7. Making and Using Color Charts

As stated before, the various systems of color measurement, useful as they are in some industries and in certain areas of the applied arts, have only limited value in relation to the every­day problems of the artist, However, the simple charts that we present in this chapter have a different purpose than the more complicated scales of the well-known color systems, al­though they are similar in some re­spects. The latter are intended to set standards of accurate color meas­urement, primarily for the purpose of specification and matching, but the charts which we now suggest the reader make for himself will pro­vide him with numerous practical pointers on color mixture in pigment form. These charts should be made as carefully as possible and kept for permanent reference.

Pigment Mixture

If you experimented with your pig­ments as directed in the previous chapters, you doubtless discovered that, whether you mixed them by making overlays, or by merging them on paper or canvas, or by blending them on your palette, the results indicated that pigment mixture fol­lows certain natural laws. The fol­lowing exercises are designed to reveal the best established of these, while at the same time providing simple scales for color measurement.

Primary Colors

In previous chapters we learned that various authorities choose dif­ferent colors as primary, depending to a large extent on whether they are working with colored light, with pig­ments, or with the appearance of colored objects. Since we are dealing with pigments, we shall base our experiments entirely on the pigment primaries: red, yellow and blue, from which almost any desired hues can be mixed. These are the primaries used by many colorists, including the printer, painter and dyer. The exact hues of red, yellow and blue which will serve best as primaries may differ according to purpose. The color reproductions in this book are printed with the three inks shown in full strength (and as mixed by super-imposition) in the pigment color mixture circles of Plate 1, plus black to give deeper values. As the printer's problems in pigment mixture are similar to those of the artist, these hues could be selected for your primaries. In Plate 9, the pri­maries used were Cadmium Lemon, Alizarin Crimson, and Permanent Blue. The main thing is to utilize the reddest red, the yellowiest yellow and the bluest blue that your palette affords.

You should find, by the way, that your own experiments with pure pig­ments are brighter and truer than the color reproductions in this or any other book. Excellent though modern proc­esses of reproduction and printing are, they rarely achieve more than an acceptable approximation of the original color.

Exercise 43: Mixing the Second­aries — When you have selected your primaries, the next move is to mix secondaries from them. (See Plate 9.) By varying the proportions of your primary red and primary yellow, you can obtain a full range of oranges. Choose for your secondary the one which seems to stand midway be­tween your red and yellow.

Now mix primary yellow and pri­mary blue in varying proportions to obtain a wide range of greens and select the one that seems least in­clined toward blue or yellow for your secondary.

Repeat the exercise with primary red and primary blue and choose the midway violet as secondary.

Some authorities say, in substance, that by mixing equal parts of primary yellow and primary blue, secondary green is obtained. This is not quite true. For yellow, even though it is extremely intense, is light in value while blue is dark but less intense. In equal mixture, therefore, one may out­weigh the other, and the result may not seem a normal green. Vary your proportions as necessary, but try to get a normal green, a normal orange and a normal violet. These three secondaries, together with the three primaries, give us our six leading colors.

Exercise 44: Mixing the Intermedi­aries — Now, progressing a step further, mix the six intermediaries: red-orange, yellow-green, blue-violet, yellow-orange, blue-green and red-violet. (In compounding these names, as "red" with "orange" to make "red-orange," that of the primary is usually placed first, indicating an excess of red over the other compo­nent primary, yellow.)

As you can see, these intermedi­aries are mixtures of the three prima­ries and three secondaries. However, if you try to carry the exercise fur­ther, mixing red with green, orange with blue, or yellow with violet, you will produce not intermediary hues but grayish tones. The reason for this will be made clear when we con­sider complementary colors.

Exercise 45: Making a Color Wheel — The color wheel or "chromatic circle" is an extremely valuable device for establishing certain color relation­ships. You should make one of your own and save it for future reference. Plate 10 is offered for your guidance.

Though there is no arbitrary rule as to number of colors, a 12-hue wheel is convenient as it exactly accommodates the three primaries, three secondaries and six intermedi­aries. Follow the steps shown in the top row of Plate 10 (your own colors will be brighter) and you will have a completed wheel similar to the 12-hue wheel at bottom left. A con­venient size is about 6 inches in di­ameter.

In a sense, such a wheel is a simple scale for measuring hues. Although far from accurate by scienti­fic standards, it is most useful for the artist. The approximate "measure­ment" of any hue can be quickly judged by the eye if it is referred to the hues of the wheel for comparison. Of course, the more hues a wheel bears, the closer this judgment will be. Hence, some artists prefer a wheel with 18 or more hues (see bottom right, Plate 10).

