COLOR tools of the Painters' Trade BY GAINOR ROBERTS "All colours are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.“ Marc Chagall: •What is color •Simplified theory of color in light •Eyesight influence on color perception •Pigments and paint •Color Mixing •Local color vs atmospheric color •Impressionist ideas about color COLOR = LIGHT + VISION COLOR BASICS Color is the perceptual characteristic of light described by a color name. Specifically, color is light, and light is composed of many colors—those we see are the colors of the visual spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Objects absorb certain wavelengths and reflect others back to the viewer. We perceive these wavelengths as color. DESCRIBING COLORS A color is described in three ways: by its name, how pure or desaturated it is, and its value or lightness. Although pink, crimson, and brick are all variations of the color red, each hue is distinct and differentiated by its chroma, saturation, intensity, and value. Chroma, intensity, saturation and luminance/value are inter-related terms and have to do with the description of a color. Chroma: How pure a hue is in relation to gray Saturation: The degree of purity of a hue. Intensity: The brightness or dullness of a hue. One may lower the intensity by adding white or black. Luminance / Value: A measure of the amount of light reflected from a hue. Those hues with a high content of white have a higher luminance or value. Shade and tint are terms that refer to a variation of a hue. Shade: A hue produced by the addition of black. Tint: A hue produced by the addition of white. COLOR THEORIES science, poetry, philosophy A FEW OF THE MORE MODERN CONTRIBUTORS There were many color theories from the ancients to our times. Even Leonardo had his ideas about how color worked. NEWTON Newton introduced the term 'colour spectrum' and although the spectrum appears continuous, with no distinct boundaries between the colors, he chose to divide it into seven: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Newton chose the number seven as this reflected the Ancient Greek belief that seven is a mystical number GOETHE Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was the greatest poet, playwright, novelist and essayist in the German language – comparable to Shakespeare and Dante. He said “That I am the only person in this century who has the right insight into the difficult science of colors, that is what I am rather proud of, and that is what gives me the feeling that I have outstripped many.” CHEVREUL In 1839, the theory of color interaction was first put on a sound experimental base by the French chemist Michel Chevreul (1786-1889). His De la Loi du Contraste Simultané des Couleurs (the law of simultaneous color contrast) introduced theories that led to new uses of color. The 19th century also witnessed the Industrial Revolution that made available new technologies such as Chevreul's color model synthesized pigments, augmenting the the hue circle is exemplified by 72 normal scales artist’s palette. A new scientific of tones, arranged with white at the center and worldview searched to describe black at the circumference; as shown for yellow, experience, including art, light, color and each normal scale produced 9 broken scales of vision, in scientific terms. It was tones by means of increasing proportional Chevreul’s work and ideas that are the mixtures with the achromatic gray scale located basis of our modern color theories. as the vertical axis of a hemisphere AND IT GETS EVEN MORE COMPLICATED! Albert Munsell The system consists of three independent dimensions which can be represented cylindrically in three dimensions as an irregular color solid: hue, measured by degrees around horizontal circles; Chroma, measured radially outward from the neutral (gray) vertical axis; and value, measured vertically from 0 (black) to 10 (white). Munsell determined the spacing of colors along these dimensions by taking measurements of human visual responses. In each dimension, Munsell colors are as close to perceptually uniform as he could make them, which makes the resulting shape quite irregular. A color is fully specified by listing the three numbers for hue, value, and chroma in that order. For instance, a purple of medium lightness and fairly saturated would be 5P 5/10 with 5P meaning the color in the middle of the purple hue band, 5/ meaning medium value (lightness), and a chroma of 10 (see swatch). The Munsell Color theory has been TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF A CONTROLLED arranged in a book that is quite pricey PALETTE and has page after page of swatches that the student has to match by color and value The Classical Realist method of painting uses the Munsell theory of color. The artist uses value “strings” of color