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Title: Elementary Color
Author: Bradley, Milton
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Elementary Color" ***
[Illustration: (_See Page 41._)]
ELEMENTARY
COLOR
BY
MILTON BRADLEY.
Author of "Color in the Schoolroom"
and "Color in the Kindergarten."
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
HENRY LEFAVOUR, Ph.D.,
Professor of Physics, Williams College.
Third Edition.
MILTON BRADLEY CO.,
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
COPYRIGHTED, 1895,
BY MILTON BRADLEY CO.,
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
THE THEORY OF COLOR 9
Why Artists and Scientists Have Disagreed 10
The Speculations of the Past 12
What the Primary Teacher Needs to Consider 13
Concerning the Solar Spectrum 15
Six Spectrum Standards of Color 17
The Color Wheel and Maxwell Disks 18
The Bradley System of Color Instruction 20
COLOR DEFINITIONS 23
PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS 31
The Color Wheel 31
The Color Top 32
Use of the Disks 32
How to Begin the Experiments 34
The Old Theories Tested by Mixture of Three Pigments 45
Old Theories Tested by the Color Wheel or Color Top 46
Concerning the Complementary Colors 50
Citrines and Russets 54
Olives 55
Vermilion, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna and Indian Red 55
Classification of Harmonies 56
The Work of Chevreul Reviewed 58
Simultaneous, Successive and Mixed Contrast 61
Contrasted Harmony 64
Color with White 64
Black with White 64
Color with Black 65
Colors with Gray 65
Contrast of Colors 67
Dominant Harmonies 67
Complementary Harmonies 69
Analogous Harmonies 70
Perfected Harmonies 70
Field's Chromatic Equivalents 73
Colored Papers 74
COLOR TEACHING IN THE SCHOOLROOM 76
The Glass Prism 78
How the Bradley Color Standards Were Chosen 79
Paper Color Tablets 80
Color Wheel or Top 82
The Study of Tones 85
Neutral Grays 89
Explanation of Broken Colors 91
An Exercise in Broken Colors 92
Formulas for a Chart of Broken Spectrum Scales 95
Certain Color Puzzles 96
Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales Completed 98
The Work of Cutting and Pasting 99
A Variety of Designs 101
Analysis of Color Materials 106
The Bradley Colored Papers 112
Engine Colored Papers 116
Water Colors 118
Color Blindness 121
OUTLINE OF A COURSE IN COLOR INSTRUCTION 124
The Solar Spectrum 125
Pigmentary Spectrum Colors 125
Study of Tones 126
Broken Colors 127
Complete Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales in Five Tones 127
Advanced Study of Harmonies 128
INTRODUCTION.
The movement in educational reform at present is in the direction of
unification. It is held that in framing the programme for any grade the
interest not only of the next higher but of all higher grades must be
considered. This is done not solely that those who are to enter the
higher grades may be directly prepared for their more advanced studies,
but especially because it is felt that better work will thus be done for
those whose school training is soon to terminate. For the child's
education is never finished and a mind rightly directed at the start
will gather from its practical experience that with which it may develop
and augment the resources and the ideas already received. No education
can be sound which teaches anything that is inconsistent with the more
advanced truths, however complex and profound those truths may be. There
should be no unlearning in the course of an education nor any
expenditure of time on that which has no permanent value.
It is of importance therefore to consider in connection with the study
of any special subject what the problems are which lie at the end of the
educational journey and what basis will be needed in the child's maturer
thought. There will thus be the inspiration of the goal to be attained
and guidance in the selection of the most helpful methods.
There is scarcely any subject that has so many practical and scientific
aspects as the subject of color. Its great importance in the arts and
its contribution to the enjoyment of life are matched by the
multiplicity of problems in the physical and philosophical sciences with
which it is connected. Without attempting to enumerate all of the
scientific problems related to this subject, it may be of interest to
briefly summarize those which are most prominent. At the outset we have
such purely physical questions as the nature of light, the cause of its
emission, the mode of its propagation, the difference in the waves which
give rise to the various color sensations, the principles of absorption,
of reflection and of refraction, and the nature of material surfaces
whereby they acquire their characteristic colors. Then comes the
physiology of the eye, including its structure and its function and
involving the much discussed questions of primary and secondary colors,
and these are closely related to the psychological or psycho-physical
study of the nature, duration and delicacy of color vision and color
judgment. Next to these comes the study of pigments and of the chromatic
effects of their mixture, essentially a chemical and technical question,
and finally, the most important of all, the purely psychological or
æsthetic problem touching the harmonization and grouping of the various
colors and their modifications. The recent advance made in experimental
psychology has given an impetus to the study of the whole subject and we
may reasonably expect that rational explanations may be found for
questions in æsthetics hitherto considered purely arbitrary.
It will be readily seen that there must be a well developed and
carefully trained color sense at the basis of an education which is to
lead to the consideration of these and similar chromatic problems. As in
the development of any special perceptive power, a great deal depends
upon making a beginning early in life, when the mind is most receptive
and there are no preconceptions to be overcome. Every means should be
employed that will help the child to distinguish between principal
colors and between modifications of principal colors. His attention
should be directed at as early a stage as possible to the analysis of
composite colors and the effects obtained by the combination of colored
lights and the results of irradiant light. The principles of chromatic
harmony are perhaps not simple, but a child, before whom right standards
of color combinations are constantly presented, will acquire a correct
æsthetic judgment that may become intuitive. The effect of such a
training on the higher development of our people and on their
appreciation of true art would be of the greatest value.
If the instruction in color is to be systematic and efficient, it is
unquestionable that there must be a simple nomenclature for the standard
colors; and for the teacher's guidance at least as well as for the use
of the older pupils, a scientifically accurate system of describing any
required modification of these recognized standards. The system
presented in this book is based on the well-known principle of the
Maxwell wheel and has been elaborated by one who has had in view not
only the theory of the subject but also the practical possibilities of
its use in preparing educational material. This fact, I feel sure,
greatly enhances the value of the conclusions at which he arrives.
HENRY LEFAVOUR.
Williams College, December 20, 1894.
PREFACE.
Ever since Newton discovered the solar spectrum it has been referred to
in a poetic way as Nature's standard of color. But as soon as the author
attempted, some twelve years ago, to use it practically by making
pigmentary imitations of the spectrum colors as standards they were
decried as vulgar and inartistic. Under such circumstances it was a
great pleasure to him to hear a celebrated art professor answer his
inquiry if the solar spectrum is the proper place to look for standards
of color with the emphatic assertion, "Certainly, there is no other
place to go."
Where there are no standards there can be no measurements, and if in
color we have no measurements of effects, no records can be made, and
hence no comparisons of results at various places and times, and
consequently no discussion and little progress. Because there have been
no accepted standards and no measurements of color very little has thus
far been decided regarding psychological color effects.
In drawing, as at present taught in our best schools from the
kindergarten to the university, the foundation of art in black and white
is laid in form study. From the drawing teachers we learn that a good
touch and a fine sense for light and shade in all their subtle relations
to each other are without value, unless due care has been given to the
commonplace consideration of lengths and directions of lines, that is to
say to the measurement of lines and angles, and to the laws of
perspective. We cannot have measurements without standards. By the foot
or the metre we measure lines and by the divided circle we measure
angles.
Geometrical forms have already been so definitely analyzed by
the science of mathematics that if destroyed to-day these solids and
surfaces could be reconstructed at any future time from written or
printed directions. But suppose all material samples of color to be
lost, it would be impossible by the ordinary system of color
nomenclature to even approximately restore a single one from written or
verbal descriptions.
Color is one of the first things to attract the attention of the infant,
almost as soon as a sound and long before form appeals to him, so that a
collection of colored papers will often prove more interesting and
instructive than a picture book to the baby, while the graduate from a
two year's course in the kindergarten may have a better color sense than
is at present enjoyed by the average business or professional man.
If we could determine the colors used by the great masters in the past,
we could add much to our knowledge of the fine arts; and if we knew what
colors Chevreul, the master dyer of the Gobelins Tapestry works, refers
to in his writings, and which he indicated by hundreds of numbered
samples filed away in his cabinet, we should in this generation have a
wonderful fund of information to increase our knowledge of harmonies, on
which to base our study of color in the industrial arts.
But alas! the paintings of the old masters have faded and the great dyer
had no language in which to describe his colors in his writings, and
therefore it is claimed that little or no advance in color perception
has been made in modern times, if indeed we have held our own. The
further assertion is made that those semi-civilized nations whose
drawings are the least artistic greatly surpass us in natural color
perceptions. If color is the one thing in which we are deficient and in
which we are making no advance, is it not necessary that we adopt a new
line of operations for our color instruction in the primary grades? It
is self-evident that in primary work highest art is not expected in
either literature, music, drawing or painting, but as has been the aim
in literature for a long time and in drawing and music more recently, so
in coloring, our instruction should be based on those principles on
which highest art must rest.
