[art] Fugitive Colors of the Past

3399.

There's a rubric in art I like: fugitive colors. They're colors that get away from you, over time. Alizarin crimson is a notorious fugitive.

Basically what's going on here is a factor of the way pigments interact with sunlight. Colors, quite simply, bleach out and fade over time in paintings. Reds are the hardest to keep in place, it seems, and alizarin crimson is about the worst. You'll know about a color's fugitiveness by looking on the package: typically, there's a specification for permanence on any given tube of acrylic, oil, or watercolor or pan of watercolor, and the higher the permanence, the more likely that color's going to be standing by you over time after you create your work.

There are some colors that are actually no longer with us; they've truly escaped us. There's a variety of reasons for this, usually having to do with something about the materials; too expensive, too poisonous, or too fictional. There's a luminous quality to white lead, for example, but you make a habit of using it (providing you can actually get it) and you'll pay with a bit of your health. The colors arsenic can enable add to the artistic atmosphere, but the stuff it releases won't add anything you want to your breathable atmosphere. And things like that.

Here at a blog called Hyperallerigic, blogger Allison Meier recounts the stories of a handful of pigments that have completely escaped to the past, never to return: White lead, lapis lazuli, even (ha!) mummy brown, made with real mummy, as the legend has it.

The article can be read by pointing yourself at http://hyperallergic.com/74661/the-colorful-stories-of-5-obsolete-art-pigments/.

[print tech] I May Not Be Rich, But My Black Is

2153.I got a tipoff to a great article today about three sins in print design, and they're good things to remember.

They reduce down to three things they even teach you in Community College design school, they are that basic. they are, in order: Designing in RGB rather than CMYK; using black rather than "rich" black; and not using 300 dpi images in designs meant for print.

The first and last can make up an article all on thier own. But the second really caught my attention, because I also have a love of words that make things that don't necessarily happen together stick in the mind. Though the idea of "rich" black should stick in every print designer's mind.

Okay, enough circumlocution, and besides, what non-designer readers might want to know is, just what is rich black (disposing of the quote marks hereinafter)? It's pretty much what it suggests it is: black with a little "something extra".

Color print (other than spot printing) involves using the four so-called process colors cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y) and black (K) to create the colors you see on the final product. Nothing is perfect, so CMYK can't produce every color you find in nature, but the gamut (a color theorist term for the range of possible colors that can be produced) is wide and useful enough that you'll never run up against a wall. Since inks aren't perfect, then black isn't perfectly black. You have to give it a little help. How? By adding one of the C, M, or Y inks.

On the left, true black @ K=100, On the right, rich black at C=90,
M=60, Y=30, and K=100. Inspired by the linked article.

Long ago, some wag said you can never be too rich or too thin. In the CMYK model, that's only half right: as you can see, you can indeed be too thin. True black ink, printed at 100%, may seem black, but when put up against rich black, it seems gray. A very dark gray, to be sure, but unmistakably gray. You amp up that black by throwing in a bit of one, two, or three of the other process colors.

Amusingly (and perhaps predictably) there is more than one opinion as to what constitutes a good rich black. One of the commenters in the linked article, Darren, put it in a way that's both interesting, has a clear grounding in color theory, and is easily rememberable:

I am a prepress technician and a true rich black or super black is 100% K and 40% Cyan for a cool black or 40% Magenta for a warm black. Don’t use any other percentage combos as they cause problems for the printer. Also don’t use a rich black for any text under 20pts (printers hate that). And if you do any of the above most printers will convert your pdf to the percentages I have above. Only use it for large black areas and text over 20pts.

And that's another thing: rich black isn't ideal for every part of the application. True black is typically adequate for small black areas and type you're going to be reading; the more ink you use, the more saturated the paper is going to become, which has the unfortunate tendency of munging up the works.

But if a real good black is part of the overall design scheme, you'll want to remember to use rich black. Black is a powerful color, and if you're looking to make an impact with that design, you'll want it to crackle and pop, and if you take the edge off your black, the pop just won't be as large.

