Color Theory History

Color Theory History By Adrian and Kris4na Color Spectrum and the 1700’s • Isaac Newton • Our modern theory of light and color started with Newton. • He was the first person to really understand how a rainbow was made and the first to make a color wheel. • The understanding of color theory started with Newton in the 1660’s doing different experiments. An important experiment that Newton performed was seng up a prism by a window as the sunlight hit the prism the prism projected a color spectrum. Color Spectrum and the 1700’s •Color Wheel Model • The prism experiment helped Newton built a concept of what is known as the color wheel. • He arranged colors around the circumstance of a circle (boPom leQ), this helped ar4sts because it arranged the primary colors opposite to their complementary colors. • Claude Boute’s color model (right) was the first to represent Newton’s idea. Tobias Mayer and the 1700’s • In 1758 Tobias Mayer did a color triangle diagram and he began with 3 main pure colors, red, blue and yellow. • He put them on each corner creang a triangle shape. The colors gradate towards the center, showing that 2 colors can create another one. Schaffer and the 1700’s • Jacob Chris4an Schaffer • 1769 Schaffer (right) who was naturalist and inventor invented his own color system. • He explained how when blue, red, and yellow are combined they create mul4ple shades in between. His color system shows color combinaons within a color group. Goethe's Color Theory and the 1800’s • Johann Wolfgang Van Geothe (1810) was a writher and scien4st • He studied the psychological impact that colors had an people’s emo4ons and feelings. • Geothe created different theories about each color. For example he suggested that yellow since is the closes color to the light and is a bright color it creates a serene, and joyful feeling • Newton believed color wasn’t a physiological process but a measurement according to white light, making color a physical object. • Geothe on the other hand believed that color wasn’t just a physical object or a measurement of light but a mixture of light and dark. Runge and Chevreul 1800’s • In 1807 Painter OPo Runge made a color wheel model taking the primary colors and adding black and white to demonstrate other colors. • He created a 3D model color sphere (right). • In 1839 Michel Eugene Chevreul took Runge's idea and arranged 72 colors into a hemisphere ,similar to Mayer's arrangement. • Chevreul also came up with a phenomenon called the Chevreul's Illusion, 2 same colors of different intensi4es are placed next to each other, and they seem to be brighter at the edge where they meet. Munsell and the 1900’s • In 1915 Albert Henry Munsell came up with a cylindrical system model showing hue, value, and chroma (saturaon). • His model described the colors in a scien4fic manner. • His color wheel helped launch other color wheels. • In his color model chroma is demonstrated horizontal, value is ver4cal, and hue is shown around the model. THE NATURAL COLOR SYSTEM, 1900’s • In 1979 Ewald Hering came up with the Natural Color System. • The color model was based on the six psychological primary colors of yellow, blue, red, green, white and black. • The color wheel that was created was not designed for mixing colors but for organizing them in relaon to how they are experienced by people. • It proved to be useless to designers and ar4st because it had a more natural approach when it came down to color mixture. • Today, It is the most recognized color-matching system around the world. .

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