This simply means providing room for a wider range of intermediate hues; the primaries and secondaries remain the same.

You will have noticed that the color wheel has something of the appear­ance of the solar spectrum, bent round to meet end to end. Actually, however, the two ends of the spec­trum have little in common. It will be recalled from Chapter I that red, which terminates one end, has waves which are long and slow in vibration, while the waves of violet, terminating the opposite end, are short and rapid. When we try to force these ends together, as in the color wheel (we have to add purple to fill the gap), the result is highly artificial. Never­theless, a well-prepared color wheel can prove extremely useful, as we shall see.

Complementary Colors

Chapter I showed us that when an object, such as a red book, is ex­posed to light, it reflects to the eye rays of light which are capable of exciting the sensation of red, and absorbs all other rays. The color is produced, or made visible, through this power which objects have (commonly known as selective absorption) of separating or subtracting some colors from light as a whole. The color of the absorbed light is said to be comple­mentary to the remaining light, for the absorbed (colored) light plus the residual (colored) light would pro­duce, in mixture, white light. As this absorbed or complementary light is, in the case of an object, invisible, it cannot be studied, but the scientist has learned not only how to decom­pose white light into its component parts (as we have seen), but how to present to view the complement of each spectral hue. If we take the three primary colors (remember we are dealing with light just now, rather than pigments), he can show us that red (Scarlet Vermilion) has for its complement blue-green (Cyan Blue); green has purple (Magenta); blue-violet has yellow (slightly orange). He can demonstrate, too, the fact already mentioned that if these spectral primaries are mixed in proper proportions, white light results. It is also true that if each of these primaries is mixed with its complement, white light will result. In fact, any spectral color and its true complement produce, in mixture, white light.

(It is interesting to note that the so-called additive primaries of light — red, green, and blue-violet — have as their complementariness blue-green |cyan], magenta, and yellow, which approximate the subtractive pigment primaries, blue, red, and yellow.)

This repetition of truths concerning pure light would be irrelevant here were it not for the fact that from them certain valuable parallels can be drawn. If we mix together our pigment primaries, for example, we get gray rather than the white pro­duced by spectral mixture. This differ­ence is mainly due to the dullness of pigments in relation to light. Note that we have used a neutral gray in filling the centers of the color wheels in Plate 10.

In dealing with pigments, we can find complements much as with light. Here is one method. By mixing pri­mary red with primary blue, we obtain a secondary, violet. This is the com­plement of the third primary, yellow, and vice versa. In other words, the secondary obtained by mixing any two primaries is the complement of the third primary.

Now we have already seen that when we mix a primary (red, for instance) with certain secondaries (in this case, orange or violet), the result is a bright intermediate hue. By looking at the color wheel, you can see that orange and violet are related to red, that is, they are near it on the wheel. If, however, we mix pri­mary red with the secondary directly opposite it on the color wheel — its complement, in other words — we obtain, not an intense intermediate hue, but an approximation of neutral, gray. This relates to what we have just learned about the three pigment primaries in mixture producing gray. The secondary green is a mixture of the two primaries, blue and yellow, so its mixture with red produces the same result as a blend of the three primaries.

As we just noted, green is directly opposite red on the color wheel. In fact, any hues exactly opposite each other on a well-prepared color wheel are complementary.

We cannot over-emphasize the im­portance of these complementary hues in work with pigments. You should memorize the principal pairs. The 12-hue wheel gives us red and green, yellow and violet, blue and orange, yellow-orange and blue-violet yellow-green and red-violet, red-orange and blue-green.

Exercise 46: Testing Complements — You will find it extremely practical to experiment with your own pigments to see which hues prove the most complementary. By comparing grays, it is easy to judge in what respects particular pigments fail. Usually, if the grays are too warm (brownish), the cooler colors (blues, etc.) are not strong enough, and vice versa. How­ever, you will probably find that grays produced by complementary mixtures often do lean a bit towards brown.

Plate 11. (See page 41.) The top chart shows typical value scales. The value of any hue can be measured against the gray scale in the center. In the bottom chart are ex­amples of normal colors, tints, and shades. The normal colors were diluted with water to form the tints, and darkened with gray to form the shades.

Uses of Complements

A strange paradox of color relation­ships is that when a color and its complement are mixed together, each tends to dull or neutralize the other, but when placed side by side, each emphasizes or accentuates the other. Thus complements have power both to destroy and to reinforce, according to the way they are employed.