When through the introduction of colored papers in the kindergartens and
primary schools the teachers began to call for better assortments of
colors in their papers than were to be found in the market, and some of
us in the field attempted to meet their wants, the solution of the
problem seemed almost a hopeless task, because no two wanted the same
colors; each teacher was a law to herself and one thought a color "just
lovely" which another declared "perfectly horrid." According to the
early theories then in vogue the first colors called for were red,
yellow and blue for primaries, but no two persons were sure just what
they wanted for either of these, and there was no authority to be
referred to for a decision.
In this strait, which was practically a serious difficulty, the artists
were appealed to for a decision as to the three "primary colors," and
also for examples showing in what proportions the "ideal primaries" must
be mixed to produce the "ideal secondaries." But in this there was no
satisfaction because hardly two agreed in the primaries and necessarily
the secondaries were much less definite, which was the result that
should have been expected.
It is a self-evident proposition that if two indefinite primaries are
combined in indefinite proportions the possible secondaries which may
thus be produced must be exceedingly numerous, and if this idea is
carried out in the production of tertiaries by the combination of the
secondaries the resulting colors may be almost infinite. In view of the
indifference of the artists and the popular ignorance regarding the
subject the solution of this question and the discovery of any solid
basis on which to formulate a system of elementary color instruction
seemed very problematical. But after much experimenting and many
conferences with artists and scientists a basis for operation was
decided upon and at the end of fifteen years the efforts begun in doubt
have resulted in a definite system of color instruction which it is the
purpose of this book to concisely set forth.
It is prepared in response to inquiries from primary school teachers for
a clear and condensed explanation of the Bradley System of Color
Instruction. The aim is to offer a definite scheme and suitable material
for a logical presentation of the truths regarding color in nature and
art to the children of the primary schools. Much of this instruction is
so simple that it should be familiar to children who have had
kindergarten training and has therefore already been explained in
substantially the same form in "Color in the Kindergarten."
A few years ago it might well have been thought necessary to preface a
treatise on the subject with arguments to prove that color is a
legitimate object for school instruction, but to-day this is not a
question with thoughtful educators, whether considered from the
practical, industrial or æsthetic standpoint. With the establishment of
professorships of practical psychology and the equipment of
laboratories, provided with delicate and expensive apparatus for making
and recording tests, there comes with increasing force the demand for
some means by which the experiments in color made in various localities
may be unified both as to the colors used and the terms and measurements
for recording the result. It is the hope of the author that the system
here outlined may be the initial step in gathering together such facts
regarding color effects as will form a fund of knowledge little dreamed
of at the present day.
[Illustration]
The Theory of Color.
In order to place the study of color on a broad and safe foundation, the
work must commence at the bottom with a rational presentation of the
subject, based on experiments and the use of color material. We must
intelligently consider the relation that exists between the pure science
of light which is the source of all color and the use of color materials
with their effect on our color perceptions. While it is true in all
study that there is here and there found a natural genius in some line
of work who seems to have such inborn perceptions as to require little
or no logical instruction in his special line, it is also manifest that
the masses must gain their knowledge through a systematic presentation
of the subject, if they secure it at all. Therefore with the growth of
modern pedagogics the laboratory work of the psychologist has become a
necessity. This consists in collecting and tabulating the results of
hundreds and thousands of experiments regarding any subject under
investigation, and the averaging of these to form theories and laws. In
making these experiments there must be standards and measurements on
which they may be based and some nomenclature in which to make the
records; and the standards, measurements and nomenclature adopted must
be common to those who desire to compare their results made in different
places at different times.
From the results of many physical experiments properly measured and
recorded certain psychological theories are deduced. These experiments
are tried on hundreds and thousands of individuals and the average
results establish the theories, which will ultimately stand or fall
according to the truth and accuracy with which the experiments have
been made. Experiments are useless for formulating any exact theories
unless they can be recorded in some generally accepted terms for
comparison with other experiments made under similar conditions and
recorded in the same terms.
So in color perceptions it is not necessary that we know anything of the
theories of color in order to see colors, and if endowed by nature with
a natural genius for color, education in color may not be necessary, but
if there is to be education in color which can be transmitted to a
second party there must be some standards of colors and some measurement
of color effects which can be recorded in accepted terms.
Why Artists and Scientists Have Disagreed.
In the realm of art there is no necessity for any purely scientific
analysis of sunlight, which is the origin of natural colors, because all
the practical value of color is found in its æsthetic effects on the
mind, and in order to enjoy these even in the highest degree it is not
necessary that we understand the scientific origin of the colors, any
more than it is necessary for the artist to know the chemical
composition of his pigments in order to produce best effects with them
on his canvas. Because of this almost self-evident fact, artists have as
a rule been very impatient when any reference has been made to the
science of color in connection with color education, believing that
color is an exception to the general subjects of study to such a degree
that it lies outside of all scientific investigations. Consequently they
have not been in sympathy with the physio-psychological investigations
which have been prosecuted with such promising results in other lines,
when such investigations have been proposed regarding color. While it is
not essential for best results in his own work that an expert artist
shall know anything of the science of color, still if he is to
communicate his knowledge of art to any others except his personal
pupils, he must have some language in which to make known his ideas, and
on the same grounds if any psychological tests are to be made regarding
color, it is evident that there must be some accepted terms in which to
record the results, which has not hitherto been the case.
When the well known Newton and Brewster theory of three primary colors
red, yellow and blue, was advocated by those scientists there appeared
to be something of interest and value in it for the artists also,
because with the three pigments red, yellow and blue, they seemed to be
able to confirm the truth of the scientific theories regarding the
spectrum colors. But the scientists have long been convinced that there
is no truth in this theory and have quite generally accepted the
Young-Helmholtz idea of three other color perceptions red, green and
violet, from which they claim all color vision is produced, and which
they call fundamental colors.
This more modern theory has seemed so far removed from the realm of the
artists and the colorists that they have not been able to see anything
in it of truth or value to them, and so have continued to repeat the
old, old story of the three primaries red, yellow and blue, from which
the secondaries orange, green and purple are made etc., etc., all of
which is the more pernicious when accepted as a correct theory because
of its seeming approximation to the facts. And yet there is not in it
all any scientific truth on which to build a logical system of color
education, and some of the effects which are considered prominent
arguments for the system are directly opposed to well known facts in the
science of color. Consequently, the artist has failed to gain from the
investigations of the scientists anything to aid him in his pigmentary
work, and the scientist has not been interested in the æsthetic ideas of
the artists which in fact he has generally been unable to fully
appreciate, from lack of training and associations.
The system of color instruction here presented for primary grades is
based on the results of careful study and experiment for many years in
which the attempt has been made to bring the scientist and the artist on
to common ground, where they may work in sympathy with each other
instead of at cross purposes as has been the case heretofore, and the
results with children have already been such as to testify fully to the
efficiency of this line of work.
Thus the feeling for color which every true artist has, may be to a
certain extent analyzed so that it can be understood by the scientist
and recorded for the benefit of fellow artists one hundred or a thousand
miles away and in time an aggregation of facts regarding the
psychological effects of color collected which will form the beginning
of a valuable fund of color knowledge to be increased from age to age.
The Speculations of the Past.
Ever since Newton produced the prismatic solar spectrum, the so-called
science of color as applied to pigments and coloring, has been a most
curious mixture of truth, error and speculation. It was supposed by
Newton and Brewster that in the solar spectrum the colors were produced
by the over-lapping of three sets of colored rays red, yellow and blue.
The red rays at one end were supposed to overlap or mix with the yellow
rays to make the orange, and on the other side of the yellow the blue
rays were supposed to combine with the yellow to produce green.
Following the same theory in pigmentary colors, it has been claimed that
all colors in nature may be produced by the combination of pigments in
these three colors red, yellow and blue, and hence they have been called
primary colors. It is still claimed by the advocates of this theory that
from the three primaries red, yellow and blue the so-called secondaries
orange, green and purple can be made, and that the secondaries are
complementary to the primaries in pairs; the orange to the blue, the
green to the red and the purple to the yellow.
By similar combinations of the secondaries it is claimed that three
other colors, in themselves peculiar, and different from the first six,
may be made, the orange and green forming citrines, orange and violet
russets, and green and violet olives and these are called tertiaries.
