Produced by light of various wavelengths, and when light strikes an
object and reflects back to the eyes.
of art with three properties: (1) hue
or tint, the color name,
e.g., red, yellow, blue, etc.: (2) intensity,
the purity and strength of a color, e.g., bright
red or dull red; and (3) value,
the lightness or darkness
of a color.
When the spectrum is organized as a color
wheel, the colors are divided into groups called primary,
secondary and intermediate
(or tertiary) colors; analogous
and complementary, and also
as warm and cool
Colors can be objectively
described as saturated,
clear, cool, warm,
deep, subdued, grayed,
multicolored, particolored, variegated,
Some words used to describe colors
are more subjective (subject
to personal opinion or taste),
such as: exciting, sweet, saccharine, brash, garish, ugly,
beautiful, cute, fashionable, pretty,
Sometimes people speak of colors
when they are actually refering to pigments,
what they are made of (various natural or synthetic
substances), their relative permanence,
Photographers measure color temperature in degrees kelvin
Examples of art especially concerned with color:
Johannes Itten (Swiss, 1888-1967), Space Composition, I (Raum Komposition I), 1944, oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 19 3/4 inches (65.1 x 50.1 cm), Museum of Modern Art, NY. See Bauhaus and Swiss art.
Johannes Itten (Swiss, 1888-1967), Space Composition, II (Raum Komposition II), 1944, oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 19 5/8 inches (65.1 x 49.7 cm), Museum of Modern Art, NY.
- Color is "a phantasm of the sense."
David Hume (1711-1776), British philosopher.
- "The purest and most thoughtful minds
are those which love color the most."
John Ruskin (1819-1900), English art critic.
- "Color is my day-long obsession,
joy and torment."
Claude Monet (1840-1926), French Impressionist painter.
- "Color is the keyboard, the eyes
are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The
artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to
cause vibrations in the soul."
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), modern Russian painter,
one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern
painting and founder of Der Blaue Reiter.
- "Color has taken hold of me; no longer
do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever.
That is the significance of this blessed moment. Color and I
are one. I am a painter."
Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss painter.
- "Blue is the male principle, stern
and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, cheerful
and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy, and always the
color which must be fought and vanquished by the other two."
Franz Marc (1880-1916), German painter of Der Blaue Reiter. In
a letter to Auguste Macke.
- "Colors, like features, follow the
changes of the emotions."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. "Conversation
avec Picasso", in Cahiers d'Art, vol. 10, no. 10
(Paris, 1935; translated in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso:
Fifty Years of His Art, 1946).
- "Anybody who paints and sees a sky
green and pastures blue ought to be sterilized."
Adolph Hitler (1889-1945), German dictator and perpetrator of
genocide, who painted as a very young man. Also see degenerate
- "I try to apply colors like words
that shape poems, like notes that shape music." Joan Miró
(1893-1983), Spanish Surrealist artist.
- "I make black and white prints because
I want to go back to the beginning, and because in prints black
and white are absolute: these two colors express the most delicate
vibration, the most profound tranquillity, and unlimited profundity."
Shiko Munakata (1903-1975), Japanese.
- "Artists can color the sky red because
they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color
things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid."
Jules Feiffer, contemporary American cartoonist and writer.
- A riddle:
Q: What colors should you paint the sun and the wind?
A: The sun rose and the wind blue!
(Contributed by Reid Delahunt, 10 years old.)
- "Chalkboard" on
color theory, painting materials
and techniques. With excellent text and graphics, several pages
thoroughly explain various aspects of color, along with color
mixing with pigments, light, and optics. Chalkboard is produced
by Ralph Larmann, an art faculty member at the University of
- The causes of color.
- The Russian emigrant conceptual artist
team Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid are responsible for the projects
they titled "The Most Wanted paintings" and "The
Least Wanted paintings", reflect the artists' interpretation
of a professional market research survey about aesthetic preferences
and taste in painting. Intending to discover what a true "people's
art" would look like, the artists, with the support of the
Nation Institute, hired Marttila & Kiley, Inc. to conduct
the first poll. In 1994, they began the process which resulted
in America's Most Wanted and America's Least Wanted paintings,
which were first exhibited under the title "People's Choice."
Their research resulted in data on the favorite colors of peoples of numerous
countries. See conceptual
- Color Theory on the Computer is an online course teaching fundamental color
theory concepts through exercises and tutorials on working with
color using Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements software.
This course is posted on the Adobe.com site as created by Patricia
Johnson, a computer graphics educator and consultant.
- What's YOUR favorite color? Want to know
conducts an online survey of its visitors' favorite colors, and
then formulates THE ultimate color that results from its visitors'
- Color Matters. The
concept of color can be approached from several disciplines:
physiology, psychology, philosophy, and art. Starting points
for an exploration of color. Explore how color affects appetite,
vision, sexuality, energy conservation, and its relationship
to architecture and interior design.
- Color Theory Overview and Tutorial offers essays on a number of aspects of the theory
of colors and the aesthetics of color combinations.
- Basic color schemes
- Introduction to Color Theory offers great information from TigerColor.com, the maker of ColorImpact, a Windows-only software application that helps users create color schemes.
- Colorguides.net offers Pantone color guides and books, especially useful in incorporating the Pantone palette in graphic design.
Also see angstrom,
ASTM International (American
Society for Testing and Materials), bias,
look-up table, feather, feng shui, fluorescent
colors, fugitive colors,
nuance, palette, Pantone
Matching System (PMS), pattern,
and pull, RGB, saturation, spectrum, stain
and stain removal, texture,
ultraviolet, and value.
Coming soon (available
now only in early stages of construction): articles on individual colors: magenta,