Let us examine this destructive characteristic and see what use it is. Suppose you have mixed an orange that is too bright for your purpose. Thinning it with water or medium, or adding white, will make it lighter, not duller. How can you modify its intensity? By adding gray? Yes. But the use of gray often proves a dead­ening influence. Instead, add com­plementary blue. In the same way, if you have painted a green hillside and it seems too vivid, you can super­pose it with a pale wash or glaze of red or red-violet.

As an example of the reinforcing characteristic of complements, sup­pose an artist is painting a building in bright sunshine. In order to make his sunny yellows and oranges all the more telling, he will oppose them with blue or violet shadows, which, through contrast, will enhance the brilliance of the warm tones. In a landscape consisting mainly of greens, a dash of red is frequently added to intensify the whole. Corot's paintings often exemplify this point. Nature makes use of complements or near complements. We see stretches of yellow sand contrasting with blue of sea and sky, and purple clouds against the golden sunset. Artists have long recognized the value of such contrasts and base many of their schemes upon them.

Scales of Intensity

Let us now perform several exer­cises which will acquaint us with the behavior of complementary colors when they are mixed together.

Exercise 47: Color Graded to Com­plement — Do a watercolor wash grading by almost imperceptible de­grees from red to green. (See Fron­tispiece.) When complements are wedded in this manner, they produce, no matter how intense, a variety of more or less neutral hues. About half way between red and green, a neutral zone will be noted in which the two opposing colors are so proportioned as to appear gray. This gray corresponds to the neutral cen­ters of the color wheels you have made. Between the neutral zone and red will be many gray-reds, while, similarly, there will be gray-greens separating it from green. Thus, one learns that by mixing a given color with its complement in varying quan­tities, it is possible to produce a wide variety of intensities of both colors, along with neutral gray. Per­form this same exercise with other pairs of complements.

Exercise 48: A Stepped Scale — Be­cause of the inability of the eye to measure readily such gradual changes of intensity as shown in a graded wash of the sort described above, a stepped scale may be of more value. (See Frontispiece.) This can be done in either oil or watercolor.

Draw five small rectangles in a vertical row and fill the top one with any hue at full intensity. (Red-orange would be a good choice.) Now mix red-orange with its complement, blue-green, until it is reduced to neutral gray; fill the lowest rectangle with this tone. (This area corresponds to the neutral zone in the middle of the graded wash or in the center of the color wheel.) Now, by mixing approximately half as much blue-green with the red-orange, the tone for the middle rectangle will be pro­cured, relatively greater and lesser proportions of blue-green being used for the areas in quarter and three-quarter intensity. (Your eye will have to be the judge.)

Exercise 49: The Color Wheel as a Scale of Intensity — A color wheel can also be made showing a scale of intensity. (See Frontispiece.) Divide the outer portions in twelve parts as in the previous wheels mentioned. Fill these with colors of full intensity. Provide a second ring within for the same colors at half intensity, and a central neutral zone.

Study, in particular, the colors at half intensity, for it is true, although strange, that most of us cannot recognize even the common colors seen in lowered intensity — gray-yellow, for instance. Not only will the preparation of this scale help you to gain acquaintance with such hues, but whenever you must mix them, the scale will show their constit­uents.

To make this wheel of still greater value, add an extra pair of rings between the others, the first for three-quarter and the second for one-quarter intensity.

The Effects of Juxtapositional Mixture

We all know that pigments can be mixed or blended in many ways, but there is one method which, while not uncommon, receives less at­tention than it should. It consists of placing in close proximity many small brush marks of two or more colors which, when viewed from the proper distance, are merged by the eye into a single hue. This method, known as pointillism, produces ef­fects that are quite different from those resulting from the more usual methods of combining colors. We have already spoken of the strange paradox that while complements in mixture tend to annihilate each other, juxtaposed, each strengthens the other. This statement needs some modification, as the following exer­cises prove. (See Plate 15.)

Exercise 50: Area Experimentation — Mix together vivid red and comple­mentary green pigments to obtain neutral gray. This proves that com­plements annihilate each other in mixture. Next, lay areas of the same vivid red and green, each at least an inch square, side by side. Each of these colors will now appear more intense than if seen by itself, showing that juxtaposed complements do in­deed strengthen each other.

But now comes a vital difference. Cover an area about 1l/2-inch square with alternate stripes, each approxi­mately Vs-inch wide, of the bright red and green just used. You will discover as you work that, with adjacent bands of this width, marked intensification of the colors will be evident unless they are held too far from the eye. The effect may even seem dazzling, the red tending to advance and the green, especially if bluish, to retreat. A sort of oscillation is set up, making such an area more striking than the single pair of con­trasting complements.