on the palette and has a wide range of values and hues available as mixes that the artist makes before painting. Some of these energetic painters actually premix their paint and put it up in tubes with a numbering system that indicates the hue, Chroma and value of the contents. Frank Mason (1921-2009) was a painter and teacher at the Art Students League who used a shelf- Many artists and illustrators like palette arrangement for his oil used the Controlled palette paints called "The Prismatic system Palette." Graydon Parrish (born April 3, 1970) is a Frank Mason "Margaree River realist painter living in Austin, Texas. He Valley, Nova Scotia" oil on canvas, 24" x 30" (1999) is both trained in and an exponent of “Frank was inspired by, and the atelier method which emphasizes paints in the tradition of, the classical painting techniques. He old masters like Velasquez, espouses the use of a controlled palette Rubens or even Rembrandt,” and the Classical Realist movement in says longtime Mason student and Ohio-based artist Jack art today harks back to Bouguereau and Liberman. “And he has worked other 19th Century Classical painters, tirelessly to pass on that NOT the Impressionists! tradition to his own students.” Monet’s Palette Van Gogh’s Palette FOR COMPARISON… THESE ARE “OPEN” PALETTES MONET VAN GOGH DID YOU EVER WONDER WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN? Color of Art Pigment Database An Artists’ Paint and Pigment Reference with Color Index Names, Color Index Numbers and Chemical Composition Color Index Name Code: This is the official code given by the Color Index International for that particular pigment. The first 2 letters describe the general pigment color and the number is the individual pigment identifier. N/A (not applicable) means that pigment has not been given a color index name or number. The number after further describes the exact pigment in the tube. PY = Pigment Yellow; PO = Pigment Orange; PR = Pigment Red; PV = Pigment Violet; PB = Pigment Blue; PG = Pigment Green; PBr = Pigment Brown; PBk = Pigment Black; PW = Pigment White; PM = Pigment Metal This system of color designations works really well when a designer, say of a car, wants to tell the Ford Factory exactly what color to paint it, or when two classical painters converse over coffee they talk in this obscure code! Do YOU need to know all this? Probably not, but if you are an Industrial Designer you would need to know this system. LOCAL COLOR AND ATMOSPHERIC COLOR Local color refers to the language of color; a banana is yellow, a traffic light is red, the pear is yellow-green, and so on. We need to navigate our world this way, identifying colors around us to make sense out of our everyday experiences. Manufacturers and advertisers rely on local color and the way color affects our emotions. Atmospheric Color was used by many artists, especially the Impressionists when they realized that light hitting any object would have all the spectrum of colors with it. What we see depends on what is reflected, what is absorbed and how our own eyes, retinas, rods and cones, and brains interpret those colors. The time of day will affect those colors too. Monet’s Haystack series was his experiment showing how the time of day and season changed the colors and values of not only the objects themselves but the air around them. WHAT IS PAINT? All paint is based on pigments; some are dug out of the earth, and others are made from coal tar extracts and petroleum. Pictured here are pigments before they have been mixed with their binders to form our paint. Pigments come from the earth in the form of colored clays, plants such as indigo, and mines where we get coppers, cobalts and cadmiums. Some pigments are ground up jewels, as in Lapis Lazuli and Azurite. In general, our paints are made from pigment and linseed oil, for Oil Paint, polymer resin to make Acrylics, gum tragacanth to make Pastels, and gum arabic to make Watercolors. That is a huge simplification to the subject of the chemistry of paint! But we even use egg yolks to make Egg Tempera paint! The binder acts as the glue to hold the molecules together and stick it to the support. WHAT DOES ‘HUE’ MEAN? If there ever was a confusing term! “Hue” is the name of a color like Red or Yellow or Violet It also refers to what is in the tube of paint you buy. Cadmium Red (Hue) is not Cadmium Red. Rather it is a mix of pigments to make the paint in the tube resemble what used to be Cadmium Red. These are usually synthetic pigments with unpronounceable names like dioxazine purple, napthol red, phthalocyanine blue, and Irgazine orange although it can contain some cadmium so it is not always free of some of the more toxic pigments, but you can check those mysterious numbers on the tube to find out what has been mixed to make that color.