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An Introduction to Colour 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:
* links to The Colour Project
* lists of colours
* pigments and the issues they present for artists
* an overview of colour science and theory
* colourist painters.
* books about colour
* tips, techniques and tools for using colour
* organisations, websites and blogs focused on colour
This site - and the two linked sites listed below - arose out of The Colour Project on Making A Mark. New links are added on a regular basis. Please use the guestbook if you have any suggestions for additions to this lens. See also
- Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists identifies leading art books about colour and includes reviews of art books on colour - understanding colour, using colour, mixing colour.
- Colour science, systems and models - Resources for Artists. This is an introduction to the more technical and scientific aspects of colour. (Wikipedia references previously on this site have been transferred to this new one)
If you like this site please feel free to add a link to it on your website. You can also create a bookmark or link within various social network sites and/or e-mail this site to a friend who may find it interesting - see the right hand column
You can find out about.....
.....click a link to go straight to that topic
This table of contents was getting so long that I've now had to resort to section headings - these crop up as you scroll down as big headings in red lined boxes.
In each section, you'll find relevant blog posts from The Colour Project followed by links to aspects relating to that perspective and relevant books
- Making A Mark - Colour and Color
- Test your Colour IQ
- BOOKS: Learning About Colour
- A Scientific Perspective - How we experience colour
- A Materials perspective - colour in pigments, dyes and paints
- BOOKS: Understanding Dyes and Pigments
- A Classification Perspective - Sorting and naming colours
- BOOKS: Understanding more about specific dyes and pigments
- A Systems Perspective - ways of conceptualising colour
- BOOKS: Colour - Theory
- A Behavioural Perspective - Mixing Colours
- BOOKS: Using Colour
- VIDEO: A Painting Palette
- BOOKS: Mixing colours
- BOOKS: Mixing Colours
- BOOKS: Michael Wilcox and colour
- Colour as Symbol, Colour as Meaning
- A Cultural Perspective - artists and colour
- The Colour Project - everything else
- Comments and Suggestions
- New Featured Lenses
Making A Mark - Colour and Color
An online project for learning about colour
For the next two months I'm going to be focusing on colour with a view to becoming better at understanding and using colour. The idea is that I will:
* remind myself of what I do know - so it gets bedded down even further into the braincells
* then work out what I don't know and find out about as much of that as possible in the time.
* Plus along the way I hopefully identify all the things which currently I don't know I don't know about - and learn about those too!!!
- Making a Mark: Colour and Color - an online project
- An introduction to the project and what it covers.
- Making a Mark: Learning about Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #1
- This week, I'm producing a very brief synopsis of each book that I own. This which will cover:
* what the book is about (list rather than evaluation)
* what sort of audience it's aimed at
* whether it is a favourite of mine and whether I recommend it
Today we're focusing on Learning about Colour - and books which are primarily devoted to explaining about colour and/or provide an overview. - Making a Mark: Using Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #2
- Following on from yesterday's post about books which promote Learning about Colour, today's post is going to highlight some books which help to understand how to use colour.
- 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 materials perspective #1 - pigments and dyes
- This post provides a materials perspective on colour for artists and a basic overview of pigments and dyes. Pigments and dyes are a prime component of the colour used by artists - but
* Where do they come from?
* Which are 'old' colours and which are new?
* What or who creates them? - Making a Mark: Colour - pigments and related colours
- I want a table which tells me all about different colours - and relates pigment to colour names to chemical names and then explains what all that means. But can I find one on the internet? Well I've looked and no I can't! I can find lots of freely available material and some excellent and very informative links - but its all in chunks and I can't find a table which can be looked at offline.
So I'm going to try and produce one. My table will set out the following:
1. Pigment Groups - natural organic, synthetic organic, and inorganic -
2. Colour / pigment name (allocated to type of pigment group) - and then for each of these
3. Chemical Name
4. Comments abut its use in art
5. Links to relevant information - which can be opened when viewed online. - Making a Mark: Colour - naming dyes, pigments and paints
- This post is about naming pigments, dyes and paints. I've often heard it said that commercial considerations protect the secrets of how art media is made. I absolutely disagree - this is a fallacy and part of marketing hype. I'd like to highlight a different perspective - one which is very much consumer oriented and very much connected to the whole process of classifying and naming - and selling - pigments, colours and paints.
- Making a Mark: Complementary Colours and mixing neutral colours
- About complementary colours - how to identify them, what they are in different systems, principles for their use and what happens when you mix them.
- Making a Mark: Analogous Colours
- Analogous colours often don't get adequate coverage in many art instruction books or, as I've discovered, in websites generated by a browser enquiry. The information made available is often basic in the extreme. This post is an attempt to redress the balance - but it also recommends other sources of even better advice and information! I'm going to
* start by looking at the basics about analogous colours
* move on to some aspects which get referenced less often
* then point you in the direction of more information. - Making a Mark: Local Colour and Realism
- Before I move on to discuss strategies for colour schemes in producing artwork, it struck me that I needed to explain about 'Local Colour' and its role in art.
