, Hue, Value, and Chroma."
Adobe Technical Guide
Welcome to the Munsell Color Science Laboratory
Academic laboratory dedicated to research and education in color science, based at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Munsell color system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Munsell color system, showing: a circle of hues at value 5 chroma 6; the neutral values from 0 to 10; and the chromas of purple-blue (5PB) at value 5. ...
ColorAcademy 2004 - Munsell

The Munsell System on Amazon 

Color Models - The CMYK System - on Wikipedia 

CMYK (short for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black),The ?K? in CMYK stands for key, as in four-color printing, cyan, magenta, and yellow printing plates are carefully keyed or aligned with the key line of the black key plate. Some sources suggest that the ?K? in CMYK comes from the last letter in ?black?, for instance Mark Galer and Les Horvat (2002). Digital Imaging: Essential Skills. Focal Press. and Simon Jennings (2003). Artists Color Manual: The Complete Guide to Working with Color. Chronicle Books. However, such explanations are likely inaccurate, plausible inventions of authors unfamiliar with traditional printing technology. Mark Gatter (2005). Getting It Right in Print: Digital Pre-press for Graphic Designers. Laurence King Publishing. and often referred to as process color or four color) is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, also used to describe the printing process itself. Though it varies by print house, press operator, press manufacturer and press run, ink is typically applied in the order of the abbreviation.Press Operator (interview) October 27, 2006. Dynagraphics.

The CMYK model works by partially or entirely masking certain colors on the typically white background (that is, absorbing particular wavelengths of light). Such a model is called subtractive'' because inks ?subtract? brightness from white.

In additive color models such as RGB, white is the ?additive? combination of all primary colored lights, while black is the absence of light. In the CMYK model, it is just the opposite: white is the natural color of the paper or other background, while black results from a full combination of colored inks. To save money on ink, and to produce deeper black tones, unsaturated and dark colors are produced by substituting black ink for the combination of cyan, magenta and yellow.

Colour Models - The CIE Model 

"The CIE color model was developed to be completely independent of any device or other means of emission or reproduction and is based as closely as possible on how humans perceive color. The key elements of the CIE model are the definitions of standard sources and the specifications for a standard observer."
Adobe
Adobe: The CIE Color Models - Color Models - Technical Guides
The international standard color model developed by the C.I.E. in 1931.

Colour analysis 

Livelygrey: fun color games
Fun color games This is a collection of 9 interactive color games. Or rather, exercises disguised as games. These exercises aim at providing some fun while at the same time helping you to learn how to classify colors.
Gamblin Artists Colors: Navigating Color Space (NCS)
My Multi-Dimensional Approach to Color Mixing?by Robert Gamblin
Gamblin Artists Colors: Color Temperature by Name
Colours analysed by hue, value, chroma and hue temperature.
Gamblin Artists Colors: Color Temperature by Color
Color temperarture by hue, value, chroma and hue temperature
Gamblin Artists Colors: Color Glossary
Glossary of colour terms - hue, value, chroma and hue temperature
Brightness, saturation and hue (Livelygrey)
Livelygrey - Trying to make sense of color
Brightness vs. Whiteness »Brightness, saturation and hue
Before we proceed into the depths of color, let's first cover some of the basics.
Effective color communication depends on the proper use of language.
The Munsell Color System - Color Models - Technical Guides
March 21, 2001 - The intuitive and influentioal color system developed by A. H. Munsell.

The Colour Wheel 

handprint : an artist's color wheel
This page presents my own color wheels, the result of considerable study. My understanding of the problems involved has changed over the past several years, so I present both the wheel originally published in 1999, and the version I developed in 2006.

Both wheels show the color appearance locations of all major watercolor pigments in use today. Both wheels are based on visual complementary colors. The wheels differ in their chroma scaling of all colors, and in the spacing and visual complements assigned to blue and violet colors.
Art Studio Chalkboard: Color Wheel and Color Complements

Colour organisations and academic bodies studying colour 

The Colour Group (Great Britain) - Bibliography
Bibliography about colour - split between science and art
Colour Imaging Group
The Colour Imaging Group focuses on postgraduate education and research in colour imaging. The Group is based in the School of Printing and Publishing at London College of Communication.
Welcome to the Colour Society of Australia Inc.
Explore new concepts with The Colour Society of Australia. Discover the importance of colour and its application from a multitude of disciplinary perspectives.
The SDC Colour Museum, Bradford
Colour comes to life in our explorations into the wonder, science and technology of colour. Learn how colour, light and dyes play a vital role in our every day lives. Delve into dye and fashion history or discover the myth and meaning behind your favourite colours.

Tips on colour for artists 

ArtLex on Color
Color in life and art, defined with images from throughout art history, great quotations, and links to other resources.
Gurney Journey: Color Wheel Masking, Part 1
Gurney Journey: a daily weblog by James Gurney is for illustrators, comic artists, plein-air painters, sketchers, animators, art students, and writers.

Today I'd like to introduce an approach to color that I've been developing over the last 10 years. I'm very excited about it, and I'd love to know your reactions. I call it "Color Wheel Masking." I'm going to show you a practical method that you can use to accurately describe any color scheme that you see.
Gurney Journey: The Shapes of Color Schemes
Gurney Journey: a daily weblog by James Gurney is for illustrators, comic artists, plein-air painters, sketchers, animators, art students, and writers.

any color scheme can be represented or mapped as a shape on a color wheel
Color Theories - The Good, the Bad and the Useless
An excerpt from "Gouache For Illustration" by Rob Howard - Watson-Guptill, NY
Gurney Journey: From Mask to Palette
Gurney Journey: a daily weblog by James Gurney is for illustrators, comic artists, plein-air painters, sketchers, animators, art students, and writers.

