Color palette

“ 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. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of mixing upon his palette three primaries to produce the tertiary gray, he so places them on the canvas that at the proper distance (though this consideration is of small concern to him) the spectator will mix them—which he often does. The advantage of this method of color presentation lies in the degree of purity which the pigment retains. Its disadvantage appears in its frequent distortion of fact and aspect of nature, sacrificed to a scientific method of representation. ”

“ Palette Principles.—In making up your palette, you must so arrange it that you can get pure color when you want it. There is never any trouble to get the color negative; to get richness and balance is another matter. If you will refer to the color plates, you will see that in each of the three primary colors there are pigments which lean towards one or the other of the other two. The scarlet red is a yellow red. The Chinese vermilion and the rose madder are blue reds. The same holds with yellows and blues, as orange cadmium is a red yellow, and strontian yellow is a greenish yellow. ”

“ When the sky and shadows are completed the main values of the picture are established, and the highlights being thin and transparent do not change the other values.
Most of the color is mixed on the paper as the work progresses and not on the palette, thus a pleasing transparent change and variety of color is obtained which can be seen by a study of the shadows and highlights in the plates. ”

“ You may not need the same palette for one sort of picture that is essential to another. You can have a palette which will do all sorts of work, but a change in the combinations may often be called for in accordance with the different color characteristics of your picture. ”

“ In disk combinations a spectrum color combined with a black disk produces by rotation a shade of that color. In pigments the admixture of black does not usually produce as satisfactory shades of a color as may be secured with some other pigments, and each artist has his own preferences in making shades of the various colors on his palette. ”

“ To maintain an even shade of color, it is necessary to slightly stir up the color each time the brush is dipped into the color saucer or palette, especially when the coloring is composed of mixed colors, because the coloring matter is apt to separate from the water and sink to the bottom. ”

“ We must expect, then, in painting, to find that neutral gray will be more altered by pale tints of red, orange, or yellow, which are slightly lighter than itself, and that the gray will be less altered by these colors when differing considerably from it in luminosity; analogous conclusions with regard to green, blue, violet, and purple, can also be drawn. Saturated or intense colors in a painting have less effect on white or gray than colors that are pale; this was shown in the preliminary experiment when gray was placed on a ground of strong color. ”

“ If it were not that colors can be compounded, we should be limited in hue and shade to the seven spectral colors; the wealth and beauty of color in nature, art, and commerce would be unknown; the flowers with their thousands of hues would have a poverty of color undreamed of; art would lose its magenta, its lilac, its olive, its lavender, and would have to work its wonders with the spectral colors alone. By compounding various colors in different proportions, new colors can be formed to give freshness and variety. ”

“ When the pale or dark colors are not complementary to their more intense or brilliant rivals, they undergo the same changes indicated in the table on page 7, the changes in the case of the dull or pale colors being considerably greater. In proportion as the colors are distant from each other in the chromatic circle, do they gain in saturation and beauty; while, as they approach, their character is altered and they are apt to look very pale, or, in the case of the dark colors, blackish or dirty. This is particularly so when the brilliant color is large in surface and surrounds the darker one ”

“ Pigments that are jet black and pure white either vegetable or mineral are unknown. It takes the addition of blue to alter the yellowish cast of white, and blue to deepen the brownish cast of any so called black pigment.
White being a neutral color, will harmonize with most any color combination.
NEUTRAL HUES AND TINTS Neutral hues are made by a 50–50 mixture of warm and cold colors. White added to neutral hues produce neutral tints. ”

“ Hue is the pure color neither mixed with white, black, nor a complementary color. A hue may be a primary color, secondary color, or tertiary color in its true value. When you mix a hue with white it becomes a tint; when mixed with black it becomes a shade; and when greyed with a complement it becomes a tone. Since walls should be lighter than the floor covering, walls are usually done in a tint; floor coverings in a shade or tone or a particular hue, and furnishings either in the pure hues in adjacent or complementary colors or in tones, tints, or shades of these hues. ”

“ Those valuable laws of optical illusion teach us always to select colors that have a tendency to recede, that is, those that are indefinite and difficult to classify. For instance, the moment rose is added to gray, or yellow to tan, it takes on light and tends to intensify size rather than to reduce it, while we can add white to gray, or brown to tan with the opposite result. So often we see someone who has achieved a beautiful color plan, change it to satisfy her own desire for variety and in the changing lose all that she has worked to gain. ”

“ Hence the judicious artist purveys for his palette at least two pigments of each colour, one eminent for delicate beauty, the other for richness and depth.
Truth of hue is a relative quality in all colours, except the extreme primaries, in the relations of which, blue, being of nearest affinity to black or shade, has properly but one other relation, in which it inclines to red and becomes purple-blue: it is, therefore, faulty or false, when, tending to yellow, it becomes of a green hue. ”

“ The Palette.—You try to attain nature's effects of light with pigment. Pigment is less pure than light. You cannot have the same scale, the same range, but you must do the best you can, and the arrangement of your palette will help you. As you have not a perfect blue, a perfect red, and a perfect yellow, you must have two colors for one. ”