- Making a Mark: Colour Schemes: Split Complementaries, Triads and Tetrads
- Colour schemes are not just for interior designers, they also help visual artists to achieve unity, harmony as well as contrast and impact in the design and composition of paintings. I've already highlighted the characteristics of complementary colours and analogous colours and in this post I'll be highlighting three other colour schemes which are often used by professional artists:
* Split Complementary - a colour plus the two colours either side of its complementary colour (the isosceles triangle shape on the Color Wheel above
* Triad - any three colours which are equidistant on the colour wheel
* Tetrad - any four colours which are equidistant on the colour wheel - Making a Mark: Symbolic Colour
- Colour has meaning. Colour is symbolic. Colours remind us of things. Local colour is the colour which we see, while symbolic colour is the colour we need to interpret. This post provides an overview of some of the meanings of different colours - and the origins of some of those meanings.
- Making a Mark: Winsor & Newton - Notes on the composition and permanence of Artists' Colours
- Winsor and Newton publish a slim booklet titled Notes on the composition and permanence of Artists' Colours. It's only 24 pages long and cost me £1.33. However it is an absolute treasure trove of relevant information for all artists using their art media.
Test your Colour IQ
Why not test your Colour IQ?
- Xrite - Test your Colour IQ
- Test your color IQ
Drag and drop the colors in each row to arrange them by hue order.
This is a test based on Munsell - and the aim is to get a perfect colour score of zero
BOOKS: Learning About Colour
Books by and for artists on Amazon
Detailed book reviews of some of these will be appearing on my blog "Making A Mark" - starting in June 2008.
Colour
This is the BEST and most COMPREHENSIVE book about colour that I've come across to date. It's accessible but I think it likely that it might would be of most interest to colour nerds (like me)! However, if you've been interested by the content of my blog posts in the colour project and want to know more then this is the book to get. It expands on all topics relating to colour in every direction - it's highly recommended by me.
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Color by Betty Edwards: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors
This guide published in 2004 is by the bestselling author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. This is a primer for people wanting to learn more about colour written an author who focuses on making art theory and practice accessible. Of all the books concerned with learning about colour it's probably most suitable for those who are just starting to learn about colour.
Release Date: 09/23/2004
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Painter's Guide to Color
This book is good for people who want to produce coloured greys rather than mud! It's written by a well known contemporary artist who is also a very popular instructor. He provides an analysis of the painter's ideal palette and how it is organized with primary, secondary, and intermediate hues.
The major benefit of this new version of Quiller's take on colour is that in this one he's placed an emphasis on identifying lighfast and permanent colours and exploring what each colour does.
The guide explores value and intensity, complementary and analogous colors, harmonious and discordant colours, six colour families and the ways in which color can be used to evoke moods and express atmospheric conditions.
Release Date: 09/01/1999
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Artist's Color Manual: The Complete Guide to Working with Color
This is one of those books I'm glad I have and it's nicely laid out - but it is absorbing rather than stimulating. It's a good introduction to colours for those who don't want all the in-depth theory. It won 'Artist's Choice' art instruction book of the year in 1995.
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A Scientific Perspective - How we experience colour
What follows is all about the science behind how we experience colour
Colour - Scientific Perpsective
Making A Mark - The Colour Project
The former tend to get a lot of artists switching off just as they've opened the book or skipping that chapter and the latter mean would-be artists are not given the opportunity to learn. Either way, many artists can be left with no little or understanding at all of the basic principles about what colour is and how it works.
My own personal perspective is that it's very useful to understand some of the scientific basics about colour but it's probably best to avoid the physics lesson so long as people people know where to go to find out if they want to know more. I think it's also unhelpful and misleading to avoid any explanation at all since this can leaves people with incomplete and/or misconceived ideas about colour.
- 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
Colour - Companion sites - Resources for Artists
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Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists
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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 partici...
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Colour science, systems and models - Resources for Artists
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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...
Colour - article on Wikipedia
Color or colour (see spelling differences) is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others. 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. By defining a color space, colors can be identified numerically by their coordinates.
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.
- Visible spectrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Visible spectrum From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The visible spectrum (or sometimes called the optical spectrum) is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to (can be detected by) the human eye.
Definition - ArtLex on Colour
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
Colour - Value / Saturation / Intensity
- Munsell Color Space - A&Awiki
- This describes colour in terms of 3 factors:
Value - how light or dark a colour is, on a scale from black, to white
Hue - the "colour" - whether it's red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple
Chroma - how strong the intensity of the colour is - whether its weakly coloured or very strongly coloured. - 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.
A Materials perspective - colour in pigments, dyes and paints
What follows examines how colour used for art has been manufactured - then and now.
Colour - A Materials Perspective
Making A Mark - The Colour Project
Colour in paint comes from pigments and dyes. All media - oils, watercolours, acrylics, pastels and coloured pencils - are derived from the same pigments and dyes. What varies is the vehicle used to bind the pigment together.
Some pigments and dyes have been around for a very long time and some are modern and the result of recent manufacture. Some colour comes from organic or natural living sources and some comes from inorganic or 'dead' sources.
It's important to know that not all pigments behave in the same way. Consequently it is worth trying to understand a little bit more about the characteristics of different pigments.
- Making a Mark: Colour - a materials perspective #1 - pigments and dyes
- This post provides a materials perspective on colour for artists and a basic overview of pigments and dyes. Pigments and dyes are a prime component of the colour used by artists - but
* Where do they come from?
* Which are 'old' colours and which are new?
* What or who creates them? - Making a Mark: Colour - pigments and related colours
- I want a table which tells me all about different colours - and relates pigment to colour names to chemical names and then explains what all that means. But can I find one on the internet? Well I've looked and no I can't! I can find lots of freely available material and some excellent and very informative links - but its all in chunks and I can't find a table which can be looked at offline.
