Colour science, systems and models - Resources for Artists

Making A Mark - the Colour Project

an online project for learning more about colour

Making a Mark: Colour and Color - an online project

An introduction to the colour project and what it covers.

Making a Mark: Learning about Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #1

Reviews of books which provide an introduction to colour and on overview of colour theory

Making a Mark: Using Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #2

Reviews of books which focus on the use of 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 scientific perspective

What is colour? How do we experience colour? This post will focus on the science of colour - in simple terms:
* The defining characteristics of colour
* How colour is made
* How we see and think about colour

Making a Mark: 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.

Making a Mark: Colour - naming dyes, pigments and paints

My first awareness of colour names came with Michael Wilcox's book analysing watercolour paints The Wilcox Guide to the Finest Watercolours. This was the first time I realised that
* every pigment has an international classification and standardised name
* not every colour is what it says it is. In other words the names can continue even if the manufacturers has switched to using different pigments.
* some of the labelling of watercolour paint has been misleading (an understatement!)
* some manufacturers refuse to disclose which pigments are in their art media.

Making a Mark: Hues - a systems perspective

I touched on various systems for analysing colour in Colour - a scientific perspective. This week I'm going to try and cover the systems perspective in terms of:
* Hues: primary, secondary and tertiary colours
* 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)
* Colour harmonics - complementary colours, analogous colours etc

Making a Mark: Describing a colour space - there's more than one colour wheel!

this post is about a Matrix of Theories about Colour Space - which is the method I've adopted to categorise some of the people who have tried describe colour in terms of spatial relationships - to describe a colour space.

Making a Mark: Complementary Colours and mixing neutral colours

Complementary Colours are conventionally described as colours which are on the opposite sides of a colour wheel. However, as I demonstrated in Describing a colour space - there's more than one colour wheel! more than one shape has been used to describe colour relationships in space
- and there's also more than one colour wheel. So how do you work out what are complementary colours?

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

Try looking for definitions of 'local colour' on the web and you'll often find explanations rooted in literature, where interestingly it often seems to mean introducing aspects of local life which are distinct and different.

Making a Mark: Colour Schemes: Split Complementaries, Triads and Tetrads

n 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.

Games and Tools: Practice seeing colours correctly

Color - Method of Action

A color matching game. Check out your perception of hues, saturation, complementary colours, analogous colours, triads and tetrads. If you don't know what these terms are - read on and find out!

Color Scheme Designer 3

A designer tool for creating color combinations that work together well.

Accessibility Color Wheel

Accessibility Color Wheel - choose color combinations to improve the readability of your pages. This site really helps you to see the practical implications of your choice of colours for different aspects of websites and other contexts where you are using more than one colour.

The author says "The page with this tool helps to achieve that by analyzing the contrast of a color pair and showing how color-blind people see it. It simulates three kinds of vision deficiencies: deuteranopia,protanopia and tritanopia."

WebAIM: Color Contrast Checker

Color Contrast Checker
Simply select or enter a foreground and background color in RGB hexadecimal format (e.g., #fd3 or #f7da39). Select the lighten and darken options to modify the colors slightly. You can use the color picker to change colors or change luminosity.

The Perception of Colour

Color - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Color (or colour) is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, 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.

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

Color (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Colors are of philosophical interest for two kinds of reason. One is that colors comprise such a large and important portion of our social, personal and epistemological lives and so a philosophical account of our concepts of color is highly desirable. The second reason is that trying to fit colors into accounts of metaphysics, epistemology and science leads to philosophical problems that are intriguing and hard to resolve. Not surprisingly, these two kinds of reasons are related. The fact that colors are so significant in their own right, makes more pressing the philosophical problems of fitting them into more general metaphysical and epistemological frameworks.

Color - Method of Action

A color matching game

See if you can match up the hues, complementary colours plus analogous colours, triads and tetrads

A List of Colours

List of colors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following is a comprehensive list of colors that are included in the Wikipedia articles about color.
Contents: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
White - Pink - Red - Orange - Brown - Yellow - Gray - Green - Cyan - Blue - Violet
Web colors - Fictional colors - See also - Footnotes - References

Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (1969) (ISBN 1-57586-162-3) is a book by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. Berlin and Kay's work proposed that the kinds of basic color terms a culture has, such as black, brown or red, are predictable by the number of color terms the culture has.