After having accepted this fiction as a scientific theory for so many
years, it is very difficult to convince the artists and colorists that
in it all there is nothing of value to any one, but such is practically
a fact, because from no three pigmentary effects in red, yellow and blue
can the three colors orange, green and purple of corresponding purity be
produced, neither are the primary colors complementary to the
secondaries as claimed nor are the so-called tertiaries new and distinct
colors but simply gray spectrum colors.
Because the red, yellow and blue theory would not stand the test of
scientific investigation the Young-Helmholtz theory of three other
primaries red, green and violet, has been quite generally adopted by the
scientists of the past generation.
What the Primary Teacher Needs to Consider.
All these discussions of the scientists are intensely interesting and no
doubt of great importance in the line to which they pertain, but
practically neither the artists nor the primary school teachers care for
all these theories and discussions and because the scientists have
closely confined themselves to these lines, the artists and teachers
have seen nothing of value to them in their theories.
In going to the solar spectrum for standards on which to base pigmentary
standards, we have given little attention to these various theories in
their details, but the one fact of science has received careful
attention, namely, that all color effects in nature and art are produced
by light reflected from material surfaces. Therefore, inasmuch as the
light reflected from any surface must be affected by both the material
color of the surface and the color of the light which illuminates the
surface, it is necessary that every one having to do with this subject
be informed as to what color must be expected to result from given
conditions.
In order that this phase of the subject be discussed and thus more fully
understood, there must be a terminology or nomenclature in which to
express the results produced by given conditions, and also standards by
which to analyze, measure and record these results. In selecting these
standards more regard must be given to the æsthetic or psychical effect
of the pigmentary standards than to the purely scientific or physical
properties of colored light. This selection is of great interest to the
physiological psychologist because it is only by the comparison and
averaging of thousands of experiments made on different people that
valuable theories can be formulated.
With standards and a nomenclature, color will be placed on an equal
footing with other subjects, so that perceptions of color effects may be
recorded and discussed with much of the definiteness with which we treat
form and tone. Because this has not heretofore been possible,
comparatively little advance has been made during the last two decades
in the æsthetic consideration of material color _which is the only
practical phase of the subject_, and if any greater progress is to be
achieved in the future it evidently must be along new lines.
From the nursery to the university we are constantly asking two
questions, "What is it?" and "Why is it?" and this is what the educator
from the Kindergarten to the College is called upon to answer. In his
laboratory the psychologist is collecting physical facts by tests
regarding the powers of the eye and the ear, the sense of touch, weight,
memory, etc., and these experiments when classified, arranged and
averaged, furnish a basis for formulating theories, all of which is
called psychology.
In vision, form and color play the principal parts, in fact cover the
whole ground if we include light and shade in color where it belongs.
Experiments regarding form can be and have long been very definitely
recorded but this has not been true with color.
To Froebel must be given the honor of introducing logical form study
into primary education, and on this has been built the present admirable
system of drawing in our higher grades of schools, and the introduction
of the standard forms in solids and surfaces has brought about a
definite use of geometrical terms by young children which would have
seemed very unnaturally mature a generation ago. But in color no
corresponding advance has been made because there have been no generally
accepted standards in color to correspond to the sphere, cube, cylinder,
circle, ellipse and triangle in form, nor any means for measurements to
take the place of the foot or metre for lengths and the divided circle
for angles.
It is not expected that the children in the lowest grades will learn
much of the science of color, but it is desirable that the teachers have
such knowledge of it that they will not unconsciously convey to the
children erroneous impressions which must be unlearned later in life.
Concerning the Solar Spectrum.
More than two hundred years ago Sir Isaac Newton discovered that a
triangular glass prism would transform a beam of sunlight into a
beautiful band of color. If the prism is held in a beam of sunlight
which enters a moderately lighted room, there will appear on the walls,
ceiling or floor, here and there, as the glass is moved, beautiful spots
in rainbow colors. If the room is darkened by shutters, and only a small
beam of light is admitted through a very narrow slit and the prism
properly adjusted to receive this beam of light, a beautiful band of
variegated colors may be thrown on to a white ceiling or screen, and
this effect is called a prismatic solar spectrum. A perfect solar
spectrum once seen under favorable conditions in a dark room is a sight
never to be forgotten.
The accompanying illustration shows the relative positions of the parts
named. A is the beam of light as it enters the room. B is the triangular
prism. The dotted lines represent groups of rays extending to the
vertical band of colors indicated by the letters V for violet at the
top, then blue, green, yellow, orange to red at the bottom.
The explanation of this phenomenon is that the beam of sunlight is
composed of a great number of different kinds of rays, which in passing
through the prism are refracted or bent from their direct course, and
some are bent more than others, the red least of all and the violet
most. It is supposed that light is propagated by waves or undulations in
an extremely rare substance termed ether which is supposed to occupy all
space and transparent bodies. These waves are thought to be similar to
sound waves in the air or the ripples on the smooth surface of a pond
when a pebble is thrown into it. Because so many of the phenomena of
light can be satisfactorily explained by this theory, it has been very
generally adopted by the scientists. The amount that rays of light are
refracted from a straight line in passing through a prism is in
proportion to the number of waves or undulations per second, and in
inverse proportion to the length of the waves. The red waves are
refracted the least and are the longest, while the violet rays are
refracted the most and are the shortest.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
Whether this theory of the spectrum formation is absolutely correct or
not, the fact is established that the colors found in a prismatic solar
spectrum are always the same under the same conditions and the order of
their arrangement is never changed. By means of the quality of spectrum
colors called the wave length, a given color can always be located in
the spectrum, and hence if a spectrum color is selected as a standard it
can always be determined by its recorded wave length.
Six Spectrum Standards of Color.
Therefore it seems possible to establish certain standards of color by a
series of definitely located portions of the solar spectrum and in the
system here presented six have been chosen, namely red, orange, yellow,
green, blue and violet. These six are more distinctly recognized than
the others, and from them by combination in pairs of colors adjacent in
the spectrum all the other colors can be very closely imitated, and
hence these six are selected as the spectrum standards. In these
standards the most intense expression of each color is chosen i.e. the
reddest red, greenest green, etc. which by the closest scientific
investigation have been located by their wave lengths so that if they
are in doubt in future they can be re-determined by individuals or if
disputed, may be corrected by any authoritatively established congress,
selected for the purpose. The wave lengths of our six standards are
represented by the following numbers in ten millionths of a millimeter.
Red, 6571; Orange, 6085; Yellow, 5793; Green, 5164; Blue, 4695; violet,
4210. Having thus scientifically established these unchangeable
standards the attempt is made to secure the best possible pigmentary
imitation of each.
To any one who has ever compared a piece of colored material with a good
presentation of a spectrum color, it is unnecessary to say that the
result in an attempt to match the spectrum color with the material or
pigmentary color is a very weak approximation, but the one thing aimed
at is to secure nearly as possible the same kind of color. For example
in the red, it is the aim to obtain the same _kind_ of red, by which we
mean the same location in the spectrum, i.e. a red neither more orange
nor more violet than the reddest spot in the spectrum. This selection
must be based on a purely æsthetic perception or impression of color.
The same is true of each of the six standard colors, as for example, for
orange we select the location which has seemed to a large number of good
judges to best represent the feeling of orange as between the quite
well defined red on one hand and the equally definite narrow band of
yellow on the other, and it is quite wonderful what unanimity of opinion
there is on this particular color which would naturally seem to be the
one most doubtful in its location. On the other side of the yellow the
green seems to offer little difficulty and the pure Paris or emerald
green is very nearly the standard. The violet being at the other end of
the spectrum is as easily decided as the red, but the blue between the
green and violet is not so easily determined, because, from the best
blue the hue runs so imperceptibly into the violet on one side and the
green on the other. Pure ultramarine blue is the nearest approach to the
spectrum standard of blue of any of the permanent pigments, but even
this is a trifle too violet.
For educational purposes papers coated with pigments afford at once the
purest colors and the most economical and useful material, and on this
plan a line of colored papers has been prepared for color instruction in
the kindergartens and primary schools in imitation of the above
described spectrum standards.
From the pure spectrum standards it is possible by reflected light to
combine the two standards to produce a color between them, for example
if two small mirrors are held in a spectrum one at the "red" and the
other at the "orange" and the two reflected on to the same spot on a
white surface, the result is a color between the red and the orange. So
also if we mix red and orange pigments together we may produce colors
between the two which may be termed orange-red or red-orange; but
unfortunately there is no means known by which we can measure the
proportion of the red and orange color-effect which is produced by any
given mixture of these two pigments, because color-effect cannot be
measured by the pint of mixed paint or the ounce of dry pigment.