So I'm going to try and produce one......... (in draft - watch this space)
Colour - comments on pigments, paints, purity and permanence
Do you know about the impact of binders and fillers on colour and permanence?
Do you know who permanent the colour is in relation to its pigment parent?
These are all questions addressed by links in this section.
- 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 - 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.
- Pigments through the Ages - detailed pigment histories, recipes
- Pigments in painting. How artists have colored our lives.
- Winsor and Newton - Composition & Permanence Tables
- Composition and Permanence tables provide all the essential information on the composition, characteristics and permanence of our colour ranges.
This technical information is extremely important for any artist who is committed to producing paintings of the highest quality. For example,
* Permanence ratings will tell you how long your painting will last over the years...
* The Chemical description will tell you exactly what pigments make up your colour and...
* Transparency and Opacity ratings are key indicators to how your colour will perform when layering colour - Pigments and their Chemical and Artistic Properties
- A resources created by Julie C Sparks for a project on the Painted Word (Illuminated manuscripts). It provides an excellent overview of numerous pigments and colours. It is also capable of being printed.
- Handprint - Guide to watercolour pigments
- The colored links at the top of the screen take you to detailed information on modern watercolor pigments, based on evaluations of over 750 commercial watercolor paints - the most comprehensive watercolor paint information available on the Internet.
- Pigments For Making Artist's Paint by Tony Johansen
- Introduction Pigments for paint making
This page contains the pigment lists where you can find information on
the pigments you may use. There are also guides to the various terms
and classification systems you will find in the pigment lists. - Historic Artist's Pigments by Tony Johansen
- Historic pigments Obsolete colors
While a few obsolete pigments get a mention in the main lists because
they were so important or remain famous, there are many others not so
well known but which might be found in accounts of painting techniques. - Society Of Tempera Painters - Pigments
- The hazards presented by different types of pigments
- Colour experience - Natural Dyes and Pigments
- 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.
- handprint : earth pigments tour
- Earth pigments map
Last revised 08.01.2005
copyright 2005 Bruce MacEvoy - handprint : earth pigments tour
- Iron oxide or "earth" paint marketing names - yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, burnt umber, venetian red, mars violet - do not exactly stand for specific pigments or colors in the way that ultramarine blue or viridian do. They stand for a traditional color concept that each paint manufacturer interprets in their own way, using varieties of iron oxide with loosely defined chemical or color characteristics.
The sheer diversity of earth paints on the market today makes it hard to understand the basic color concept each type of pigment represents. This page explains the key differences and defining features. - Making a Mark: Winsor & Newton - Notes on the composition and permanence of Artists' Colours
- Winsor and Newton publish a slim booklet titled Notes on the composition and permanence of Artists' Colours. It's only 24 pages long and cost me £1.33. However it is an absolute treasure trove of relevant information for all artists using their art media.
- The Studio News - Archive - Pigments
- The earliest pigments were found naturally occurring in the earth's surface and include ochres, siennas, umbers, iron oxides, and terre verte. One of the first pigments, carbon black, is still used today in the form of vine, willow, and compressed charcoals.
- The Studio News - Archive - Toxic Shock
- Now that we know a little more about the longevity of our artist's pigments, let's discuss the longevity of the artist. Pigment poisoning can occur through inhalation or ingestion. Take a look at this consolidated overview of art materials and their hazards:
BOOKS: Understanding Dyes and Pigments
The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques: Fifth Edition, Revised and Updated (Reference)
An acclaimed and authoritative reference book of artist's materials and methods including the latest advances in new materials. It's been known as the "artist's bible" in the past. This 5th edition is posthumous.
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Dye Plants and Dyeing
A newly revised edition of the popular 1994 book, this clear account of plants from which natural dyes can be obtained will be welcomed not only by all who work with fiber arts but also by botanists. The authors have selected 48 plants from different parts of the world and they describe each plant's structure and cultivation, the history of each as a dye source, and the best method for a plant's use based on their own experiments. Most well-known dye plants are discussed, and each plant is beautifully illustrated by Gretel Dalby-Quenet in a full-page painting that shows the colors the plant can yield.
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Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments
This is a compact publication at an affordable price. Well-written, loaded with information, and with a rich assortment of illustrations.
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Color: A Natural History of the Palette
A popular perspective on the pigment and dye origins of different colours - and the associated stories and legends
Release Date: 12/30/2003
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High Performance Pigments
For chemists and technologists: High Performance Pigments have become increasingly important in recent years, with a growth rate well in advance of the more classical types of pigments. The book offers both producers and users of High Performance Pigments the opportunity to review and update their understanding of latest technologies and market issues impacting both inorganic and organic High Performance Pigments, together with an assemment of key regulatory affairs.
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A Classification Perspective - Sorting and naming colours
We need ways of defining colours and thinking about colours and we start with names
Colour - A Classification Perspective
Making A Mark - The Colour Project
Unfortunately, some manufacturers also provide paints with names which have nothing whatsoever to do with their ingredients!
This introduction will provide an overview of
* What's in a name? Why people get confused.
* How naming conventions developed
* How pigments and dyes are classified, named and numbered
* How paints are named - and why the names of colour paints can sometimes mislead
- Making a Mark: Colour - naming dyes, pigments and paints
- This is a perspective on current systems for naming paint/art media.