Next, fill a space not less than an inch square with a stippling of small dots of the same red and green; another with fine alternating pen lines of the same colors. Set them a few feet away. What has happened? Does the dotting and lining now prove that if complements are adja­cently placed each reinforces the other, as we have stated? On the contrary, the red and green seem to merge to give much the effect of neutral gray — a tone peculiarly vibrant, to be sure, yet almost as gray as though the two hues were actually stirred together.

What does this prove? It proves that area has much to do with color appearances. This is one of the rea­sons, for instance, why a large paint­ing, perfectly copied or reproduced at small scale, may look disappoint­ingly dull. The eye has a tendency to merge small varicolored areas into solid tones. For this reason, more decided color schemes are usually needed for small paintings than for large, if brilliant effects are sought.

Exercise 51: Spatter — As further proof of the importance of area, spatter a sheet of paper a foot or so square with fair-sized drops of two or three pairs of complementary colors. If the spattering is sufficiently coarse, the effect, when viewed close at hand, should prove quite brilliant (some small spots may be dull, due to uncontrollable superposition). Now, place the paper across the room. The colors should merge into an oscillating or scintillating neutrality, as did the stippling and lining of the previous experiment. This proves again that, if brilliancy in painting is sought, one should avoid the juxtapositional use, in small areas, of even the brightest comple­mentary hues.

We stress complementary hues, for related or analogous hues (those which are near each other on the color wheel) actually seem brighter and more vital when thus employed, as you can see by performing these same exercises with various pairs of related hues. When colors are juxta­posed in larger areas, whether com­plementary or analogous, brightness is obtained, as we have seen.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note that when red and green are mixed by the juxtapositional method, the resultant gray usually tends slightly towards yellow, which is, as we have seen, the result of the spectral mix­ture of red and green.

Values

It will be recalled that value is the quality of color which has to do with the amount of light or dark which the color contains. In order to study this quality, we will now make a group of scales for measuring values.

By mixing black or white (or water or thinning medium) with a color, we can change its value without chang­ing its hue. The easiest approach to value study, therefore, is through black and white. In black we have the lowest of all values; black stands for the absence of light. In white we have the highest value which our paper and pigments permit, white representing the maximum presence of light. This gives us two predeter­mined extremes. By mixing black with white in varying proportions, we can obtain innumerable interme­diate values. For study purposes, it is customary to establish a limited number of progressive steps or inter­vals.

Exercise 52: A Value Scale — An eight or nine-stage scale will give a good range of values for compari­son. (See Plate 11.) Draw nine small rectangles in a vertical row and fill the top with your purest white, the bottom with your blackest black. Then mix the two together in varying pro­portions to fill the boxes between. Your eye will have to be the judge of just how much white or black is needed for each step. You will find, for instance, as have many color experts before you, that you cannot get middle gray by a half-and-half mixture of black and white. For the scientific, there is the well-known Weber-Fechner law which expresses the relationship between the strength of a stimulus (in this case, black and white content) and the intensity of the sensation (here, the value of gray). As the stimulus strength is increased geometrically, the intensity of the sensation increases arith­metically. For most artists, however, the eye is a thoroughly satisfactory gauge. Just add more white or more black until the scale appears to grade regularly from white to black.

Exercise 53: Value Scales in Color — In the previous exercise, we made a neutral scale which is used mainly for measuring whites, grays and blacks. However, a color of any hue can pass through similar intervals, as we have seen in Exercises 32, 33, and 34. In Plate 11 compare the value scales in color with the gray scale.

As you compare the light and dark values of the various hues, you will note again a fact that we have previously pointed out: normal colors vary greatly in value. Normal yellow is extremely light, for instance, and normal violet is dark. It is obvious, then, that we can produce no great number of tints of yellow or shades of violet showing marked differences in value.

With such scales completed, try to register impressions of these tones in your mind. Do this, too, with all your color scales, for when it comes to actual painting you will need the widest possible acquaintance with hues, values and intensities. What we have already said about variations in the values of normal hues is, how­ever, enough to show the difficulty of accurately measuring or classifying hues according to value, particularly by eye.

Obviously, all three of these color qualities are so closely related that it is not easy to think of them sepa­rately. If one changes the value of a color, for example, he often changes both its intensity and hue at the same time, and vice versa. Thousands upon thousands of hues, values and intensities are possible, and the ap­pearance of all of these is further affected by area, arrangement and textures, so it is obvious that no scale or system of measurement can be of more than limited worth. How­ever, some of the simple scales which we have just discussed, par­ticularly the color wheel, can easily prove of considerable profit, as we shall learn in discussing color har­mony and color schemes.

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