Colour Theory - over time

Color theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the visual arts, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations. Although color theory principles first appeared in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti (c.1435) and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490), a tradition of "colory theory" began 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.

Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato - theories of colour

An interpretation of Pythagoras's teachings, which maintained that the root of all harmony was to be found in the positions of the planets between the earth and sphere of fixed stars; the linear arrangement of colours according to Aristotle, who was probably the first to investigate colour mixtures; and finally a personal intepretation of Plato's colour-system taken from his Timaios, according to which the eye does not receive light, but rather transmits a ray of vision towards an object.

Theory of Colours - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Theory of Colours is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1810. It contains some of the earliest published 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.

handprint : goethe's "zur farbenlehre"

Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – This is without a doubt one of the oddest "color theory" books available.

handprint : the geometry of color perception

Mapping the quantities of a physical stimulus onto color sensations is called psychophysics, and it was the earliest form of color specification.

handprint : the geometry of color perception - Newton's hue circle

Commentary on the discoveries documented in Newton's Opticks by the English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton (1642-1726)

Theory of Colours - comparison of Newton and Goethe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A table of the differences between qualities of lights according to the colour theory of Isaac Newton (1704) and that of Goethe (1810)

handprint : modern color theory (concepts)

This page introduces the conceptual basis of artists' "color theory" - the traditional body of lore applied by painters and photographers to the design and creation of images. The addition of "modern" indicates that I compare the traditional (and still popular) tenets of color theory to the answers provided by modern color science.

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.

Aron Sigfrid Forsius - originator of the first know colour system

If, however, the origin and the relationship of the colours are to be correctly observed, then one must begin with the five basic median colours, which are red, blue, green and yellow, with grey from white and black, and one must heed their grading, and whether they move nearer to the white because of their paleness or nearer to the black because of their darkness."

This is Forsius' own description of his fundamental thoughts about his system. The construction is, as far as we can tell, the first drawn colour-system.

Philipp Otto Runge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Runge's interest in color was the natural result of his work as a painter and having an enquiring mind. Among his accepted tenets was that "as is known, there are only three colors, yellow, red, and blue" (letter to Goethe of July 3, 1806). His goal was to establish the complete world of colors resulting from mixture of the three, among themselves and together with white and black.

Johannes Itten's Color Contrasts

Johannes Itten was one of the first people to define and identify strategies for successful color combinations. Through his research he devised seven methodologies for coordinating colors utilizing the hue's contrasting properties.

MAKING A MARK A Making A Mark Guide: Colour and Color

A Making A Mark Guide: Colour and Color by Katherine Tyrrell. The following publications are available as pdf files and can be downloaded for free for personal educational use only (see copyright notice below).

Making A Mark Guide - What is colour v1.1.pdf 302.3KB What is Colour? An introduction for artists to seven different perspectives on colour

Making A Mark Guide - Colour a Scientific Perspective v1.0.pdf 347.8KB An introduction for artists to a scientific perspective on how colour is made.

Making A Mark Guide - A Matrix of Colour Space Theories.pdf 141.5KB Table of colour theories organised by approach to colour theory

Value - darkness and lightness of colour

Lightness (color) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lightness (sometimes called value or tone) is a property of a color, or a dimension of a color space, that is defined in a way to reflect the subjective brightness perception of a color for humans along a lightness-darkness axis. A color's lightness also corresponds to its amplitude. Various color models have an explicit term for this property. The Munsell color model uses the term value, while the HSL color model and Lab color space use the term lightness

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
It covers: Hue, Value and Intensity

Colorfulness, Chroma and Saturation

Colorfulness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In colorimetry and color theory, colorfulness, chroma, and saturation are related but distinct concepts referring to the perceived 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.

Chromaticity

Chromaticity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chromaticity is an objective specification of the quality of a color regardless of its luminance, that is, as determined by its hue and colorfulness (or saturation, chroma, intensity, or excitation purity).

CIE 1931 color space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Colour Space

Color space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components (e.g. RGB and CMYK are color models). However, a color model with no associated mapping function to an absolute color space is a more or less arbitrary color system with no connection to any globally-understood system of color interpretation.