Colour - names and codes
international classifications and pigment and colour names and codes
- Colour Index International - Fourth Edition Online
- The SDC Colour Index. The definitive guide for anyone who needs to know details of which companies manufacture pigments and solvent dyes, or for anyone looking for technical details of these products, for use in the paint, plastics, ink or other industries.
- Colour Index International - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Colour Index International is a reference database jointly maintained by the Society of Dyers and Colourists and the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists. It was first printed in 1925 but is now published exclusively on the web. The index serves as a common reference database of manufactured color products and is used by manufacturers and consumers, such as artists and decorators.
Colorants (both dyes and pigments) are listed according to Colour Index Generic Names and Colour Index Constitution Numbers. These numbers are prefixed in Brazil and various other countries with C.I. or CI, for example, CI 15510. This abbreviation is sometimes thought to be CL, due to the font used to display the information. A detailed record of products available on the market is presented under each Colour Index reference. For each product name, Colour Index International lists the manufacturer, physical form, and principal uses, with comments supplied by the manufacturer to guide prospective customers. - Artist's Paint
- It's not always an industry itself that sees the need for standards development, but often consumers can see a gaping hole in standardization and move to remedy the situation. According to Mark Gottsegen, chairman of ASTM Subcommittee D01.57 on Artist Paints and Related Materials, "It was more an artists' need than an industry need" that drove the formation of that subcommittee in the late 1970s.
- The Colour experience - Glossary
- The Colour Experince Glossary of words related to colour.
- A Primer on Paint Labels - The Business of Being an Artist
- Information about paint labels
- Reading Paint Labels
- Paint labels: pigment name, chemical content, lightfastness and health rating, defined by Nita Leland, author of Exploring Color
- The NBS/ISCC Color System
- At the heart of the NBS/ISCC system is a standardized set of color terms. The color space is sliced into fifteen hues such as "yellow", "greenish yellow", "yellowish green", and so forth. Within each slice, degrees of saturation and brightness are specified by modifiers such as "vivid", "dark", and "pale".
- D01.57 Subcommittee on Artists' Paints and Related Materials
- ASTM D01.57, the Subcommittee on Artists' Paints and Related Materials, helps artists and consumers recognize product quality and safety when manufacturers' products conform to its Standards.
BOOKS: Understanding more about specific dyes and pigments
What Every Artist Needs to Know About: Paints and Colors
It's a good book for "improvers" who want to know more about the technical characteristics of pigments, paint production and paint characteristics.
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Blue: The History of a Color.
Bluehas a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. Once considered a hot color, it is now icy cool. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now pick it as their favorite color. In this entertaining history, the renowned medievalist Michel Pastoureau traces the changing meanings of blue from its rare appearances in prehistoric art to its international ubiquity today
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Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World
Offers a study of the color mauve--created in 1856 by eighteen-year-old English chemist William Perkin, who was working on a treatment for malaria in his home laboratory and accidentally discovered what became the most desired shade in fashion and ultimately led to the development of explosives, perfume, photography, and modern medicine.
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Indigo
Indigo dye is examined here at local and international level, in many aspects: historical; agricultural and botanical; chemical and technological; commercial and economic; indigos various uses in textiles; and its many sociological, medicinal, folkloric, and other connotations.
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Madder Red: A History of Luxury and Trade (Caucasus World)
Madder red is an ancient dyestuff, extracted from the root of the madder plant, growing in many countries around the world. The secret and devilishly complex Oriental dyeing process to obtain the lustrous colour known as Turkey Red was avidly sought by Europeans, from the time before the fall of Ancient Rome. It was finally cracked by the French about 1760, who were able to dye wool, silk and cotton bright red. After the lowlands of the Caspian Caucasus had been subdued by the Russians in the early 1800s, madder was cultivated there and rapidly became the main crop. The quest for Turkey Red went hand in hand with an avalanche of scientific research, which not only improved the yield of dyestuff from the roots but led to its chemical synthesis and in 1870 the collapse of the world-wide madder industry. Many of the nascent dye companies grew into chemical giants of our time.
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List of Colors - on Wikipedia
The following is a comprehensive list of colors that are included in the Wikipedia articles about color. Note that a large percentage of the color swatches below are taken from domain-specific naming schemes, such as X11 or HTML4. 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 the color management systems, built into operating systems and image editing software, can attempt such conversions as accurately as possible.
The HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) color space values, also known as HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) and the 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 the actual color swatches displayed below will vary, depending on many parameters, such as the properties of the display device, its color management settings and the viewing surround conditions.Viewing surround conditions, IPA.org
Note also that color naming is fuzzy and arbitrary, and varies among people and cultures; no single swatch is adequately representative of any particular color name. Additionally, computer displays have a 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
Links to Wikipedia categorisation
- 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.
A Systems Perspective - ways of conceptualising colour
What follows relates to all the different theories and models for thinking about colour and how it works - in different contexts
Colour - A Systems Perspective
Making A Mark - The Colour Project
* Hues: primary, secondary and tertiary colours
* How colours behave in a context (otherwise known as 'why the background matters!)
* How to represent colour relationships in space - how many different ways can you arrange colour relationships in different shapes in space (triangles, wheels and globes)
- Making a Mark: Hues - a systems perspective
- I have a simple test for deciding whether to look in any depth at any art book which has a section on the colour wheel. If it talks about colour and starts with a notion that there are three primary colours - red, blue and yellow - plus it has a very simple 3 primary, 3 secondary colour wheel then I generally put it down and reach for the next one.