Technorati Tags: CMYK, Process Color, 4-color process, rich black, color design

The Evolution Of The TriMet MAX Map 3: Along The Red Line

2036.2001 was the first year of a new Century, the first year of a new age, and the first year that Portland had a light rail system that had, effectively, two lines.

The Airport MAX line opened then, and proved immediately as popular as the rest of the system. Arrivals at PDX were treated to light rail service right at the terminal doorstep.

Airport MAX began as a service from PDX going only as far as downtown. Along the way, perhaps with the prospect of future service expansions in mind, TriMet hit upon a color scheme: the main east and west line of MAX, Hillsboro to Gresham, was to be dubbed the Blue line; the downtown to Airport route, the Red line. Here's what one of the first maps looked like:

Click on the map to embiggen. The abstractization of Portland continues. With the necessity to express the physical reality of one station serving two lines, a level of sophistication occurrs; the stops, which are circles on the lines, expand into cartouche-like ovals where they have to span the two lines. See the following illustration dragging and panning in the Picasa Web Album picture browser is too much of a hassle (It's not exactly intutive, is it?):

Each station serving both lines is taken as a given, but the oval station markers is a rather urbane touch, and echoes the station icons seen on such worldly maps as the New York Subway maps and the London Underground. Amenities are shown by icons which would be familiar to any world traveller. The ends of the lines are tied down by large colored dots. Fare zones are gradated boxes.

Later this service was expanded westward to the Beaverton Transit Center, and maps evenually started featuring bars labelled with travel times between stations and along major sections. The station labels at a 45 degree angle also contribute to the sophisticated feel of the map. Though largely a schematic, in greater ways this still has some fidelity with the geography, at least in as much as the branch along 1st Avenue downtown parallels the river and turns right to cross it.

This abstraction was to become even more prominent in the next map, which will be posted soon.

PS: A couple commenters in a previous entry noted that David Bragdon, current METRO Council President, may or may not have had something to do with getting the TriMet Map and Guide series started. I'm going to get an email winging his way and see what he has to say about that (I ought to be able to find an email contact for him on the METRO web page, I should think)

Technorati Tags: TriMet, Portland Transit, Map Design, graphic design, transit graphic design

TriMet Map Cover Designs: 1993, 1994

2035.We move on to the next two TriMet Map cover designs, this time: 1993 and 1994.

While MAX is still a big hit with the transit fans, it has become part of the landscape. It's now being incorporated in as just another part of one of America's most celebrated transit systems. The designs change to suit.

The 1993 design is a cheery, blocky, fun thing full of primary color and active play. Everything you might use to get round the town is included as part of a great palette of transportation options: bus, bike, light rail, the personal car has a place still, car/vanpooling, and your own two feet can serve to get you about this metro-area-on-a-human-scale.

The 1993 design is joyous and inviting. It reminds one of child's play blocks or a pleasant day spent at preschool. Portland's fun ... and TriMet can be a part of that!

The 1994 edition really dials back and goes for restraint. My guess is that badge down in the lower left: a bit of dignity, please, as we celebrate our 25th Anniversary of The Nation's Best Transit System. I sincerely enjoy the restrained color palette, the violet suggesting a sort of luxury and "having arrived", and the screened-back logos forming a sort of tessellated pattern that wouldn't look half-bad as a wallpaper (on your screen or on your wall).

Technorati Tags: TriMet, Portland Transit, Portland History, Map Design, graphic design, transit graphic design

Color vs Mood: That 70s Ring

2018.The idea of color matching mood is one that apparently runs deep within our own Western culture. And nowhere does that idea have a more whimsical fruition than that iconic bit of 1970s mass-market jewelry couture, the mood ring.