The Color Wheel and Maxwell Disks.
We, however, have another means for measuring color effect which just in
this emergency seems providential. It is a fact well known to every boy
that if he rapidly whirls a lighted stick the fire at the end produces
the effect of a circle of light, which phenomenon is explained by a
quality of the eye called retention of vision, by which the impression
made by the point of light remains on the retina of the eye during an
entire rotation. It is a fact, based on the same quality of vision, that
if one color is presented to the eye, and instantly replaced by another
the effect is a combination of the two colors. Therefore if one-quarter
of the surface of a disk of cardboard is covered with orange paper and
three-quarters with red paper, and then the disk placed on a rapidly
rotating spindle, the color effect is a mixture of red and orange, and
the effect is exactly in proportion to the angular measurements of the
two sectors, so that if the circumference is divided into 100 equal
parts the resultant color will be definitely represented by the formula
"Red, 75; Orange, 25."
Less than forty years ago an English scientist named J. Clerk Maxwell
while making experiments with such painted disks happily conceived the
idea of cutting a radial slit in each of two disks from the
circumference to the center so that by joining the disks they could be
made to show any desired proportion of each and hence they are called
Maxwell disks. With such disks made in the six pigmentary standards red,
orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, the intermediate pigmentary
spectrum colors may be very accurately determined by combination and
rotation. If we give to each of these standards a symbol as R. for red,
O. for orange, Y. for yellow, G. for green, B. for blue, V. for violet,
we then have the basis for a definite nomenclature of colors in
imitation of the pure spectrum colors. As all pigmentary or material
colors are modified by light and shade thus producing in high light
tints and in shadow shades of the colors, we must seek for some means of
imitating these effects, and fortunately find them in white and black
disks. If with a standard color disk we combine a white disk we may have
a line of tints of that color, and with a black disk, shades. Giving
this white disk a symbol of W. and the black disk N. we complete our
nomenclature. We cannot use B for black because B has already been used
for blue, and therefore we use N. for _niger_, the Latin word for black.
The Bradley System of Color Instruction.
Briefly stated then this system of color instruction is comprised under
the six general heads: Spectrum Standards; Pigmentary Standards based on
the spectrum standards; Maxwell Rotating Disks in the pigmentary
standards and Black and White; a Color Nomenclature based on the
accepted standards and their disk combinations; and Colored Papers and
Water Colors made in accordance with these standards.
For spectrum standards, six definite locations expressing the natural
æsthetic or psychological impressions of red, orange, yellow, green,
blue and violet are selected. Six standards are chosen instead of a
larger number as for example twelve, because for the purpose of a
nomenclature the smaller number is more convenient than a greater
number. The six are selected rather than three, four or five, because
while in the consideration of colored light alone the smaller number
would possibly suffice to form by combinations imitations of all other
colors, any number smaller than six is entirely inadequate to form by
pigmentary or disk combinations fairly good expressions of the
corresponding spectrum color combinations.
In selecting the spectrum standards special prominence has been given to
the psychological color perceptions of experts in determining those
locations in the spectrum best expressing the color feeling of red,
orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, while the purely scientific
consideration of these several questions has not been ignored or lightly
treated.
For pigmentary standards the best possible pigmentary imitations of the
six spectrum standards are secured and to these are added the nearest
approach to white and black that can be produced in pigments.
Pigmentary standards on which to base a nomenclature are valueless
without some means by which measurements of standards embraced in a
given compound color can be expressed.
The Maxwell color disks are the only known means by which we may measure
the relative proportions of color effect embodied in a given color, and
therefore the eight color disks are the foundation of the original color
nomenclature herein advocated.
Colored papers are chosen for primary color instruction because paper is
a valuable medium for simple schoolroom manual training and because no
other pigmentary medium is at once so economical and affords such pure
colors as may be secured in specially prepared colored papers, without a
glazed surface.
Before leaving this part of the subject we do well to remember that in
the present conditions of chemistry as applied to the preparation of
pigments it is not possible to establish any absolutely definite science
of such color combinations. Nor is it possible to establish permanent
pigmentary standards without great expense, but if the locations of the
standard colors in the spectrum are established by wave lengths the
pigmentary standards may be re-determined at any time and produced, in
the purest pigments available at the time. In art or harmony effects,
the purity of the pigmentary standard is not so important as its hue,
i.e. its location in the spectrum, which may always be determined by the
established wave length. This last statement may be illustrated by the
investigations regarding complementary harmonies. Scientifically one
color is not considered complementary to another unless when combined in
equal quantities they produce white light, or in other words when
combined by the rotation of disks each color must occupy a half circle
and the result must be a neutral gray. But this is not essential in
considering a complementary harmony, as harmonies in different tones and
in various proportions are pleasing and as yet the proportions and tones
which produce the best combinations have not been determined.
The entire question of harmonies or pleasing color effects is dependent
on individual color perception, and the establishment of rules and laws
on these points can result only from a comparison of the opinions of
many experts in various localities and at different times. This cannot
occur without some means for recording these opinions in generally
accepted terms. It is too late for any individual opinion to be accepted
as authority regarding the relative values of two different harmonies in
color and this will be still less possible as we become better educated
in color and able to sense finer distinctions in color combinations.
[Illustration]
Color Definitions.
Among other advantages to be gained by a logical study of the psychology
of color is the establishment of more accurate color terms and
definitions. If experiments and discussions based on accepted standards
and methods of comparisons can be carried on we may hope in time to have
as definite expressions of color terms as we now have in music and
literature.
All color terms used by artists, naturalists, manufacturers, tradesmen,
milliners and the members of our households are as indefinite as one
might naturally expect from the utter lack of a logical basis for the
whole subject.
Without definitions or means for intelligently naming any color, it is
not strange that the terms used in speaking of colors and color effects
are so contradictory as to lose much of their force, if perchance they
retain anything of their original meaning. For example, probably most
people apply the term SHADE to any modification of a color, either a
hue, tint or shade.
It is true that a concise and reasonably full dictionary of color terms
must be the outcome of long experience in the logical study of the
science of color and its use in our every-day lives, and at the best
only suggestions can be made at present. But as there must be a
beginning and some terms seem to be fairly well established, the
following incomplete list of definitions is offered, always subject to
amendment by the majority vote, for whenever such changes indicate
advance they should be welcomed.
_Ray of Light._--The finest supposable element of light impression in
the eye.
_Beam of Light._--A number of rays. _Standard Colors._--As used in this
system of color nomenclature, the best pigmentary imitation of each of
the six spectrum colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet and
black and white. These are more specifically called _Pigmentary
Standards_ in distinction from spectrum standards.
_Spectrum Standards._--The six colors found in the solar spectrum and
definitely located by their wave lengths, as follows in the ten
millionths of a millimeter. Red, 6571; Orange, 6085; Yellow, 5793;
Green, 5164; Blue, 4695; Violet, 4210.
_Pigmentary Colors._--All colors used and produced in the arts and
sciences. This is in distinction from colors seen in nature, as in
flowers and the solar spectrum. The term refers not only to pigments in
the strictest sense but to all surfaces coated, painted or dyed
artificially.
_Pure Colors._--A pure or full color, also called a saturated color, is
the most intense expression of that color without the admixture of white
or black or gray. All spectrum colors are pure, while no pigmentary
color is absolutely pure, but the pigmentary color which approaches most
nearly to the corresponding color in the spectrum must be selected as
the pigmentary type of purity of that color. For example, the standard
for green must be the best possible pigmentary imitation of the spot in
the spectrum which by general consent is called green, and so not only
for the six standards but for all their combinations which produce the
other colors in nature.
In pigmentary colors the term pure is entirely one of relative degree.
As processes of manufacture are improved and new chemical discoveries
made, there is good reason to believe that we shall have much more
intense colors and hence much better imitations of spectrum colors than
are at present possible. Therefore as our pigments become purer those
now accepted as full colors will in time become tints or broken colors
and new standards will be adopted.
_Hue._--The hue of a given color is that color with the admixture of a
smaller quantity of another color. An orange hue of red is the standard
red mixed with a smaller quantity of orange. With the disks, pure hues
are secured only by mixing two standards _adjacent_ in the spectrum
circuit.
For convenience in speaking and writing about colors in this system of
color instruction, all the spectrum colors other than the six standard
spectrum colors are designated as intermediate spectrum hues, and often
for convenience in speaking of them they are called simply spectrum
hues. To these are also added the colors between red and violet which
are not in the spectrum. When so used the term must be considered as
purely technical in this particular relation, because a color between
the standard blue and the standard green is in the abstract no more a
hue than either of these colors. If two standards not adjacent in the
spectrum circuit are combined the result is not a _pure_ spectrum hue
but always some _broken_ spectrum color.