I honestly believe that very many artists have failed to realise their potential because of a poor understanding of colour generated by weak explanations of colour analysis and the colour wheel in art instruction books.
Having said that, where do I go from here to try and remedy those perceived deficiencies? - Making a Mark: Describing a colour space - there's more than one colour wheel!
- Over time, many people have tried to develop ways of thinking about how colours relate to one another in space. I've been trying to learn more about this and also trying to find a way of making it all make sense to me.
My current Matrix of Theories about Colour Space is my third version - and I'm welcoming comments on it!
An overview of colour systems and theories
- Colour Order Systems in Art and Science (English, Fran%uFFFDais, German)
- Colour order systems in art and science
Virtual colour space
Colour and culture - Color Theory Tutorial by Worqx
- Color Worqx - Color Theory Overview
by Janet Lynn Ford - Basic color schemes: Color Theory Introduction
- Basic color shemes explained. the color wheel, warm and cool colors, tints shades and tones and more.
- Design & Color: A Bibliography of Resources
- Color in Art & Design: Color Symbolism & Color Theory
- The Dimensions of Colour
- The Dimensions of Colour
Basics of Light and Shade
Basics of Colour Vision
Additive Colour Mixing
Subtractive Colour Mixing
Colour Mixing in Paints
Hue
Lightness and Chroma
Brightness and Saturation
Principles of Colour
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
- lines and colors :: a blog about drawing, painting, illustration, comics, concept art and other visual arts » History of the Color Wheel
- It's been the subject of much discussion, some suggesting that it is misleading enough that it should be rethought entirely, but the color wheel remains the most common and convenient method for visually understanding and comparing the relationships of different hues.......
- Color Behavior - A&Awiki
- THE FACTS BEHIND COLOR BEHAVIOR and HOW TO APPLY SUCH KNOWLEDGE TOWARD BETTER, EASIER, AND FASTER COLOR MIXING By Bill Martin (WFMartin)
- Color + Design Blog / History Of The Color Wheel by COLOURlovers
- Description of early visual representations of colour theories including Newton's colour wheel
- Handprint - Artist's Value Wheel - in colour
- Charts the spectrum of different watercolour paints against a value scale
Handprint and the Colour Wheel
With those points in mind, I set out to make a visual color wheel adapted specifically to the needs of painters and graphic artists, and drawing on as many reliable sources as I could find. I think this is one of the best color wheels you will find for making both visual design and paint mixing decisions.
- 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. - handprint : an artist's color wheel
- an artist's color wheel
An earlier page described several modern color models, including the latest CIE color difference and color appearance models, and a later page explained how the hue circle from any color model can be used to create an artist's color wheel. - Artist's Colour Wheel (2006)
- a printer friendly (Adobe Acrobat PDF) version of the artist's color wheel (330K)
copyright Bruce MacEvoy 2006
BOOKS: Colour - Theory
Books on Amazon
Others which are useful - but generally reflect the author's perspective follow
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.
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Interaction of Color: Revised and Expanded Edition
Josef 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.
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Colour: A Workshop for Artists and Designers
David Hornung demystifies the phenomenon of colour and makes it accessible to the art and design student.
A manual for self-guided study as well as a handbook for directed study.
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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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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.
- Notebook - Color Systems
- [From: Harlan, Calvin. Vision & Invention, An Introduction to Art Fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1986.]
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! - Goethes Triangle Explanation
- Color Mixing and Goethe's Triangle
In Goethe's original triangle the three primaries red, yellow, and blue are arranged at the vertices of the triangle. The other subdivisions of the triangle are grouped into secondary and tertiary triangles, where the secondary triangle colors represent the mix of the two primary triangles to either side of it, and the tertiary triangle colors represent the mix of the primary triangle adjacent to it and the secondary triangle directly across from it.
A Behavioural Perspective - Mixing Colours
What follows is about what happens when we mix hues in different contexts
Colour - A Behavioral Perspective
* Complementary colours
* Analogous colours
* Local colour and its interpretation
* The dominance of triadic colours
* Partitive colours
* Simultaneous contrast
* Split complementary
* Warm and cool colours
- Making a Mark: Complementary Colours and mixing neutral colours
- How to identify complementary colours and how to mix them to make neutrals
- Making a Mark: Analogous Colours
- Analogous colours often don't get adequate coverage in many art instruction books or, as I've discovered, in websites generated by a browser enquiry. The information made available is often basic in the extreme. This post is an attempt to redress the balance - but it also recommends other sources of even better advice and information!
I'm going to
* start by looking at the basics about analogous colours
* move on to some aspects which get referenced less often
* then point you in the direction of more information. - Making a Mark: Local Colour and Realism
- Before I move on to discuss strategies for colour schemes in producing artwork, it struck me that I needed to explain about 'Local Colour' and its role in art.
- Colour Illusions - After-images: Reversing complementaries
- Colour comes to life in our explorations into the wonder, science and technology of colour.