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.

CIE 1931 color space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the study of color perception, one of the first mathematically defined color spaces was the CIE 1931 XYZ color space, created by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) in 1931

MAKING A MARK A Making A Mark Guide: Colour and Color

A Making A Mark Guide: Colour and Color by Katherine Tyrrell. The following publications are available as pdf files and can be downloaded for free for personal educational use only (see copyright notice below).

Making A Mark Guide - A Matrix of Colour Space Theories.pdf 141.5KB Table of colour theories organised by approach to colour theory

Additive Colour - RGB Model

RGB = Red, Green, Blue

Additive color - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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. 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).

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.

Subtractive Colour Model

Subtractive color - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A subtractive color model explains the mixing of paints, dyes, inks, and natural colorants to create a full range of colors, each caused by subtracting (that is, absorbing) some wavelengths of light and reflecting the others. The color that a surface displays depends on which colors of the electromagnetic spectrum are reflected by it and therefore made visible.

Subtractive color systems start with light, presumably white light. Colored inks, paints, or filters between the viewer and the light source or reflective surface subtract wavelengths from the light, giving it color. If the incident light is other than white, our visual mechanisms are able to compensate well, but not perfectly, often giving a flawed impression of the "true" color of the surface.

Colour Space: HSL and HSV

Hue Saturation Value (HSV)

HSL and HSV - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HSL and HSV are the two most common cylindrical-coordinate representations of points in an RGB color model, which rearrange the geometry of RGB in an attempt to be more perceptually relevant than the cartesian representation.

CMYK Colour Model

a subtractive process

CMYK color model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The CMYK color model (process color, four color) is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key black. Though it varies by print house, press operator, press manufacturer and press run, ink is typically applied in the order of the abbreviation.

Dick Nelson: Tri -hue Demo

A demonstration of how mixing cyan, magenta, yellow and black - in terms of ration and percentage - can create an enormous number of different hues

What Is CMYK?

CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and key, or black) is a color mixing system. When compared to RGB, CMYK is better at...

CMYK - Defining CMYK 4-Color Process Printing

CMYK refers to four colors of ink used in printing.

CMYK support in The GIMP - ArchWiki

CMYK support in The GIMP Summary
This article will show how to enable rudimentary CMYK support in Gimp using the Separate and Separate+ plug-ins, and explain how to use color proof filter to soft-proof your ima

How to convert RGB files to CMYK files

How to Convert RGB to CMYK in Photoshop

The best way to Convert RGB files to CMYK using Photoshop.

SVG CMYK Color Codes

Scalable Vector Graphics CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-blacK) Color CodesThis page lists the CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-blacK) representation of color of the 147 colors defined by the Scalable Vector Graphics

CMYK Converter - Convert images between CMYK and RGB online

CMYK Converter painlessly converts your images between CMYK and RGB color profiles online.

Colour Models - Munsell Colour System

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

Munsell color system From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Munsell Display Calculator

Munsell Display Calculator. ... Interactive 3D Viewing of the Munsell Set. Click and drag on the images below to view the 3D models interactively. ...

The Munsell Color System - Color Models - Technical Guides

March 21, 2001 - The intuitive and influentioal color system developed by AH Munsell.

Triplecode - Munsell Palette

The Munsell system is different because it is based on how people perceive colors. At its core is a set of data from perceptual studies (done in the late ...

Albert Henry Munsell

One of the most widespread-and nowadays most utilised-colour-systems, this system was developed by the American painter Charles Munsell between 1905 and ...

Color Center - Color Handbook - Munsell Color System

Color Center: Munsell Color System. ... The Munsell Color System, developed in 1898 by American artist A. Munsell, is another commonly used color ...

Munsell colour system -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Britannica online encyclopedia article on Munsell colour system: method of designating colours based on a colour arrangement scheme developed by the ...

The Munsell Color System - Color Models - Technical Guides

March 21, 2001 - The intuitive and influentioal color system developed by A. H. Munsell.

Munsell Colour 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.

Test your color 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

Colour Models - The CIE Model

The CIE Color Models - Color Models - Technical Guides

March 21, 2001 - The international standard color model developed by the C.I.E. in 1931.