This trifle, a staple of the 1970s – a decade that could still glimpse the free-love and emotion vibes of the 1960s and the Summer of Love – purported to disclose the mood of the wearer via a color change. A typical rundown might go as follows:

• Black Very stressed
• Gray Very Nervous
• Amber Anxious and/or uncertain
• Green Calm
• Teal Calm and relaxed
• Blue Happy
• Indigo or Violet Happy, romantic or passionate

Some of the mentioned colors may align with ones' personal subjective impressions of color, and some may govern ones' subsequent reactions to a certain range of colors. Some may simply make little or no sense. Follow this link for a nearly-insanely detailed list of possible meanings.

The rings worked on a very simple principle: body heat. The usually-inexpensive rings had a layer of liquid crystal bonded to a surface over which was mounted polished glass or some inexpensive transparent gem. The liquid crystal responded to changing body heat which was held to be in specific response to specific moods, refracting light and changing the reflected color as body heat changed ... as mood changed.

What I find interesting here is that many of the colors listed correspond to already-held assumptions about color in Western society – blue, green, and cool colors were held to connote clamness and cheerfulness, whereas colors such as black, which is found in situations of gravity and grimness, connote stress and strain.

The connection to mood and bodily response is one whose validity is open to question, depending on one's point of view. The interesting thing about the mood ring is that instead of color determining mood, mood determines color – which is a thing that wouldn't occur to us in the gestalt if we didn't think that color did indeed, somehow, influence mood.


Technorati Tags: mood ring, color and mood

Robert Gamblin and Navigating Color Space

2005.I visited the Gamblin Artist Color website today and got a bit of a lesson in color mixing.

Robert Gamblin has a very impressive resume. He has worked as a colorman for the Smithsonian Institution in recreating paintings and for 25 years he's produced colors for the professional artist (and the artist who aspires to be professional) from Gamblin Artist Colors.

The company specializes in the production of oil paints and associated media. His company doesn't make water colors, but oh, I wish it did!

Mr. Gamblin has his own view of the 3-D view of color relationships, and he calls it "Color Space". This takes the theoretical information encoded by theorists such as Munsell, creating a volume aligned along Hue, Intensity, and Value axes and forges from it a practical way of looking at color which strives for predictablility in mixing and working from known quantities to produce expected results. As still a beginner in my autodidactic color theory activities, I was quite surprised at how doable his approach makes it seem to be.

He has a short video, Navigating Color Space, which tells you all about it. You can buy a copy to keep for yourself at the rather reasonable price of $11.95 from his company's website or via your local Gamblin retailer, but if you want to know what he has to say right now, the video is hosted on his website at the Navigating Color Space page, which you can view for free.

At first, the Hue/Value/Intensity structure seemed familiar, but as I said before, the Gamblin Color Space concept is about practical use. It allows you to, given the paints you have, view the space as something you can traverse on the way to something you can achieve. It also, in relating to various eras of painting, give you an idea of the palette you should start with to get to the colors that you want to use. Particularly instructive was the way Mr. Gamblin related the various eras, represented by the old Masters, the Impressionists, and the modern painters, to volumes in the Color Space, so if you're going for a look of a certain era and a knowledge of the paints you have available (particularly of the Gamblin line) you know where to start with a minimum of guesswork.

Screenshot of Navigating Color Space from
the Gamblin Color website. All rights remain with creator.

It turns out to be a very useful tool, and its logic is quite accessable to those who know the color basics of warm, cool, value, neutral, and such

Essentially the takeaway I got was that to have access to the colors I want, I can use Gamblin's rationale to more aptly choose the basic colors I start with.

Late in the video, the artist himself demonstrates his highly logical palette logic, which he calls "unzipping the color wheel", where the palette itself gains a sort of inherent intelligence.

The video I found enjoyable in the main because it demonstrates rather clearly the bridge from abstract color theory through to practical application and, moreover, presents it in a way that one can actually picture using. It also speaks to the obviously deep simpatico that Robert Gamblin has with color itself.

As a delightful postscript, we became aquainted with the Gamblin range of "Portland Grays", formulated by the artist and inspired by our long cozy gray winters. One thing's for sure; Robert Gamblin knows Portland.

Mr Gamblin? Are you sure we can't talk you into branching into watercolor?

