Milton Bradley

“ To any one who has ever compared a piece of colored material with a good presentation of a spectrum color, it is unnecessary to say that the result in an attempt to match the spectrum color with the material or pigmentary color is a very weak approximation, but the one thing aimed at is to secure nearly as possible the same kind of color. For example in the red, it is the aim to obtain the same kind of red, by which we mean the same location in the spectrum, i.e. a red neither more orange nor more violet than the reddest spot in the spectrum. ”

“ If color is the one thing in which we are deficient and in which we are making no advance, is it not necessary that we adopt a new line of operations for our color instruction in the primary grades? It is self-evident that in primary work highest art is not expected in either literature, music, drawing or painting, [Pg 7] but as has been the aim in literature for a long time and in drawing and music more recently, so in coloring, our instruction should be based on those principles on which highest art must rest. ”

“ In the realm of art there is no necessity for any purely scientific analysis of sunlight, which is the origin of natural colors, because all the practical value of color is found in its æsthetic effects on the mind, and in order to enjoy these even in the highest degree it is not necessary that we understand the scientific origin of the colors, any more than it is necessary for the artist to know the chemical composition of his pigments in order to produce best effects with them on his canvas. ”

“ In nature nearly all colors are broken. First, there is always more or less vapor together with other impurities in the air, so that even in a clear day objects a few hundred feet from us are seen through a gray veil, as it were, and in a misty or hazy day this is very evident. In the case of somewhat distant foliage the general color effect is produced by the light reflected from the aggregation of leaves, some of which may be in bright sunlight and others in shadow, with a mixture of brown twigs. All these tints and shades of green and brown are mingled in one general effect in the eye. ”

“ Scientifically one color is not considered complementary to another unless when combined in equal quantities they produce white light, or in other words when combined by the rotation of disks each color must occupy a half circle and the result must be a neutral gray. But this is not essential in considering a complementary harmony, as harmonies in different tones and in various proportions are pleasing and as yet the proportions and tones which produce the best combinations have not been determined. ”

“ If we could determine the colors used by the great masters in the past, we could add much to our knowledge of the fine arts; and if we knew what colors Chevreul, the master dyer of the Gobelins Tapestry works, refers to in his writings, and which he indicated by hundreds of numbered samples filed away in his cabinet, we should in this generation have a wonderful fund of information to increase our knowledge of harmonies, on which to base our study of color in the industrial arts. ”

“ More than one professional artist has already worked successfully from nature in oil colors with a palette consisting of only close approximations to the six standard colors with white and a few grays. A person whose color perception has been trained by the use of the color disk in six standard colors with [Pg 121] colored papers to correspond, will undoubtedly be able to more truthfully reproduce the colors which he sees in nature, on the canvas or paper by means of such a pallette than if he had been taught by any other system and used the ordinary pigments. ”

“ Unless the standard colors in a system of color instruction are the closest possible imitations of corresponding spectrum colors there is no logical relation between such a system and a chart of colors based on the spectrum, because the spectrum does not furnish a complete circuit of colors and its only value is, as before stated, in furnishing a permanent standard on which to found a nomenclature of colors. ”

“ In this way the advanced study of harmonies can be greatly facilitated so that it will be possible for the student to apprehend and appreciate many delicate and subtle color effects in art and nature never before imagined. In fact the foundation of color study will have been laid in such a logical and fascinating manner that its further advance will be but a pleasure to the pupil and teacher, so that no arbitrary plan will be necessary, because so many lines of work will suggest themselves to all who are interested in the subject. ”

“ By a trial before school, in company with some other teacher perhaps, the best positions for different parts of the room as well as best lighting of the room may be determined in advance and thus such a success achieved with the first experiment that the whole idea of tint and shade may be impressed on each child for all time and definitions firmly fixed in his mind for these two most abused words in our every day vocabulary. ”

“ If it were practicable to use opaque colors in the school they could be employed to show that the effect of a tint is produced in pigments by mixing white with the standard color and a shade by mixing black with it, but while the mixture of white may produce the best imitations of some tints in nature, the same result does not hold good in the use of black to form shades, and black pigments are rarely used for this purpose, because they impart various untruthful hues, according to the colors with which they are mixed. ”

“ And yet there is not in it all any scientific truth on which to build a logical system of color education, and some of the effects which are considered prominent arguments for the system are directly opposed to well known facts in the science of color. Consequently, the artist has failed to gain from the investigations of the scientists anything to aid him in his pigmentary work, and the scientist has not been interested in the æsthetic ideas of the artists which in fact he has generally been unable to fully appreciate, from lack of training and associations. ”

“ For instance, if we are to consider a certain red object which may be represented by the standard red disk, we place a medium sized disk of that color on the spindle, and in front of it, smaller disks of white and black united. By rotation the white and black disks become a neutral gray at the center of the red disk. If this gray is made nearly white all observers will agree that the gray is lighter than the red, and if it is nearly black the opinion will be equally unanimous that it is darker than the red. ”