BOOKS: Using Colour
Books by artists for artists on Amazon
Color in Contemporary Painting: Integrating Practice and Theory
Explains how to make use of colour in oil, acrylic and watercolour painting. Colour theories are outlined, but the main emphasis is on the way contemporary artists actually use colour. The book's thesis is that once artists have become acquainted with fundamental colour principles, they can begin to have fun with colour and play with it spontaneously. A number of approaches to colour are set forth as a guide, including building a picture with colour blocks, enriching colour with shadows, heightening colour intensity, achieving freshness with broken colour, painting with sunlight, experimenting with abstract colour systems, fantasizing with colour and creating space with colour. Each of the sections of this book are illustrated by the work of artists of historical importance as well as by the work of contemporary artists such as 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.
There are also a number of development studies of the author's own work. Each section closes with a group of suggested exercises.
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Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory
Internationally renowned artist and best selling author Stephen Quiller shows readers how to discover their own personal "color sense" in Color Choices, a book that offers readers a fresh perspective on perfecting their own color styles.
With the help of his own "Quiller Wheel," a special foldout wheel featuring 68 precisely placed colors, the author shows artists how they can develop their own unique color blends. First, Quiller 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.
This book is especially good at explaining about complementary colours, analogous colours, split-complementary and triadic colour schemes. It fills the gap left by other books..........
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Painting the Impressionist Landscape: Lessons in Interpreting Light and Color
The secrets of the impressionists' dazzling color are revealed in exercises based on the teachings of Charles Hawthorne, student of William Merritt Chase.
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Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light & Color
Many artists aspire to a vibrant, impressionistic style of painting. In this beautiful book, master painter Kevin Macpherson shows them the way. In his years of painting outdoors, Kevin Macpherson has developed an effective approach to capturing the glorious light and color of nature in oils.
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 12/09/2009)
Color Right from the Start: Progressive Lessons in Seeing and Understanding Color
Color Right from the Start carefully explains some sophisticated concepts and is written to give artists just the depth of knowledge they need to be well-informed.
it provides a familiar foundation for lessons on the color spectrum, why colors produce certain optical effects, what paints are made of, why they behave as they do when they're wet, when they're dry - and much more, all lavishly illustrated. If you want to construct your own color charts - color wheels for light and for pigments, and color-mixing "maps" - Hilary Page shows you how. If you want to test your pigments for their special properties - how the pigment particles settle on paper, how well the paint serves as a glaze or in wet-on-wet application - she tells you exactly how to proceed. In subsequent lessons, she focuses on each major hue, from gray to yellow and on through red and blue to green - primary colors, secondary colors, and neutrals.
Amazon Price: $19.95 (as of 12/09/2009)
Complementary Colour - article 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.
Complementary Colours - the Handprint perspective
- handprint : artist's color wheel (CIECAM version)
- Download the high quality PDF version of the Artists Colour Wheel
Last revised 08.01.2005 copyright 2005 Bruce MacEvoy - handprint : painting in neutrals
- The aim of this section is to get you to recognize grays, mix them reliably with paints, and use them effectively in design.
- handprint : an artist's color wheel
- We have to choose from among competing approaches when we build a color wheel. The easiest way to review these choices is to compare visual and mixing complements side by side, using the major "cool" pigments as the basis for comparison.
- handprint : painting in neutrals
- The chart below shows all the mixing complements between warm and cool watercolor pigments (from ultramarine violet BS to chromium oxide green).
Colour schemes and basic colour chords
Split complementaries, Triads etc
- Web Color Wheel - Split Complementary
- Copyright 2006 Mindy McAdams
These are sets of colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. Unlike simple complementary pairs, however, in a split you substitute the two colors on either side of the directly complemenatary partner color. There are 12 such combinations. Above, only four of the 12 are shown. - Color Harmonies: complementary, analogous, triadic color schemes
- A short description of the basic color harmonies: complementary, analogous, triadic and tetradic color schemes.
- Basic Color Theory, Monochromatic, Analogous, Split Complementary Colors
- Basic techniques for combining colors
Below are shown the basic color chords based on the color wheel.
Analogous Colours
- Fraphic Design - Lesson 9: Analogous colors
- Analogous colors are a palette of compatible color combinations that blend well together. They are neighbors on the color wheel. They tend to live harmoniously because they are relatives to each other.
- Color Wheel Pro: Classic Color Schemes
- Color Wheel Pro is a software program that allows you to create color schemes and preview them on real-world examples. Click here for Classic Color Schemes.
Color temperature - article on Wikipedia
Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, and other fields. The color temperature of a light source is determined by comparing its chromaticity with that of an ideal 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 and Wien's displacement law.
Higher color temperatures (5,000 K or more) are cool (blueish white) colors, and lower color temperatures (2,700?3,000 K) warm (yellowish white through red) colors.
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.
VIDEO: A Painting Palette
My Painting Palette by Karin Jurick
BOOKS: Mixing colours
books on Amazon
BOOKS: Mixing Colours
books on Amazon
BOOKS: Michael Wilcox and colour
books on Amazon
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.
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The Artist's Guide to Selecting Colors
This is a book about artists' paints: a guide to the selection of a suitable palette in watercolors, oil paints, acrylics, gouache or alkyds. It will enable you to identify the good, the indifferent and the bad. It also outlines the characteristics and temperaments of each color and lists the suitable as well as the unsuitable pigments that you will come across.
