Notebook

Notebook, 1993-

COLOR

Back [to Color in 'Vision and Invention' by Harlan]

The Color Wheel and the Natural Order of Colors - The Afterimage - The Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Hues - The Achromatic Scale - Color Terminology - Chromatic Gradations: Tints and Shades - Chromatic Whites and Blacks - Broken Colors - Chromatic Grays: Warm and Cool

[From: Harlan, Calvin. Vision & Invention, An Introduction to Art Fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1986.]

Color Terminology
It may be a good idea at this point to define certain terms, a number having already appeared. We have already defined hue, value, intensity, tints, shades, chromatic grays, chromatic whites, and chromatic blacks. Again, intensity is one of four words [the others being chroma, brightness, and saturation] used to indicate the quality of a color as color, the degree of strength or chromatic energy. Three variables--hue, value, intensity--are referred to by William Charles Libby as the three "dimensions of color." A broken color is the result of the mixture of unequal portions of all three of the primary hues [putting it rather theoretically]. In balanced mixtures, these three pigment colors cancel one another to an unnameable gray. In unbalanced or unequal mixtures, however, one or two of the three would dominate and a dull red, yellow, green, orange, or some such would emerge. These dullish colors happen to be the most common colors in nature; they are the so-called earth colors--browns, tans, burnt oranges, clay reds, moss greens, and so on. Tone is one of those catch-all words, borrowed from the vocabulary of musical terms and used to denote or connote a confusing variety of qualities--involving value, color, and color and value together. [p. 96]

[Harlan, Calvin. Vision & Invention, An Introduction to Art Fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1986.]




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