Technorati Tags: color, color theory, art matierials, Gamblin Oil Paints, Color Space

Colors In Hyperspace

2001.From color wheels to the Wilcox Bias Wheel we've gotten theoretical. Now get ready to go seriously abstruse.

Just as the inhabitants of Flatland know there is a third dimension above the two-dimensional world they live in but can't comprehend, the world of the flat 2-D color wheel tells just half of the story. There is a way to arrange color values along a three-dimensional rationale.

Color can be quantified three ways:

1. Every color has a hue, or its essential color. When we say Yellow, we are talking hue.
2. Every color is also modified by its value. This is how light or dark the color is. A simple value scale is a gradient from black to white through tones of gray. Art students typically are asked to create 10-step value scales as an exercise.
3. And, every color has a chroma. This is how "colorful" your color is, how yellow your yellow is; when artists speak of saturation, this is what they're saying The most colorful color is, for instance, that yellowest yellow – the least colorful color is gray – if you take all the yellow out of your yellow. Colors with low key chroma are dull and gray, and this is the same for all colors.

Just there exist three axes we can use to construct a 3-D conception of colors and how they relate to each other.

We've gone to the next level; welcome to color hyperspace.

Originally, color theorist Otto Runge (ca 1810) concieved of a sphere an idea that was forwarded by Johannes Itten later, perhaps reasoning via the love of the human mind for symmetrical depictions of natural things. Ostwald, even later, depicted the color space as a double-cone.

The flaw in this reasoning has to do with human perception. When plotted on a 3-D solid, one would assume that the pure colors would line up about the equator of the solid, and this is not the case:

The problem with both the sphere and the symmetrical cone conceptions of colour space is that, as we have just seen, different hues reach their maximum chroma at different tonal levels.  Putting all of the pure colours on the equator of the solid ensures that the vertical dimension does not represent lightness. Consequently neither the Runge-Itten sphere nor the Ostwald double cone is a true hue-chroma-lightness space. If the vertical dimension of the solid is to represent lightness, then we need in some way to tilt the colour wheel through space, so that yellow occupies a high position opposite light grey and blue occupies a low position opposite dark grey.

So if your axis, your value scale, is to work, you also have to respect that the purest colors will not occur at the same values. The symetrical solid will not work truly.

In order to make a solid work, an irregular solid will work. Purest blue has a lower value than purest yellow, so the solution turned out (through the work of various color theorists staring ca 1880, culminating in the work of a certain Albert Henry Munsell in the early 20th) to be a skewed double cone, something we call today the Munsell Color Solid. Above and to the right should be a image from Wikipedia giving the basics (and click here to see the big version or click on the illustration itself). Here, from David Briggs article at HueValueChroma The Dimensions Of Color is an illustration that really spoke to me about it. You can probably find others yourself with teh Google:

Illustration copyright David Briggs, included for illustration only.
Creator retains full rights to this illustration.

When smoothed out, it looks like a squished globe. The plot in the lower right there really makes the concept come up. As you can see, from up to down everything gets darker. On the lower right of the 3-D display, note that the blue there is the bluest blue; on the upper left, they yellowest yellow is of a significantly higher value. The system is consistent, respects its own rules, and works.

It is not necessarily likely that you'll use the Munsell solid directly, but like the most abstruse philosophy, the thinking behind is presumably underlies the color theory that the layman is most familiar with. It is data that will probably help you a little bit in deciding on using colors based on the qualities you actually see them with.

Here's a few links for you:

• This is Wikipedia's Article on the Munsell.
• This is the full page at HueValueChroma that is by David Briggs and explains the color solid-and why it is the way it is-very well. It went into my research for this post majorly, and I'm am grateful to it for this.
• This is Wikipedia's article on Color Solids,showing some of the early attempts at them.

Technorati Tags: Color, Color theory, Color solids, Munsell Color System

The Wilcox Color Bias Wheel: Yellow and Blue Don't Make Green? (Updated)

1996.In my quest to understand color better I've collected a great deal of references. One of them, and one I commend to anyone at least to push the envelope of their color thinking.