CIEXYZ - Color Models - Technical Guides

March 21, 2001 - The original CIE model using the chromaticity diagram adopted in 1931.

CIELAB - Color Models - Technical Guides

March 21, 2001 - A CIE model based on a different approach to color developed by Richard Hunter in 1942 that defines colors along two polar axes for color (a and b) and a third for lightness (L).

CIELUV - Color Models - Technical Guides

March 21, 2001 - A CIE color model composed in 1960 and revised in 1976. This model uses an altered and elongated form of the original chromaticity diagram in an attempt to correct its non-uniformity.

Lab color space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lab color space From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Lab color space is a color-opponent space with dimension L for lightness and a and b for the color-opponent dimensions, based on nonlinearly-compressed CIE XYZ color space coordinates.

Colour order systems and theories - an overview

Colour Order Systems in Art and Science (English, Français, German)

Colour order systems in art and science
Virtual colour space demonstrations
Colour and cultures

MAKING A MARK: Colour - naming dyes, pigments and paints

My first awareness of colour names came with Michael Wilcox's book analysing watercolour paints The Wilcox Guide to the Finest Watercolours. This was the first time I realised that
* every pigment has an international classification and standardised name
* not every colour is what it says it is. In other words the names can continue even if the manufacturers has switched to using different pigments.
* some of the labelling of watercolour paint has been misleading (an understatement!)
* some manufacturers refuse to disclose which pigments are in their art media.

html Colour Codes

Siggiez Giant Color Chart

colour names - plus Red Blue Green Codes - plus hex codes for website colours

Html Color Codes

Get HTML color codes for your website. Color chart, color picker and color palettes.

Web Color Chart - Hexadecimal - by VisiBone

Chart of 216 web-safe colors with hex HTML codes, fitting on one screen. Free swatch libraries and color scheme design lab. Printed HTML color charts available.

Color Charts - Webmonkey

The Web Developer's Resource (and my personal favourite!)

w3 schools - HTML Colors

Free HTML XHTML CSS JavaScript DHTML XML DOM XSL XSLT RSS AJAX ASP ADO PHP SQL tutorials, references, examples for web building.

HTML color codes

HTML valid color codes in hexidecimal and valid color codes for netscape and Internet Explorer

Hex Hub HTML Color Codes: Hexadecimal codes for named colors used in HTML page features

Color name; swatch; and red, green, and blue hexadecimal color codes for hundreds of colors for use in HTML Web page features or applications requiring color values for light

HTML Color Codes

HTML Color Codeswww.htmlcolorcodes.org
HTML Color Chart with 216 Web Safe HTML Color Codes

Organisations studying colour

THE COLOUR GROUP (GREAT BRITAIN

Home page of the Colour Group web site

Colour Palettes

Palettes by the Encyclopedia of Irish and World Art

Prehistoric Colour Palette: Artist Colours, Pigments Used by Stone Age Painters, Paleolithic Era

Prehistoric Colour Palette: Artist Colours/Pigments/Hues Used by Stone Age Painters: Chauvet, Lascaux Caves, Altamira

Egyptian Colour Palette: Artist Colours, Pigments Used by Painters in Ancient Egypt

Egyptian Colour Palette: Artist Colours/Pigments/Hues Used by Painters in Ancient Egypt

Colour Palette, Classical Antiquity: Artist Colours, Pigments Used by Painters in Ancient Greece, Rome

Classical Antiquity Colour Palette: Artist Colours/Pigments/Hues Used by Greek/Roman Painters

Renaissance Colour Palette: Artist Colours, Pigments Used by Painters in Venice, Florence, Rome

Renaissance Colour Palette: Artist Colours/Pigments/Hues Used by Fresco/Tempera/Oil Painters in Venice, Florence, Rome

Eighteenth Century Colour Palette: Artist Colours, Pigments Used by 18th Century Painters, Rococo, Neo-Classical

Eighteenth Century Colour Palette: Artist Colours/Pigments/Hues Used by 18th Century Rococo, Neo-Classical Painters

Nineteenth Century Colour Palette: Artist Colours/Pigments Used by Impressionist Painters, Expressionists

Nineteenth Century Colour Palette: Artist Colours/Pigments/Hues Used by 19th Century Painters, Impressionists Expressionists