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Color Mixing Swatch Book
This pocket-sized guide to quick and accurate color mixing is an essential reference for artists of all media. Inside are 2,460 printed color mixes from 12 standard artist paints. Each page features the range you can get from any two of these colors.Artists can seek out the color they desire, identify the hues they need to mix and then instantly reproduce the color on their palette. They'll also find invaluable information about every color including the strength, transparency and handling qualities of the colors used to attain it.
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Mixing Greens (Colour Notes Series)
Without a doubt, the foremost color problem identified by artists lies in the mixing of greens. Unlike grays, oranges, browns and violets, greens present special challenges. This book helps artists and craftspersons mix greens easily.Using a simple step-by-step approach, readers are shown how to produce yellow-greens, blue-greens, bright, dull, vivid, opaque and transparent greens, as well as special variations from lightening and darkening to adding white paint and glazing.
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Perfect Color Choices for the Artist
Michael Wilcox offers an entirely new way of creating color harmony and contrast with Perfect Color Choices for the Artist. It's a complete artist's guide to selecting, mixing and using color.
Based on the way that colors in nature are related, this book teaches artists how to achieve perfect color in their art. Artists learn the color relationships of plants, animals and nature, and how to mix and apply those colors in their paintings.
Readers will find over 1,000 color arrangements and 400 illustrated examples, plus easy-to-follow instruction and guidelines for mixing and using color in any medium.
Recommended by Petra Voegtle
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Tips and techniques for artists working with colour
- 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 - Gamblin Artists Colors: Navigating Color Space (NCS)
- Navigating Color Space (NCS)
My Multi-Dimensional Approach to Color Mixing?by Robert Gamblin
Navigating Color Space is a DVD program I created on color mixing. By using 3D computer animation, I can best show painters how to access the universe of color, I call Color Space. The animated sequences demonstrate how to define a color by its attributes: value, hue and intensity (chroma). During the program, I demonstrate a few of the secrets of the Old Masters so you, too, will know how to mix green and red into blue. - Notebook - Il Libro dell' Arte - by Cennino D' Andrea Cennini
- NotebookNotebook, 1993- Il Libro dell' Arte - Cennino D' Andrea Cennini. The Craftsman's Handbook. The Italian "Il Libro dell' Arte." Translated by Daniel V. Thompson, Jr. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1933, by Yale University Press.Notes 1-50 Notes 51-124 Notes 125-162 Notes 163-283Second Sect
- lines and colors :: Blue and Green or is it?
- All of my studies of color and color theory have led me to the inexorable conclusion that the single most important rule of color is that the human perception of any color is almost entirely dependent on adjacent or surrounding colors.
This image shown here is one of the most striking illustrations of this principle I've seen.
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
- Poynter.org: Color Contrast & Dimension in News Design
- © Copyright 2001
The Poynter Institute
801 Third
Street South | St. Petersburg, FL 33701 | Phone (888) 769-6837
- Color Palette Generator
- Generate A Color Palette For Any Image
Color Field Painting
Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975
Smithsonian American art Museum
"Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975" is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Eighth and F Streets, NW, Washington, (202) 633-7970, through May 26 2008
- Wikipedia - Color Field
- Color Field painting is an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s after Abstract Expressionism and is largely characterized by abstract canvases painted primarily with large areas of solid color. An alternate but less frequently encountered term for this style is chromatic abstraction.
Color Field painting sought to rid art of superfluous rhetoric. Artists like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Zox, and others often used greatly reduced references to nature, and they painted with a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In general these artists eliminated recognizable imagery. Certain artists quoted references to past or present art, but in general color field painting presents abstraction as an end in itself. - Mark Rothko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Mark Rothko born Marcus Rothkowitz (Latvian: Marks Rotko); September 25, 1903-February 25, 1970) was a Latvian-born Jewish American painter and printmaker who is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he rejected not only the label but even being called an abstract painter.
- Tate | Glossary | Colour Field Painting
- Term originally used to describe the work from about 1950 of the Abstract Expressionist painters Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, which was characterised by large areas of a more or less flat single colour. 'The Colour Field Painters' was the title of the chapter dealing with these artists in the American scholar Irvine Sandler's ground-breaking history, Abstract Expressionism, published in 1970. Around 1960 a more purely abstract form of Colour Field painting emerged in the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and others. It differed from Abstract Expressionism in that these artists eliminated both the emotional, mythic or religious content of the earlier movement, and the highly personal and painterly or gestural application associated with it. In 1964 an exhibition of thirty-one artists associated with this development was organised by the critic Clement Greenberg at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He titled it Post-Painterly Abstraction, a term often also used to describe the work of the 1960 generation and their successors. In Britain there was a major development of Colour Field painting in the 1960s in the work of Robyn Denny, John Hoyland, Richard Smith and others.
(From Tate Glossary)
see website for examples of paintings and links to individual painters - ArtLex on Color Field Painting
- Color Field Painting, an art movement / style, defined with images of examples from art history, great quotations, and links to other resources.
Paintings with solid areas of color covering the entire canvas, as exemplified in the work of Mark Rothko (American, 1903-1970), Kenneth Noland (American, 1924-), and Jules Olitski (American, 1922-). A type of Abstract Expressionism, these artists were interested in the lyrical or atmospheric effects of vast expanses of color, filling the canvas, and by suggestion, beyond it to infinity. Most color-field paintings are large - meant to be seen up close so that the viewer is immersed in a color environment. - 'Color Field' Artists Found a Different Way : NPR
- Starting in the 1950s, a group of artists found new ways to create colorful, abstract works known as "color field" painting. They rarely used paint brushes and one of them couldn't even draw. A new exhibit celebrates their tradition-breaking techniques.