_Local Color._--A term applied to the natural color of an object when
seen in ordinarily good daylight and at a convenient distance, as a
sheet of paper at arms length, a tree at twice its height, etc.
_Tint._--Any pure or full color mixed with white, or reduced by strong
sunlight. In the disk combinations a spectrum color combined with white.
_Shade._--A full color in shadow, i.e., with a low degree of
illumination. In disk combinations a spectrum color combined with a
black disk produces by rotation a shade of that color. In pigments the
admixture of black does not usually produce as satisfactory shades of a
color as may be secured with some other pigments, and each artist has
his own preferences in making shades of the various colors on his
palette.
_Scale._--A scale of color is a series of colors consisting of a pure or
full color at the center and graduated by a succession of steps to a
light tint on one side and a deep shade on the other.
_Tone._--Each step in a color scale is a tone of that color, and the
full color may be called the normal tone in that scale. In art this word
has had such a variety of meaning as to render it very convenient for
Amateur Art Critics, together with such terms as breadth, atmosphere,
quality, values, etc., but in the consideration of color it should have
this one definite meaning.
_Warm Colors._--Red, orange and yellow, and combinations in which they
predominate.
_Cool Colors._--Usually considered to be green, blue and violet, and the
combinations in which they predominate. But it is, perhaps, questionable
whether green and violet may properly be termed either warm or cool. The
term cool as applied to colors is quite indefinite, except in a general
way, but red, orange and yellow are universally considered as warm, and
blue and green-blue as cool.
_Neutral Gray._--White in shade or shadow. Pure black and white mixed by
disk rotation. Black and white pigments mixed do not usually produce a
neutral gray, but rather a blue gray.
_Warm Gray._--A neutral gray with the admixture of a small quantity of
red, orange or yellow.
_Cool Gray._--A neutral gray with a small quantity of blue or
green-blue.
_Green Gray._--A neutral gray having combined with it a small quantity
of green. As this color could hardly be classed with either warm or cool
grays this fourth class of grays is suggested as helpful in giving
definiteness to the more general color expressions.
_Broken Colors._--Gray colors, often improperly called broken tints. For
simplicity, a tint of a color is described as the pure color mixed with
white and a shade as the color mixed with black, and the corresponding
broken color is the same color mixed with both white and black or with
neutral gray. A tint of a color thrown into a shadow or a shade of a
color in bright sunlight gives a broken color. For various reasons a
very large proportion of the colors in nature are broken. Broken colors
are much easier to combine harmoniously than full colors, or even tints
and shades.
In disk combinations when a pure color is combined with both a white and
black disk the result will be a broken color. When a color is mixed with
both black and white, i.e., with gray, and becomes thereby a broken
color, it then belongs to a broken scale and educationally has no place
in any pure scale, i.e., a scale in which the key tone is a pure color.
Neither has a broken scale of a color any place in a chart of pure
scales or spectrum scales.
_Neutral Colors._--A term often improperly applied to grays, white,
black, silver and gold. See passive colors.
_Passive Colors._--A term suggested as covering black, white, silver,
gold and very gray colors. The term "neutral colors" is often used in
this sense but this is evidently improper if we are to confine the term
"neutral gray" to the representation of white in shadow because as soon
as a gray has any color in it, it is no longer neutral.
_Active Colors._--Those colors neither passive or neutral. Necessarily
both the terms "active" and "passive" used in relation to colors must be
quite indefinite.
_Complementary Colors._--As white light is the sum of all color if we
take from white light a given color the remaining color is the
complement of the given color. When the eye has been fatigued by looking
intently for a few seconds at a red spot on a white wall and is then
slightly turned to the wall, a faint tint of a bluish green is seen, and
this is called the accidental color of the red, and is supposed to be
identical with its complementary color. If with the disks we determine a
color which with a given color will produce by rotation a neutral gray,
we have the complementary color more accurately than by any other means
at present known in the use of pigmentary colors.
_Harmony._--Two colors are said to be in harmony or to combine
harmoniously if the effect is pleasing when they are in juxtaposition or
are used in a composition.
_Spectrum Circuit._--If a pigmentary imitation of the solar spectrum
with the addition of violet red at the red end and red violet at the
violet end be made, and the two ends joined, we shall have a spectrum
circuit. This may be in the form of a circle, an ellipse or an oval.
_Primary Colors._--In the Brewster theory red, yellow and blue. In the
Young-Helmholtz theory red, green and violet are termed primary colors
because it is supposed that from these three sensations all color
perceptions are experienced. In purely scientific investigations of
color perceptions these last three or others which are supposed to serve
the same purpose are also called fundamental colors. Practically every
spectrum color is a primary, because each has its own wave length.
_Secondary Colors._--In the Brewster theory orange, green and purple
have been called secondary because it is claimed that they are produced
by the combination of primary colors in pairs.
_Tertiary Colors._--A term used in the Brewster theory to denote three
classes of colors called russet, citrine and olive, made by mixing the
secondaries in pairs. These are all broken spectrum colors. The orange
and purple produce russet; the orange and green form citrine; the green
and purple, olive. There seems to be no good reason for perpetuating the
indefinite terms secondaries and tertiaries as applied to color.
_Values._--This word is very freely used in discussing effects in works
of art, both in color and in black and white. At present it seems to be
a very difficult term to define, and yet each artist is quite sure that
he can "feel" it, although few will attempt to put into words a
definition satisfactory even to themselves. When an engraver, who is
also an artist, attempts to interpret nature in black and white on the
metal plate or wooden block, he endeavors to reproduce the "values" of
the various parts of the subject before him. In doing this he, for one
thing, attempts to produce a variety of neutral grays which will express
to the eye by means of black and white lines the same tones of color
effect as are seen in the several parts of the subject under
investigation. If this were the whole problem the matter would be
easily expressed by the disk nomenclature. For instance, if we are to
consider a certain red object which may be represented by the standard
red disk, we place a medium sized disk of that color on the spindle, and
in front of it, smaller disks of white and black united. By rotation the
white and black disks become a neutral gray at the center of the red
disk. If this gray is made nearly white all observers will agree that
the gray is lighter than the red, and if it is nearly black the opinion
will be equally unanimous that it is darker than the red. Consequently
there evidently must be a gray somewhere between these two extremes
which a large majority of experts may agree to be equal in depth or tone
to the red, i.e., neither lighter nor darker. But the artist-engraver
will insist that to him the term "value" expresses much more than this
and that he must use different lines in the sky or distance from those
which he uses in the foreground; and some engravers will also insist
that two different colors in the foreground must receive different
treatment with the graver in order to express their true values. We know
that true values of colors are not expressed in a photograph, as the
warm colors are too dark and the blue far too light. If the term "value
of a color" is to be used as expressing something more than a neutral
gray of such a tone as to seem equal to it, then possibly this latter
quality must be expressed by the word tone, and yet this use of that
word will seem to enlarge its scope beyond its present limits as it now
is used to express the relations between the different localities in
_one_ scale of color, while this new use will extend to the comparison
of tones in various color scales, including neutral grays.
_Luminosity._--The luminosity of a color is determined by comparing it
with a neutral gray. When a color seems to be of the same brightness as
a given neutral gray, i.e., not lighter nor darker, then that gray is
its measure of luminosity.
A noted authority says: "No colored object can have the luminosity of a
white object reflecting practically the whole of the light impinging
upon it. Therefore if we take absolute reflection as 100 a fraction of
100 will give the relative luminosity of any body." Luminosity is
another expression of the quality above described as forming a prominent
feature in the term values.
_Potentiality._--The ability or strength of a color to affect other
colors by combinations with them. For example, white has a greater
potentiality than black, yellow greater than red, and violet the least
of all the spectrum colors.
It is a pertinent question whether any quality is involved in this term
which is not found in value, tone and luminosity, but it expresses a
somewhat different phase of a line of color effects.
_Quality._--This term seems to be used rather indefinitely when applied
to color, but perhaps it is not far removed from the term hue or kind of
color.
[Illustration]
Practical Experiments
Illustrating the Theory of Color.
In the foregoing pages an attempt is made to explain clearly and as
briefly as possible the principles on which the Bradley system of color
instruction is based, and also to suggest a few definitions necessary to
an intelligent discussion of the general subject of Color. Owing to the
peculiar nature of the questions involved, demonstration by actual
experiment is more convincing than the mere statement of theories can
possibly be, and therefore a few of the following pages will be devoted
to the explanation of some valuable experiments, all of which may be
tried by the teacher in private, while many of them can be shown the
pupils with great advantage.