“ When the eye has been fatigued by looking intently for a few seconds at a red spot on a white wall and is then slightly turned to the wall, a faint tint of a bluish green is seen, and this is called the accidental color of the red, and is supposed to be identical with its complementary color. If with the disks we determine a color which with a given color will produce by rotation a neutral gray, we have the complementary color more accurately than by any other means at present known in the use of pigmentary colors. ”

“ If to such a gray a very small amount of color is added, as orange for example, by the introduction of an orange disk, this neutral gray becomes an orange gray, but unless the amount is considerable it can not be detected as an orange, but the gray may be termed a warm gray, denoting that it is affected by some one of the colors near the red end of the spectrum. If blue instead of orange is added to the neutral gray, a cool gray is produced. When green is added to a gray the result can not fairly be called either warm or cool, and hence we have termed it a green gray. ”

“ In the combination of pigmentary colors a tint of a color is the pure color mixed with white, a shade is the color mixed with black, and a broken color is a pure color mixed with both black and white, which is a neutral gray. Therefore if with red, for example, we mix a certain amount of a given neutral gray and call that the normal tone of a broken scale of red, for the tint in that scale we must mix with the standard red a lighter gray and for the shade a darker gray. ”

“ Color standards have been adopted, which are nothing less than selections from the solar spectrum itself, and the manufacture of pigments has improved so much that it may almost be said to be a new industry. In the training of teachers, also, color instruction is now given an important place, so that the kindergartner and primary teacher can give the attention that it deserves to a subject which is so interwoven with all that is beautiful in the material world around us. ”

“ While in the use of colored papers the dominant harmony may be the simplest and the one in which there is least danger of really bad work, some of the combinations are much better than others, and superiority is perhaps secured as much by the relative quantities of each tone used in a composition as in the selecting of the tones. In the entire range of the spectrum even this class of harmonies involves problems too complex to be solved by a few rules, but it is a very interesting field in which the children may safely be allowed to roam and experiment. ”

“ Even at this early period in his color education a child may be shown that white in shadow is a gray, and the fact that it is a neutral gray is not essential to him, as he has no knowledge of any other gray and probably it may not be desirable to call attention to the various classes of grays until after the broken colors have been studied. ”

“ Thus the feeling for color which every true artist has, may be to a certain extent analyzed so that it can be understood by the scientist and recorded for the benefit of fellow artists one hundred or a thousand miles away and in time an aggregation of facts regarding the psychological effects of color collected which will form the beginning of a valuable fund of color knowledge to be increased from age to age. ”

“ It is a well established fact that when two surfaces approximating each other in color, as red and orange for example, are placed side by side, both are rendered less brilliant, an effect which might be reasonably expected because in order to see both the eye is naturally directed first to one and then to the other, and in each case the after image induced is a green-blue or blue-green, which being approximately complementary to both, dulls both. ”

“ For example, if a state official were necessary to determine whether pupils are deaf or not after they have been through our grammar schools, and preliminary to accepting positions of responsibility, it would seem that something was wrong, and yet after a child has had instruction in color according to a logical system there should be no more necessity for an examination regarding his ability to properly distinguish colors than there should regarding his ability to hear. ”

“ In combining red and blue disks to make a violet the result is more satisfactory, while if we attempt to produce a green by combining the yellow and blue disks the result will be surprising, but probably not convincing, because the statement that yellow and blue make green has been so persistently reiterated as a fundamental axiom that people who have given the subject but little attention will feel that to doubt it is rank heresy. ”

“ When an engraver, who is also an artist, attempts to interpret nature in black and white on the metal plate or wooden block, he endeavors to reproduce the "values" of the various parts of the subject before him. In doing this he, for one thing, attempts to produce a variety of neutral grays which will express to the eye by means of black and white lines the same tones of color effect as are seen in the several parts of the subject under investigation. ”

“ Having shown that the three colors, red, yellow and blue, can not be combined to make an orange, a green or a violet of a corresponding degree of purity, we will consider the other claim which is set up by the advocates of the Brewster theory, namely, that the secondaries are complementary to the primaries in pairs, the green to the red, the violet to the yellow and the orange to the blue.
As all color is contained in white light, if we take from white light any given color, the color remaining is the complementary. ”

“ As soon as these six scales are familiar to the pupil the selecting of various objects and placing them in general families may be very valuable work, but until that time the classification of colors cannot be carried out very accurately, or at best the families will be very likely to include some uncles, and cousins and aunts, and yet, on the other hand, if even the distant relatives are recognized in preference to strangers the choice will give evidence of a sympathetic feeling for color relations, favorable to future progress and indicating something of the natural color sense of the child. ”