Michael Wilcox is one of the new colorists who has some views which seem bombastic but have "bang-bang" headlines to get your attention then shows eminent and solid logic that even the tyro and the layman and the beginner can grok.

But Blue and yellow don't make green? Strange thing to say, especially due to the conventional wisdom as due to the color wheels we've seen certainly seem to solidly suggest that they do. If you take out your paints and play, you pick a good-looking blue and a good-looking yellow and they sure do seem to go to green, or something that looks like a good green.

What might not be obvious to the beginner though is that color theory is predicated upon idea, perfect color. The red, blue, and yellow primaries we toss about in discussing color like so much grade-school tempera are in fact perfect pure ideals: the red we think about is the absolute red, the yellow and the blue also absolute.

Of course, nothing is perfect. In reality, no such thing exists. No matter how primary you red paint is going to be, there's going to be a semmingly-infinitesimal about of yellow or blue; in every blue, a tiny bit of yellow and red, and in every yellow, a tiny bit of red and blue. Moreover, of these combinations, say, in a red, there's going to be a preponderance of one or the other of the other two primaries–more of the blue than the yellow.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that all primary-color paints are subtly biased one way or the other toward one secondary or the other. Every red is either subtly violet-red or orange-red; every blue is either subtly violet-blue or green-blue; every yellow is either subtly green-yellow or orange-yellow. Starting out you may not notice this, but as you get better at looking at color, you'll start to see it. Select any two different-but-similar primary colors, lay them out on a ground and compare, and the result may become instantly apparent.

This will open your eyes. It opened mine wide.

The illustration at right s the result Mr. Wilcox came up with to abstract the entire concept, and it does it with astounding clarity. It resembles our classic color wheel in that you have red, yellow, and blue primaries, and orange, violet, and green secondaries. But see the arrows and note that the red on the side of the orange is orange-red whereas the red on the side of the violet is violet-red. This is actually the state of the primary colors you're likely to run into as a painter, be it oil, watercolor, or what have you.

It opens the door to a system where knowing your colors and their biases means mixing color is a thinking process rather than a chance process. As Wilcox himself says in the book Blue And Yellow Don't Make Green:

To define red, yellow, and blue as primaries is only true in a rough and ready way – leading to rough and ready color mixing skills.

If you're trying to learn color theory and plain on painting, you need to at least acquaint yourself with Michael Wilcox's work. His School of Color is a commercial concern that will sell you books and materials that will do the trick, or at least find yourself a copy of Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green and let the information sink in. It's all so very logical and interesting that a whole lot of things quickly become possible to you.

Update: I see I'm not the only one that sees this book and Michael Wilcox's work as important. Canadian artist Michael King also was impressed, for mostly the same reasons. Wilcox's insight into color and how it works may indeed have been a quantum leap in how artists see and work with color.

Sadly, the review of the book is pretty shallow (sincerely sorry to say, Mr. King). If you're serious about paints, you know by the time you've gotten to Wilcox's book why paints work on the page and the insight isn't so much how the paints work but why color biases exist and why that's important (there is no such thing as a pure primary in paint and how to use that as a basis for color thinking and mixing).

But I do appreciate the updated cover design. Very smart.

Technorati Tags: Color bias, color bias wheel, color wheel, Michael Wilcox, School of Color

Filed Under: The Color Initiative

1982.For those who wonder, I am creating a new label for filing my posts about color, of which there will be more, and related to a project I'm nurturing under careful development.

This label will the The Color Initiative. My main thrust is color and mood and what I can find out about it, but the thing about color theory is that if you dig your beak into it just a little, a whole lot starts presenting itself.

It's my public diary about my exploration of color, and, as usual, everyone is invited along.

Technorati Tags: Color, Color design, color theory, The Color Initiative, The ZehnKatzen Times, ZehnKatzen

Color In The News: Gamblin's Unique Torrit Gray

1978.When going over what I could find out about color today, I was pleasantly surprised that not only was color in the news, but that it was a well-regarded Oregon maker of world-famous oil paints that was making the news.