In this system the Maxwell color disks are the means for color
combinations and the basis for measurements, and therefore for a color
nomenclature. For this reason the present chapter treats largely of the
proper use of the wheel and incidentally the theory of red, yellow and
blue primaries with combinations to produce secondaries and tertiaries.
No teacher using the material connected with this color scheme can hope
to meet with success without a knowledge of the principles on which it
is based, and in this subject as in all others, it is essential that the
teacher shall know much more of it than he or she is ever required to
teach.
[Illustration: FIG 2.]
The Color Wheel.
For most convenient use the machine should be clamped to the front of a
table and near one end, so that the speaker using it can stand at the
end of the table and operate it with the right hand. Fig. 2 represents
the Normal School Color Wheel showing the face of the disks as seen by
the audience. Facility in the operation of the Color Wheel is rapidly
acquired by practice and the exact position is easily determined by the
operator after a few trials.
Fig. 3 shows the Primary School Color Wheel, which has only two sizes of
disks, while the largest machine has four sizes and is much finer in
construction. The smaller machine does not require clamping to a table,
but may be steadied by the left hand while being operated by the right
hand.
[Illustration]
The Color Top.
Many of the experiments of the color wheel can be produced with a small
toy called a Color Top, which is shown in Fig. 4. It is composed of a
thick cardboard disk forming the body of the top and a central wooden
spindle on which the disk closely fits. A number of colored paper disks
are provided with this top so that very many of the experiments
performed before a class can be repeated individually by the pupils and
in this way the facts which may have been demonstrated to the class with
the color wheel can be fixed in the minds of the pupils by their own
experiments with the top. Also as a home toy in the hands of the pupils
it can be of value, not only to the children, but to the parents as
well.
[Illustration]
Use of the Disks.
Fig. 5 shows the method of joining two Maxwell disks and Fig. 6 their
appearance when properly joined to be placed on the rotating spindle of
the color wheel. In joining two or more disks for use on a color wheel
or top, care should be taken to place them in such relation to each
other that when rotated the radial edges exposed on the face toward the
audience will not "catch the wind." With small disks on the color wheel
this is not important, and if there is no whole graduated disk on the
arbor behind the slitted disks there is no advantage, but in using the
larger disks it is well to put the graduated disk behind the others for
this purpose, as at best it is quite laborious to keep up speed when
using several of the large disks, even with the best possible
conditions. With the thin paper disks of the color top this is an
important matter. It will be noticed that the method of joining the
disks for use on the Color Top is the reverse of that to be observed
with the disks of the Color Wheel as shown in Fig. 5.
[Illustration]
Fig. 7 shows the same two color disks placed in front of a large white
disk having its edge graduated to one hundred parts, so that the
relative proportions of two or more colors to be combined can be
determined accurately.
As the smaller disks offer so much less resistance in rotation than the
larger ones they are most desirable in private experiments or before a
small class, and the largest disks of the Normal School Wheel are
necessary only when more than three expressions of color are required to
be shown at the same time. In making experiments before an audience
those persons in front should if possible be at least ten feet from the
color wheel. From ten to forty feet there seems to be but little
difference in the color perception, but for best tests fifteen to twenty
feet is the most desirable position.
For private practice with the color wheel a small mirror may be placed
five or six feet in front of the wheel in such position as to furnish an
image of the disks to the person operating the machine. Owing to a
slight loss of light by reflection the closest criticism may not be
possible when working with a mirror in this way, but if a plate mirror
is used the results are very good and a bevel plate mirror about 7 x 9
inches without frame, can usually be procured at small cost; this method
is much more satisfactory for personal experimenting than an assistant
to turn the wheel.
These disks have heretofore been used as a curious piece of
philosophical apparatus rather than because they have been supposed to
have any practical value in color training, but in establishing a color
nomenclature based on six spectrum colors the disks at once assume a
great value and are indispensable in a system of color instruction
founded on the science of color and on the psychological perception of
colors.
Let us suppose that the two disks shown in Fig. 7 are yellow and green,
80 parts yellow and 20 parts green; then by rotation we shall have a
green yellow indicated by the symbol Y. 80, G. 20. No argument is
necessary to prove that when an exact expression of color effect is
required this is better than the simple statement that it is a greenish
yellow.
How to Begin the Experiments.
For practice it is profitable to commence with the red and orange disks
combined on the spindle, with a smaller red disk in front of them, the
smallest being preferable. Begin by introducing say five per cent of
orange and notice that a change from the standard red at the center is
visible. Gradually increase the orange until it seems difficult to say
whether the resulting color is more like red or orange, and then
exchange the small red disk for an orange disk of the same size, and
continue adding orange in the larger disks until the difference cannot
be detected between the small disk and the larger combined disks.
The standards may be combined in pairs, as has been indicated with the
red and orange, to produce all the intermediate hues throughout the
spectrum, but it must be remembered that these combinations are to be
made by joining in pairs, colors adjacent in the spectrum, red and
orange, orange and yellow, yellow and green, green and blue, blue and
violet. We then shall have representations of all the spectrum colors,
but there are still the colors between violet and red, known in nature
and art as purples, which must be produced by uniting the red and violet
disks, thus completing a circuit of colors containing all the pure
colors in nature.
In nature all colors are modified by light and shade, strong light
producing tints and shadows more or less deep forming shades.
These effects are imitated on the color wheel by the use of a white disk
combined with a disk of a standard color for tints and a black disk for
shades, and can be tested in the same order as indicated for the hues,
by combining each standard disk with a white or a black disk in varying
proportions. It will be noticed early in disk experiments that a very
small amount of white produces a decided effect in the tone of a color
while a comparatively large amount of black is necessary to produce a
marked change. As this is exactly the reverse of the effects of white
and black pigments it is always a subject of remark. In pigments these
effects are imitated by the mixture of white with a color to produce
tints, and black for shades, or more generally instead of black some
dark natural pigment approaching the hue of the color, may be preferred
because a black pigment will too often impart an unexpected and
undesirable hue to the color. As for example, in making shades of red
some natural brown pigment is better than black, and so various dark
browns and grays are used for different colors. Even with the disks it
is impossible to imitate purest tints of all the standard colors,
because in some of the colors, as peculiarly in red and blue, the
rotation of the white disk seems to develop a slightly violet gray, for
which effect there has as yet been no scientific explanation. This gray
dulls the purity of the tint as compared with that which is found in the
color under a bright illumination, but on the whole both tints and
shades as well as the hues can be better illustrated with the disks than
in any other way, and in addition, the advantage is secured of being
able to measure and record the tone by the graduated disk in the same
way as the hues are measured and recorded. A further advantage is
secured in the use of disks in color instruction because with pigments,
the only other method by which colors can be combined, much time must be
lost not only in the mixing and applying of the colors but in the delay
necessary to allow them to dry before the true results can be seen.
The shades of yellow as shown on the wheel will not be generally
accepted without criticism, but careful comparison with yellow paper in
shadow will prove the substantial truth of the disk results. This
experiment may be tried as follows: Join two cards with a hinge of paper
or cloth to form a folding screen like the covers of a book as in Fig.
8. On the surface A, paste a piece of standard yellow paper and on B, a
piece of yellow shade No. 1. Hold these two surfaces toward the class in
such a position that the strong light will fall on B, which is the
yellow shade, and thus bring the face A, which is a standard yellow, in
a position to be shaded from the light. By varying the angle of the
covers with each other and turning them as a whole from side to side, a
position will be secured in which the two faces will seem so nearly
alike as to convince the class that this color which they may have
thought to be green, is not green, but a color peculiar to itself, a
shade of yellow; because the darker paper when in full light appears
substantially the same as the standard yellow in the shade or shadow.
[Illustration]
In our experiments thus far with the wheel we have combined the
standards in pairs to produce the colors of the spectrum between the
standards, which for convenience may be called intermediate spectrum
hues, and also have combined a white disk with each of the standards to
produce tints of the standards and a black disk to make shades.
By combining a white disk with an orange and a yellow disk, for example,
forming a trio of disks, a variety of tints of orange yellow and yellow
orange may be made. Also by the use of the black disk instead of the
white a series of shades of the intermediate hues may be produced, and
thus a great variety of tints and shades of many spectrum colors shown.
