Art of Color Notes

Art Of Color

• Color effects are in the eye of the beholder
• Genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration 
• Color theory was not taught but rather thought to be part of the artist
• In China the sense of color became cultivated as colors become more naturalistic and ceramics evolved new glazes
• Mosaic artists were able to produce complementary colors
• Grey light was achieved by bathing the blue mosaic walls of the interior in an orange light, filtered through narrow windows of orange alabaster
• Orange and blue make grey as they are complementary colors
• Early stained glass only had few colors
• Romanesque and early gothic artists wanted very bright colors to use as symbols
• Giatto and sienese school were the first painters to paint the human figures in color
• Hubert and Jan Van ecky painted humans realistically
• Color became a means of characterizing natural objects
• el Greco was considered a progenitor of non objective categories
• The art of the empire and classical periods coloration is confined to black white and grey
• M.E Chevreuls book became the scientific foundation of impressionist and neo impressionist painting
• Study of sunlight came about as impressionists had intensive studies of nature
• Monet explored this phenomena
• Neo impressionists divided color areas into point elements
• Mudalating color meant varying it between color and warm, light and dark, or dull and intense
• Cubists used colors for their light dark value as they were more interest in form
• Expressionists attempted to restore psychological content to painting, they aimed to represent internalized and spiritualized experience by means of shapes and colors
• It is possible to create meaningful realities without representing objects
• Art concret- represents non objective usually geometric forms and pure spectral colors in the guise of actual corporeal objects
• Surrealists employed color as a means of expression for the pictorial realization of their irrealities
• Color are forces that affects us positively or negatively
• Physicists study the nature of the electromagnetic energy vibrations and particles involved in the phenomena of light-problems of light
• Chemists study the molecular structure of dyes and pigments-problems of color fastness
• Psychologists are interested in problems of the influence of color radiation on our mind and spirit 
• Artists are interested in color effects from their aesthetic aspects and needs physiological and phycological information 
• Color aesthetics are approached in three directions: impression (visually), Expression (emotionally), construction (symbolically)
• In history color was many used for it symbolic values such as to identify social standings, castes, religion or mythology
• Masters of studying emotional and expressive powers of color are el greco and grunewald
• The visual masters of color was Velasquez and Zurbaran, Van eyck 
• Quality of color: its position or location inside the color circle
• Degree of lightness or darkness: quantity of brilliance (tonal gradation)
• Brilliance: mixing a color with white black or grey or by mixing it with another color of unlike brilliance

Color Physics

• Ways of physically generating colors are refraction, interference, diffraction, polarization and fluorescence 
• Two kinds of colored light whose mixture with each other yield white are called complementary
• The spectral hue is the complement of the mixture of all the other spectral hues
• Colors are a result of light waves
• Colors resulting from absorption is known as subtractive colors

Color Agent and Color Effect

• The color agent is the physically or chemically definable and analyzable pigment, the colorant
• Values of chromatic color is determined by relation to black white gray 
• Color effects is the psychophysiological color reality
• Color agent and color effect coincide only in the case of harmonious polytones
• Contrast makes things look bigger and darker
• When an agent and effect do not coincide we have a discordant, dynamic and unreal and fugitive expression
• Once a theme has been conceived the design must follow that primary and ruling conception
• If the color is the main form of expression then the composition must begin with color areas then lines

Concords of Color

• Color effect is the evaluating the join effect of two or more colors
• Harmonious refers to colors of closely similar chromas or without sharp contrast
• Harmony or discord refers to an agreeable-disagreeable or attractive-unatrractive scale
• This is all subjective
• Successive contrast-when the eye posits the complementary color looking to restore equilibrium
• Simultaneous contrast-Pure colors have the tendency to shift other chromatic colors towards their own complement
• Colors are harmonious if they mix and make white
• The eye and brain needs medium grey for equilibrium
• When a set of two or more colors contain yellow, red and blue they make grey-Harmonious equilibrium
• If it is neutral grey then it is mutually harmonious
• If the mixture does not yield grey then it is expressive or discordant
• Harmony=order
• Yellow:red:blue=3:6:8

Subjective Timbre

• Interpretation of subjective color combinations is not to be based on the several chromas and their expressional values alone
• The timbre as a whole is the most important then the placement of the colors relative to each other, their directions, brilliances, clarity or turbidity, their proportions, textures and rhythmic relationships
• Subjective taste cannot suffice for the solution of all color problems

Seven Color contrasts 

• Contrast of hue
• light dark contrast
• cold warm contrast
• complementary contrast
• simultaneous contrast
• contrast of saturation
• contrast of extension