Gamblin Artists Colors, I've the impression, is a company in the tradition of the colormen of the 16th and 17th centuries–utterly committed to providing artists with the best-concoted oil paints. Oil paints in and of themselves are a fascinating medium, whether or not it's your medium of choice (what painting I do I do in watercolor), and are, as far as I am aware, a very simple thing; you mix powdered pigments (some of them quite nasty and made from heavy-metals) and linseed oil.

Gamblin brings their "A" game by committing utterly to not only quality but also by a committment to being kind to the environment–very wise considering the qualities of some of the pigments, and very appropriate, being an Oregon company. In their studio, an efficient filtration system removes any particulate matter using products from a company called Donaldson Torit. Throughout the manufacturing and sample process, doubtlessly samples and bits of paint are discarded. Add all this waste together, colorwise, and what do you get?

Gray. In the ideal paint world, when you mix a great many colors together, the colors do not necessarily sum up to black; what they do is neutralize each other (an ideal red mixed with an ideal violet, for instance, being complementary (note they are 180 degress away from each other on the color wheel) cancel each other out to the degree they are ideal, resulting in, not black but gray).


If you mix together all the paint-leavings from around the studio and the particulate strained out of the air in the Torit filters, the result is, apparently, a luminous, somewhat pearly gray, with a green note. John Foyston of The Big O tells the story:

Each February, cardboard drums of pigment powder trapped by the factory's Donaldson Torit air filter are added to an oil base and buckets of waste paint, then run through the roller mill that gives Gamblin paints their trademark silky texture. Torrit Grey (with an extra "r" to avoid any trademark infringement) is the result, and it's packed into date-coded 37-milliliter tubes marked "always complimentary, not for sale" and then given away -- 11,000 of them last year -- to artists, students and teachers starting every Earth Day.

Torrit Grey is always free and it's always gray, because that's what happens when you mix together pigments from the dozens of different paints that Gamblin makes and sells to artists around the world. But don't think that gray is a synonym for boring: Any artist worth her palette knife knows that gray is a many-splendored thing. Far from being simply black and white, gray has a range of hues and shades -- they are the mid-tones that make up much of our visual world.

So it should be available in your local gentlemany art supply emporium pretty soon now. Locally I trust Art Media and Utrecht for new art supplies. You will, likely, not find this at your local Michael's, but I might be wrong about that.

Something else that occurred to me was that the Gamblin company (and, by extension, Mr Gamblin himself) are very canny marketers. Each Torrit Gray tube is as individual as what sold that year, and each are valuable in and of itself as subtly distinctive and individual.

It's a quirkiness that lends itself to amazing self-expression. The Gamblin concern even runs a contest each year for the most creative work produced by an artist using Gamblin Torrit Gray, White, and Black oils. Using these three colors is a bit of a challenge, because instead of using color, which, even when inexpertly-mixed, can tell a very subjective story with relative ease, using just black, white, and gray means you work only with value–the relative whiteness or blackness of a thing. As it happens (and this I've found true when you reduce your canon or your working tools to minimum) limiting your range to simply values seems to infuse even more creativity, resulting in works that are even more moving and compelling than you'd think. Gamblin's current gallery of Torrit Gray competition works can be found here; if they change it, just go to the Gamblin page and look up Torrit Gray.

Gamblin has a reputation of care and committment I find admirable. Torrit Gray is a brilliant stroke of genius. If Robert Gamblin only did what he did for oil paints to watercolors, I just shudder to think what would result.

Visit the Gamblin company here.

View the Oregonian article here, complete with a nifty video about how they do it.

(illustrations were taken from the Gamblin site for purposes of illustration only. All copyrights and rights obtain to them)

Technorati Tags: Gamblin, Torrit Gray, oil paints, best enviromental practices, Oregon Companies

A Sort Of Inscrutable Color/Mood Graph

1976.As part of my researches into the intersection of color and mood, I stumbled on this chart. Follow the below link to view it.