Now if the white and black disks are combined with each other the result
will be a shade of white, i.e., a white in shadow, which is an
absolutely neutral gray. As the experiments progress it will be seen
that this neutral gray is a very important feature in the study of
color, and therefore it may be well at this point to make sure that the
disk combinations give the true gray of a white in shadow by a test
similar to the one used for the shade of yellow, thus disarming
criticism. Such a test may conveniently be made by covering the reverse
sides of the folding covers with white on one cover and "neutral gray
paper No. 1" on the other. As the neutral gray papers are made in
imitation of combinations of black and white disks this experiment is as
convincing as the one regarding the yellow shade. This is but one of
many examples of the value of disk combinations in the classification
and analysis of colors.
In an elaborate chart of colors highly recommended for primary color
instruction a dozen years ago no correct understanding of the
classification of colors is shown, the tints and shades being indicated
by a very decided change of hue rather than a consistent modification
of tone. For example, in the red scale the standard or normal red is
vermilion, i.e., an orange red; shade No. 1 is simply a red less orange
in hue than the standard, and shade No. 2 a shade of the standard red
advocated in this system; while tint No. 1 is a broken yellow orange and
tint No. 2 is much more yellow and more broken than No. 1.
Similar inconsistencies occur in all the other scales, showing that the
author had no correct knowledge of the analysis of colors, and yet this
was the best and practically the only aid offered for instruction in
color at that time.
Neither were there any true standards for neutral grays and the term
"neutral" was used in such an indefinite way as to rob it of all actual
value, until by the aid of disk combinations it came to be confined to
white in shadow as closely imitated by the combinations of white and
black disks.
[Illustration]
With colored papers made in imitation of the six standards and two tints
and two shades of each, six scales of colors may be produced by
arranging the five different tones of each color in a row, as in Fig. 9,
which represents the orange scale with tints at the left and shades at
the right. If, in addition to these six scales, we have two scales
between each two of the standards, we may have between the orange scale
and the yellow scale a yellow orange scale and an orange yellow scale,
and if we thus introduce the intermediate scales between each of the
other two standards, and include the red violet and violet red, we shall
have eighteen scales of five tones each.
The eighteen scales as above named may be arranged as shown in Fig. 10
to form a chart of pure spectrum scales which is very valuable for study
and comparison and especially so in the study of the theory of
harmonies. All these tones are called pure tones and this chart is
therefore called a chart of Pure Spectrum Scales.
The idea that soft, dull, broken colors produce best harmonies when used
in combination may or may not be a universally accepted truth, but there
is a general belief that it is much easier to make acceptable
combinations with broken colors than with pure spectrum colors and their
tints and shades, and therefore the temptation has been strong to select
a general assortment of colors which easily harmonize because of the
pleasing effect, instead of having regard solely to the educational
value of colors.
Truth in education requires that when colors are classified as spectrum
colors they shall all be the nearest approach possible to the true
spectrum colors, and in the spectrum there are no broken or impure
colors. Therefore, whenever the spectrum is set up as nature's standard
or chart of colors and an imitation is made in pigments or papers, great
care should be used to secure the most accurate imitation possible, but
in the past this has not been the case, because of the prevailing idea
that the colors must all be possible combinations of three primaries,
and hence the orange, green and violet have often been very broken
colors. While pure colors and their tints and shades may be
advantageously combined with various tones of broken colors in one
composition for artistic effect, they should be definitely divided when
classified for educational purposes, and their differences clearly
explained to students.
In a scale of tones in any color the several papers will harmonize more
easily if the tints and shades are not too far removed from the
standard, but it is thought by many good judges that the educational
advantage in learning to see the relationship of color in the more
extreme tones is of greater importance in the elementary grades than the
facility for making most pleasing combinations. Consequently in the
Bradley colored papers the tints are very light and the shades quite
dark.
If, instead of adding either a white disk or a black disk to a spectrum
color, by which we make pure tints and shades, we add both white and
black, a line of gray colors or so-called broken colors is formed. This
is most beautifully shown with the disks, and in this way a line of
_true broken colors_ is secured, because in each case a true neutral
gray has been added to the color, which cannot be insured in the mixture
of gray pigments. As an example, this may be shown with the three
smaller sizes of the orange disks. With the medium size of these three
make the combination Orange, 35; White, 10; Black 55. With the larger
size disks make the proportions Orange, 16; White, 5; Black, 79, and
with the smallest size Orange, 43; White, 33; Black, 24. Place these
three sets of disks on the spindle at one time and you have the three
tones of a broken orange scale.
With similar combinations applied to the six standards and one
intermediate hue between each two, there will be material for a chart of
Broken Spectrum Scales, as shown in Fig. 11, including twelve scales of
three tones each. These are the most beautiful colors in art or nature
when combined harmoniously. Because of the loss of color in broken
colors it is not advisable to attempt so many different hues or so many
tones of each hue as in pure colors, for slight differences in either
hues or tones are not as readily perceived.
In these two charts of color scales two distinct classes of colors are
represented, namely, pure colors and broken colors. The pure colors
consist of the purest possible pigmentary imitations of spectrum colors,
with their tints and shades, and the broken colors are these pure colors
dulled by the admixture of neutral grays in various tones. This
distinction is readily recognized under proper training, so that if a
broken color is introduced into a combination of colors from a pure
scale it will be readily detected, which always occurs when the attempt
is made to produce a series of spectrum scales by the combination of
the three primary colors red, yellow and blue. By this method, if
logically carried out, the orange, green and violet are dark broken
colors, and hence to a less extent the intermediate colors also, because
each of these is a mixture of a pure color with a broken color. The
usual result, however, is that the orange made from the red and yellow
seem so out of place in the warm end of the spectrum that it is modified
and made much nearer the pure color, usually, however, too yellow, while
the greens and violets, which are deep and rich broken colors, may seem
more harmonious, but are so dark as to be out of place among spectrum
colors.
[Illustration]
If light broken colors are properly combined a beautiful imitation
rainbow is produced, which is more harmonious than the spectrum made
from full colors. A series of such colors combined in spectrum order
produce a more pleasing effect when separated by a small space of white,
black, gray, silver or gold. The reason for this may be found in the
discussion of simultaneous contrasts.
In nature nearly all colors are broken. First, there is always more or
less vapor together with other impurities in the air, so that even in a
clear day objects a few hundred feet from us are seen through a gray
veil, as it were, and in a misty or hazy day this is very evident. In
the case of somewhat distant foliage the general color effect is
produced by the light reflected from the aggregation of leaves, some of
which may be in bright sunlight and others in shadow, with a mixture of
brown twigs. All these tints and shades of green and brown are mingled
in one general effect in the eye. Also, owing to the rounded forms and
irregular illumination of objects, we see very little full or local
color in nature.
Therefore the study of broken colors becomes the most fascinating branch
of this whole subject, and it also has an added interest because nearly
all the colors found in tapestries, hangings, carpets, ladies' dress
goods, etc., come under this head. In fact it would be hazardous for an
artisan or an artist to use any full spectrum color in his work, except
in threads, lines or dots. A considerable quantity of pure standard
green, for instance, would mar the effect of any landscape.
It is a very interesting diversion to analyze samples of the dress goods
sold each season under the most wonderful names. For example:--
"Ecru," a color sold a few seasons ago, is a broken orange yellow with a
nomenclature O. 12, Y. 15, W. 17, N. 56, while this year "Leghorn" and
"Furet" are two of the "new" colors, the former having a nomenclature of
O. 16, Y. 54, W. 19, N. 11, and the latter O. 18, Y. 18, W. 8, N. 56,
all of which are very beautiful broken orange yellows.
"Ashes of Roses" of past years is a broken violet red which can be
analyzed as follows: R. 8-1/2, V. 2-1/4, W. 15-1/4, N. 74.
"Anemon" of this season is R. 28, V. 7, W. 5, N. 60, which is another
broken violet red.
"Old Rose" is a broken red: R. 65-1/2, W. 24-1/2, N. 10.
"Empire" of past seasons is G. 18-1/2, B. 11, W. 16-1/2, N. 54, while
"Neptune" of this season is G. 13-1/2, B. 2-1/2, W. 11, N. 73, both
being broken blue greens.
"Topia," a beautiful brown, is O. 10, N. 90, a pure shade of orange,
while "Bolide" is a lighter yellow orange with a nomenclature of O.
18-1/2, Y. 2-1/2, W. 1-1/2, N. 77-1/2.
We might analyze "Elephant's Breath," "Baby Blue," "Nile Green,"
"Crushed Strawberry" and others common in the market, but while the
names will no doubt occur each season the colors will change with the
fickle demands of the goddess of fashion and the interests of the
manufacturers and dealers. In writing any color nomenclature the letters
should be used in the following order: R.-O.-Y.-G.-B.-V.-W.-N., thus
always listing the standard colors before the white or black. For
example, never place Y. before O. or R., and never use N. before W. If
this order is strictly adhered to the habit is soon acquired and a
valuable point gained.