(About the exhibition at the Smithsonian) - Art Review | 'Color as Field'
- New York Times - Art Review | 'Color as Field'
Weightless Color, Floating Free
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: March 7, 2008 - MFA Boston: Exhibition - Color Field Painting
- This exhibition celebrates the considerable collection of color-field painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Used to describe works that were created in the United States between the mid-1950s and the 1970s, the term color-field painting evokes a large canvas seen as a field of color, often the result of thinned paint poured onto unprimed canvas. Works in the exhibition by representative color-field artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski are striking for their luminosity, where the canvas is emphasized as a textured, depthless color-field with geometric motifs highlighting its color intensity.
Colour as Symbol, Colour as Meaning
- Color symbolism and psychology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- In art and anthropology, color symbolism refers to the use of color as a symbol throughout culture. Color psychology refers to investigating the effect of color on human behavior and feeling.
A Cultural Perspective - artists and colour
What artists had to say about colour
artists' quotations
- Quotes from Artists on Colour
- Quotes From Artists On Colour
What famous artists have had to say about colour, how they see it and how they use it.
Artists particularly associated with colour
- Josef Albers
- JOSEF ALBERS
Barbara Krakow Gallery
FEBRUARY 7, 2004 - MARCH 24, 2004 - Art/Museums: Color Chart: Reinventing Color 1950 to Today at the Museum of Modern Art
- Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
March 2 - May 12, 2008 - Seurat's Science: Incorporation of Color Theory Into Studies
- Incorporation of Color Theory Into Studies
Seurat began to employ his knowledge of color theory before attempting to do so in La Grande Jatte, but this collection of studies and masterpiece most clearly exhibits the
Scottish Colourist Painters
- ::Welcome to the Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery::
- The Hunterian's important collection of Scottish Colourists consists of some hundred works. Highlights include Les Eus, one of Fergusson's most ambitious canvas showing six sculptural nudes dancing against a stylised background; Still-Life and Rosechatel, a magnificent example of the series of bold interiors Cadell painted at Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, between 1920 and 1927; some of Hunter's earliest known drawings, giving a fascinating insight into his otherwise little known Californian years; prints by Hunter and Fergusson, not represented in any other public collections; a group of ten Iona landscapes by Peploe and Cadell; and Peploe's New Abbey, Dumfriesshire (Summer), capturing a beautiful symphony of green, white and light blue.
- 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
- FCB Cadell's work
- National Galleries of Scotland - Paintings by Samuel J Peploe in the Collection
- Paintings by Samuel J Peploe
- Richard Green Gallery - Artist Detail - Samuel John Peploe
- Background to and images of Peploe's work
- Tate | Glossary | Scottish Colourists
- Glossary item plus examples of work
Blogs about Colour
- Color + Design Blog by COLOURlovers
- Color + Design Blog by COLOURlovers
- Gurney Journey: Color
- Gurney Journey
an excellent set (and series) of Blog posts about Color - from the daily weblog by James Gurney
This blog is for illustrators, comic artists, plein-air painters, sketchers, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums. - 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.
- See.Be.Draw. - Watercolour Resources
- These include a lot of sample colour charts and experiments mixing different watercolours
- A world of colour in blog form
- The official blog of the Society of Dyers and Colourists
- Art and Quilts, cogitations thereon: How d'you know what colours to choose?
- I'm in the midst of an interesting book on ?Colour in Art? by John Gage. It describes the many different ways artists have used to choose the colours in their work.
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
- National Gallery of Art - Henri Matisse and the Fauves
- Feature website focused on the Fauves - with slideshow of works
- Henri Matisse and the Fauves
- Maurice de Vlaminck, Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou, 1906, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, - Henri Matisse and the Fauves
- Fauve painters were influenced by several postimpressionist artists, especially Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. These painters had turned away from the impressionists' aim of capturing primarily visual effects of light and atmosphere.
The Colour Project - everything else
Organisations 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.
- AATCC Online
- AATCC is the world's leading not-for-profit professional association for the textile design, materials, processing, and testing industries.
- Society of Dyers and Colourists - About the SDC
- Society of Dyers and Colourists: The world's only professional society devoted exclusively to colour
- SDC ColourClick: Colour facts at your fingertips
- Welcome to the SDC ColourClick, a unique web-based service putting colour facts and information at your fingertips. It is a simple, easy-to-use tool that keeps you up-to-date with all the latest trends and developments and can provide a deeper insight into the fascinating world of colour.
- THE COLOUR GROUP (GREAT BRITAIN
- Home page of the Colour Group web site
- The Color Association - Color Trend Forecasts
- 315 West 39th Street, Studio 507 New York, NY 10018
Tel: 212 947-7774
Fax: 212 594-6987
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.
- CSS Color Module Level 3
BOOKS: Colour - technical, digital and graphic
books on Amazon
Colour: Del.icio.us bookmarks by Makingamark
Here are a selection of the sites I've bookmarked
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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Reply
- David Briggs David Briggs Apr 1, 2008 @ 6:13 am
- 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
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Reply
- makingamark makingamark Nov 27, 2007 @ 11:41 am
- 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!
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Reply
- Casey Klahn Casey Klahn Nov 27, 2007 @ 11:35 am
- 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.
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