Color Mood Chart

It's a little inscrutable. It's not clear how one might use or or how the list below maps to the diagram up top, but it does suggest connections.

Moreover, I'm finding charts that seem to be in agreement. It's hard to say if it's a group-think thing, or perceptions reinforcing preconcieved notions. The trouble with such suggestve things is that we cross-associate a great deal of things in our heads, and no two people, no matter how similar in overall outlook they may be, are really wired exactly the same. The color blue may suggest the same overall thing to the notional you versus me, but it does not mean that while the notional you might find blue with experiential biases toward happy things, I might find it biased toward sad or indifferent or not as happy as you.

What verbiage! I just barely avoided not wading through it.

In this list, for example:

Blue represents peace, tranquility, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, sky, water, cold, technology, and depression

From the color mood chart linked above, we have Blue meaning:

• RELAXED
• AT EASE
• CALM
• LOVABLE
  

There is some congruence.

I'm still trying to find any scientific color study (you know, like that one in The Andromeda Strain (the better one made in the 70s, not that recent abomination) that told the engineers what colors to paint the walls on the underground WildFire lab) and will report back soon on this. I'm sure it's just around the corner.

Technorati Tags: design, graphic design, color design, color theory, design theory

Color Wheels Through History

1977.Something I didn't know until recently was that the concept of the Color Wheel itself–the flash of genius that caused someone to realize that you could arrange the producible colors in a logical wheel that not only displayed the natural progression but also turned the idea of color combining into an accessable thinking thing–blazed in the mind of none other than Sir Isaac Newton.

Not to belabor the point overmuch, but this is your general basic additive RYB color wheel. It's more than a logical progression for colors but a guide on how to produce more. To cover the obvious just for the sake of completeness, you start with your primaries–Red, Yellow, and Blue. These are the primaries, the colors from which all others flow and which cannot be further reduced. Exactly halfway between these colors are Green (Yellow+Blue), Orange (Yellow+Red) and Violet (Red+Blue), made with ideal equal proportions of the ideal primaries. Rounding out (if you'll excuse) the primaries and the adjacent secondaries produce the tertiaries.

In practice, of course, there's no such thing as an ideal, perfect primary. every color you get from a tube, crayon, or pencil has a very subtle bias, which is an idea I've lived with for a while and will write on very shortly.

The reason I wrote all the obviousness above is because the idea of the color wheel is a natural poetry that appeals. It's such a simple thing and works so very brilliantly, it's the most simple and effective guide to how to get what you want out of what you got ... it's born in logic and then transcends logic.

And I can't believe how highfalutin' I've gotten all of a sudden over the simple color wheel but I do whenever I realize what a quantum leap it was. I'd like to have been in the lab when Newton hit upon this. Well, that and when he figured out how to make them cookies (mmm, Fig Newtons(™ probabaly))!).

The reason I visited the color wheel is that I wanted to look through history. Wikipedia, while not 100% trustworthy, seems to have good examples.

This, for one, is Newtons original color wheel, diagrammed, correlated with musical notes and astrological symbols for planets (see, I said it was all kind of subjective):

Note, interstingly, that Newton came up with only seven colors. The color wheel's evolved since it was devised. As a matter of fact, let me direct your attention to Boutet's wheels, which came in seven and twelve color flavors:

Ahh, cherubs and unnecessary illustration. This dates from the 18th C, 1708 to be exact, so this was probably sehr teuer, if you catch my German drift. Not too many could have afforded the book that contained it.

Speaking of the German, even the great Goethe got into the act:

This from his 1810 work, Theory of Colours.

This color circle, from a 1904 book, wouldn't look to out-of-place in an art manual in modern times:

It also ID's the colors by initialisms around the rim. Very useful.

Actuallly preparing a color wheel should be something I will do very soon now, since it's simply fun playing with paint, and something I will post here as soon as I can get it up.

There are a couple of other nifty wheel designs to be seen at the Wikipedia entry here.

Technorati Tags: color theory, color wheel, color circle, color, color design