This is the third post in a Sunday series about a method called color wheel masking. The first post showed how color masks can help to analyze color schemes, and the second post explored different shapes of masks.

In this post I'll demonstrate how to actually mix the colors you have chosen for a given painting

Tools for working with colour 

Colour Confidence > Small Greyscale and Colour Separation Guide
Colour Confidence, Colour Management Shop, ICC Profiling

Small Greyscale and Colour Separation Guide ? quality and accuracy in image reproduction
The Small Greyscale and Colour Separation Guide is a Q13 equivalent quality control device for photographers, printers and other colour professionals. The twenty-step Greyscale offers an accurate, easy way to compare tonal values in an original image with its reproduction, while the set of eighteen colour patches (two saturations of nine colours) allows users to compare the colour of their subject with known printing colours.
Colour Confidence > Checker charts – colour references and white and grey balancing for photographers
Colour Confidence, Colour Management Shop, ICC Profiling

Mixing Colours 

The Art of Colour Mixing

Amazon Price: (as of 05/09/2008)

Michael Wilcox's books on colour on Amazon 

Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green

I bought "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

Amazon Price: $17.81 (as of 05/09/2008)

The Artist's Guide to Selecting Colors

Amazon Price: (as of 05/09/2008)

Color Mixing Swatch Book

I've done my colour swatches!

Amazon Price: (as of 05/09/2008)

Mixing Greens (Colour Notes Series)

Amazon Price: (as of 05/09/2008)

Perfect Color Choices for the Artist

Amazon Price: (as of 05/09/2008)

Fauvism 

Fauvism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
an article on Fauvism
Henri Matisse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
article about Henri Matisse - one of the Fauves
André Derain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
article about André Derain - one of the Fauves
Famous Artists Gallery: Andre Derain
A painting by Andre Derain: The Turning Road, Lestraque - 1906
Famous Artists Gallery: Henri Matisse
A painting by Henri Matisse: Still Life with Green Sideboard - 1928

Scottish Colourist Painters 

Scottish Colourists were influenced by the Impressionsists and have in turn influenced contemporary Scottish art.
The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow - "Colourists"
Art Collections - 118 records in the art collections match "colourist"
These are mainly Scottish Colourists.
Scottish Colourists - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scottish Colourists - a short item
National Galleries of Scotland - Paintings by FCB Cadell in the Collection
National Galleries of Scotland - Paintings by Samuel J Peploe in the Collection
Richard Green Gallery - Artist Detail - Samuel John Peploe
Background to and images of Peploe's work

Blogs about Colour 

Livelygrey
Livelygrey - Trying to make sense of color
Rational Color
Rational Color - To have an arena whose purpose is to learn and share as opposed to gripe and fight sounds almost too good to be true.

Colour temperature 

handprint : color temperature
Blue mountains are distant from us, and so cool colors seem to recede.
J.W. von Goethe
The concept of color temperature or warm and cool colors is important to artists yet often poorly understood. This page provides an in depth review of the topic.

Color temperature - on Wikipedia 

x,y chromaticity space, also showing the chromaticities of black-body light sources of various temperatures (Planckian locus), and lines of constant correlated color temperature.]]

Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in photography, videography, publishing and other fields. The color temperature of a light source is determined by comparing its chromaticity with a theoretical, heated black-body radiator. The temperature (usually measured in kelvin (K)) at which the heated black-body radiator matches the color of the light source is that source's color temperature; for a black body source, it is directly related to Planck's law.

Colour - software for artwork 

Artellmedia Inc. - The Fine Art Software Company
Fine art software with the groundbreaking real time(tm) color study tools. This technology is tailor made for artists, art teachers, and visual art students
Artellmedia Products
G-Lab Color Wheel

Computer colour management 

Basic Color Theory for the Desktop - Technical Guides
March 21, 2001 - An overview of color theory: the nature of color and the factors that determine how we perceive it.
Color Management Systems - Technical Guides
A Color management system (CMS) helps to reduce or eliminate color-matching problems and makes color portable, reliable, and predictable.
Colour Names supported in html
List of colour (color) names supported in HTML and how to use colour numbers if one of the predefined names is not what you want.

Books on Colour - technical, digital and graphic 

Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color

Amazon Price: (as of 05/09/2008)

Color: Messages & Meanings: A Pantone Color Resource

Amazon Price: $25.99 (as of 05/09/2008)

Digital Colour in Graphic Design

Amazon Price: $64.95 (as of 05/09/2008)

Color Design Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design

Amazon Price: $26.40 (as of 05/09/2008)

Recent posts on Making A Mark 

Read about art and making a mark on my blog

Katherine Tyrrell writing about: - Making marks with pastels, pencils and pen and ink - Creating new drawings and paintings - Influences on developing both artwork and art careers - Interviews with artists - Information about resources for artists and art lovers ....and best viewed in Firefox

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Comments and Suggestions 

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David Briggs

I hope you find my own new site of interest,launched late last year

The Dimensions of Colour
http://www.huevaluechroma.com

In any case I also have a lot of colour links on my teaching website that you are welcome to make use of:

http://djcbriggs.googlepages.com/colourlightandvision

Posted April 01, 2008

makingamark

Thanks Casey - you need to go and tussle with Wikipedia then. That's the great thing about WikiP - you can contribute if so minded.

I found I left some of their links out of the Wikipedia modules as I couldn't stand their existing introductions!

Posted November 27, 2007

Casey Klahn

Wonderful and thorough, Katherine. I will add my comments here over time. I do like that you post temperature near the bottom, as it gets too much attention, IMO.
I do disagree with Wikipedia's use of the term "subtractive" in reference to the Red, Blue, Yellow theory.

Posted November 27, 2007