“ We then shall have representations of all the spectrum colors, but there are still the colors between violet and red, known in nature and art as purples, which must be produced by uniting the red and violet disks, thus completing a circuit of colors containing all the pure colors in nature.
In nature all colors are modified by light and shade, strong light producing tints and shadows more or less deep forming shades. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One must remember always in studying color that we are treating with the material, not with the illusion. We are dealing with pigments, not with prismatic phenomena, and it must be obvious that the only three primary colors that can be used in a way to produce all other colors are red, yellow and blue. ”

“ White, which is also a cold color when added to black makes a cold gray. Yellow added to red forms a warm orange.
MEANING OF COLORS White is said to mean purity; blue, fidelity or truth; red, love or sacrifice; green, envy; pink, modesty; violet, innocence; yellow, jealousy; black, sorrow or distress, and lavender, passion.
4 ART OF COLOR MIXING Mixing colors is an art in itself. With a combination of the chief colors—red, yellow, blue (and black and white) , thousands of shades and hues may be produced. ”

“ It is a common habit with artists to introduce very warm effects into all sunlight by the use of orange or yellow in the warm colors. This extreme tendency has been intentionally avoided in the preparation of these papers, however desirable or allowable it may be considered in heightening effects. So also in the shades as in the tints, the aim has been to keep all the tones of one color in the same scale, even though artists [Pg 118] often run the various tones of the same piece of color into two or three analogous scales. ”

“ Complementary Colors.—A colored object shows a certain color by absorbing part of the light rays and reflecting part of the light rays. For instance, we know that light consists of the colors of the spectrum, red, green and violet. If an object is red, it absorbs the green and violet rays, and reflects only the red rays of light. Therefore, green blue which is a combination of green and violet is the complementary color to red or the shade which is absorbed by a red object. ”

“ In consequence of this law of contrast of tone the contrast of black with active colors generally tends to intensify the black and lower the tone of the color, i.e., to weaken it as though white or light gray was mixed with it, but this effect is modified by contrast of color. ”

“ It is pretty well established that the range of color-vision cannot be materially extended below the red or above the violet by practice, but susceptibility to color variations and the ability to distinguish gradations of tone within the scale can be increased almost indefinitely. ”

“ Therefore, whenever the spectrum is set up as nature's standard or chart of colors and an imitation is made in pigments or papers, great care should be used to secure the most accurate imitation possible, but in the past this has not been the case, because of the prevailing idea that the colors must all be possible combinations of three primaries, and hence the orange, green and violet have often been very broken colors. ”

“ These six bright colours, when used in conjunction with black and white, with each other, or with their complementaries, will strengthen, intensify and enrich each other without altering their true value—when such vivid effects and sharp contrasts offend the taste of the worker, when they appear too crude, too conspicuous and too obtrusive—which they are apt to do—they may be harmonised quite simply, either by modifying the complementaries or by using a tint or a shade, that is, a lighter or a darker tone of the same colour. ”

“ A little experimental practice with the colors will do more to show the various combinations of which they are capable than any lengthy exposition. Various portions of color may be tried, particularly for the more delicate tints, for greys, neutrals, and quiet compounds, where great purity is required, and the most pleasing noted for future use. ”

“ The vermilion shade of red is approximated by mixing white with orange-red.
The colored crayons with which the layout man should be supplied are exceedingly useful in determining color combinations. The eye is a reliable guide in this matter, if it is carefully trained to recognize color harmonies. It should be easy to distinguish the right from the wrong color treatment in Examples 5 and 6. The colder color should always predominate; backgrounds of bright red and bright yellow are difficult to harmonize with any color of ink excepting black. ”

“ Variety may be given to the local color by taking up on the point of the brush when charged with the compound tints portions of pure pigment such as madder, lake, blue or gray.
Water is most difficult to represent, and the suggestions given for different tones and tints may be varied indefinitely. The colors which appear in both running and still water are largely the result of the reflections of sky, cloud, and surrounding objects, but they are also produced by the light or shade reflected from its surface, and by the color of the objects over which it flows. ”

“ Experiments of this kind are particularly difficult, inasmuch as the material, usually colored paper, varies considerably from the spectral color, and differences in saturation, hue, and brightness make great differences in the results, while the feeling-tone of association, individual or racial, very often intrudes. But other things being equal, the bright, the clear, the saturated color is relatively more pleasing, and white, red, and yellow seem especially preferred. ”

“ All the recent scientific writers on color treat this three-color scheme as already exploded, because the simplest as well as the most complex experiments with colored light prove its falsity. Nevertheless, the fact that yellow and blue, which with light make very nearly white, do in the mixture of pigments produce a green, has deceived many persons. ”

“ Color preferences are often determined in this way; yet sometimes they spring from another and more radical source—an affinity between personal temperament and the feeling tone of the preferred color. A consistent choice of blues and grays indicates a specific kind of man or woman, very different from the chooser of yellows and reds.
Although single color tones are expressive, they seldom exist alone in works of art. Significant expression requires variety. The invention of original and expressive color combinations is a rare gift of genius. ”