Category: Color
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ColorJack
Like many of the online interactive color visualization and color picking utilities, ColorJack offers multiple interfaces with different options and capabilities. The most interesting of these, and most popular of the ColorJack options, is their Color Sphere, or Color Theory Visualizer (image above, top). More than simply a color picker, this displays the secondary, tertiary…
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Master Artists’ Palettes
Writing in her blog on the Telegraph in an article titled Why preserve Van Gogh’s palette?, Lucy Davies points to some of the considerations for artists learning from the palettes of the masters, both in choice and arrangement of colors. Those fascinated by the techniques of the great painters would benefit from understanding their palettes.…
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The Color Wheel on Gurney Journey
Painter and illustrator James Gurney, who I recently profiled here, is currently writing a series of fascinating posts on his blog, Gurney Journey, about The Color Wheel. In them he is exploring questions that are not raised often enough, including questioning the concept of exactly what is a primary color, and how might primary colors…
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Blue and green, or is it?
Like anyone who works with painting, design or color in any form, I occasionally struggle with color; not just with mixing and choosing colors, but with the actual perception of color, the ability to answer the seemingly simple question “What color is that?” All of my studies of color and color theory have led me…
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FM 100 Hue Test
The FM 100 Hue Test is a seemingly simple test of your ability to discern close hue relationships, a sort of “color IQ test”. The interactive is provided by x-rite, a company that makes Munsell-based color measurement products. It consists of four bands of small squares of varying colors. Each band represents a scale of…
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History of the Color Wheel
It’s been the subject of much discussion, some suggesting that it is misleading enough that it should be rethought entirely, but the color wheel remains the most common and convenient method for visually understanding and comparing the relationships of different hues. As part of the Gutenberg-e project by the American Historical Association and Columbia University…