It has been shown that combined white and black disks form neutral
gray, which is a white in shadow or under a low degree of illumination.
If to such a gray a very small amount of color is added, as orange for
example, by the introduction of an orange disk, this neutral gray
becomes an orange gray, but unless the amount is considerable it can not
be detected as an orange, but the gray may be termed a warm gray,
denoting that it is affected by some one of the colors near the red end
of the spectrum. If blue instead of orange is added to the neutral gray,
a cool gray is produced. When green is added to a gray the result can
not fairly be called either warm or cool, and hence we have termed it a
green gray. According to this plan we have four classes of grays,
Neutral, Warm, Cool and Green grays. As there may be many tones of each,
and many intermediate combinations from red to green, or green to blue,
the number of grays in nature is infinite, but these four classes with
two tones of each in the papers form what may be called standards or
stations from which to think of the grays, the same as the six standards
in the spectrum constitute points from which to think of pure colors.
A careful consideration of the foregoing pages, accompanied with a color
wheel or even a color top, can hardly fail to give a student who will
make the experiments a clear idea of the use of the disks in the system
of color education in which they form such an important feature, and
therefore the old theory of three primaries, red, yellow and blue, and
all that it leads to can be very intelligently considered and tested by
them in the experiments which follow.
This old theory briefly restated is as follows: It is said "there are in
nature three primary colors, red, yellow and blue; and by the mixture of
these primary colors in pairs, orange, green and violet may be made." In
fact leading educators have said that "in the solar spectrum, which is
nature's chart of colors, the principal colors are red, orange, yellow,
green, blue and violet; _of these_ red, yellow and blue are primaries
from which may be made the secondaries, orange, green and violet." All
such statements as heretofore made in any popular treatment of the
subject are understood to mean that in a pigmentary imitation of a
spectrum the secondaries as enumerated may be produced by the mixtures
of the primary pigments, because pigmentary mixtures are the only
combinations generally recognized.
This theory has also included the statement that the primaries are
complementary to the secondaries in pairs, and that the combination of
the secondaries in pairs may produce a distinct class of colors called
tertiaries.
It will be the aim of the following pages to demonstrate that in all
this there is neither scientific or æsthetic truth nor educational
value.
The Old Theories Tested by Mixture of Three Pigments.
Experiments in mixing the three pigments, red, yellow and blue, to
produce the secondaries, orange, green and violet, have been very
carefully made with interesting and instructive results. All such
experiments are valueless unless made with one accepted set of primaries
for the three combinations, because it is self-evident that if we select
a vermilion red which is very decidedly an orange red, and choose for
our yellow one of the orange yellows, the mixture will more nearly
approach a true orange than if a standard red and standard yellow are
used. Also in making a violet, if we mix a carmine, which is a violet
red, with a decidedly violet blue, of which there are many, the result
will be a better violet than the combination of the standard red and
blue. So also in the mixing of blue and yellow to make green, a greenish
yellow and a greenish blue will necessarily produce better results than
the standards. Therefore, to test the matter fairly, the same pigments
which are used to coat the standard red, yellow and blue papers have
been combined so as to produce the best possible orange, green and
violet, and these results when analyzed on the color wheel are as
follows:--
The orange made by mixing standard red and yellow pigments in the best
proportions is equal to O. 46, W. 2, N. 52. The violet is equal to V.
20, W. 1, N. 79, and the nearest approach to a standard green is shown
by disk analysis to be G. 37, W. 7, N. 56, which is better than the
violet and nearly as good as the orange.
These experiments show that heretofore when a line of standards of six
colors has been prepared from three primaries, red, yellow and blue,
even though the purest possible colors may have been selected for the
primaries, the secondaries have not been in the same class of colors,
and that all of them are very dark broken colors. Therefore, in using
educational colored papers based on such a scheme, the pupil has
received no correct impressions of the relative values of the several
colors involved in pure spectrum scales, but has been shown at the
outset a mixture of pure and broken colors _as standards_.
This is not a matter of opinion regarding best harmonies, because it is
easy to demonstrate that less skill is required to combine broken colors
harmoniously than pure colors, but it is a choice between truth and
error in the early education of color perception.
Old Theories Tested by the Color Wheel or Color Top.
While it may be impossible for the reader to secure pigments exactly
like the standards, red, yellow and blue, used in the above experiments,
and therefore the statement here made can not be accurately verified,
any one having a color wheel or even a color top may test the same
combinations by use of disks. If it is true, as claimed, that a good
standard orange can be made by mixing red and yellow, then it should
follow that when a red and yellow disk are combined and a smaller orange
disk placed in front of them, that it ought to be possible to so adjust
the proportion of red to yellow that by rotation the outer ring of color
will match the central orange disk.
A trial of this experiment will show that while the color resulting from
the best possible combination of red and yellow is a kind of orange, it
is not even an approximation to the standard orange, but is a shade of
orange which may be matched by combining the smaller orange disk with a
black disk in the proportion of O. 45, N. 55, the larger disks being R.
89, Y. 11.
In combining red and blue disks to make a violet the result is more
satisfactory, while if we attempt to produce a green by combining the
yellow and blue disks the result will be surprising, but probably not
convincing, because the statement that yellow and blue make green has
been so persistently reiterated as a fundamental axiom that people who
have given the subject but little attention will feel that to doubt it
is rank heresy. In a text book treating of color is found the following
passage: "Green substances reflect the green, i.e., the blue and yellow
rays of the sunlight and absorb all the others." It is a fact, however,
that in the mixture of blue and yellow light there is little or no trace
of green, as a single experiment with a color top or color wheel will
readily demonstrate.
In response to this convincing experiment a colorist of the "old
school," (and there are few others) will doubtless say, "Such an
assertion seems to be true when applied to these rotating disks, but we
see no practical value in experiments of this kind, because in the use
of color we must depend on pigmentary combinations, and in pigments
yellow and blue do make green." The author of a statement of this kind
is always honest in making it, and yet it is absolutely untrue, because
as has already been shown, the green resulting from the mixture of
yellow and blue can not be placed even approximately in the same class
as the yellow and blue of which it is composed.
In accepting the disk combinations of standard pigmentary colors we are
assuming a system of color investigation based on the combination of
colored light rather than the mixture of pigments, and to an artist who
has given the subject little thought this seems quite radical, not to
say startling. But, logically, why is it not the most natural as well as
the correct basis for this work?
Art in color must be based on the imitation of natural color effects.
We must first learn to see color correctly and to know what we see, and
after that it is a very simple matter to learn which pigments to combine
for producing any desired result which is already clearly defined in the
mind. In fact the best selection of pigments must often be based on
their chemical and mechanical qualities as much as on their peculiar
hues.
All color impressions of material substances are produced by colored
light reflected from a material surface to the retina of the eye,
through which by some unknown means it is conveyed to the brain. When
the white sunlight falls on a material substance a portion of the rays
are absorbed and others are reflected to the eye, thereby conveying
impressions of color. If on a surface of yellow material we throw a
strong orange light through a colored glass, some of the orange rays
from the glass will mingle with the yellow rays and the two are
reflected to the eye, thereby producing an orange yellow or yellow
orange effect where before it was yellow. So in a summer evening
landscape when there is a so-called red sunset, everything is
illuminated by an orange light and each color in the landscape is
affected by the orange rays which mingle with the rays of the local
color and are reflected to the eyes of the observer, producing the
effect of local colors mixed with orange.
In a room where the windows open on to a green lawn with many trees in
close proximity to the house, nearly all the light is reflected from
green surfaces, and hence is green light. In such a case a correct
painting of objects in that room would have a general green effect.
The afternoon light in a room on the west side of a city street may be
nearly all red light, reflected from an opposite red brick wall, and
such a room would be ill-adapted to showing fine dress goods, because
the hues of the more delicate colors would be entirely changed, and
hence would give a false impression as to the relations of the several
colors in combination as seen in white or clear daylight. If a piece of
light blue silk is illuminated by sunlight passing through a bit of
yellow glass, no trace of green effect will be produced, but a gray
either slightly yellow or blue, according to the relative strength of
the colors in the glass and the silk. This same effect would be secured
if the yellow light of the setting sun illuminated the same material,
but under such conditions everything else would be similarly affected so
that the effect would not be so apparent.
The idea that all color is derived from the three primaries, red, yellow
and blue, is so generally believed that our best writers among artists,
colorists and educators have repeated it for many years. George Barnard,
an English artist, in a very valuable book on water color painting,
speaking of the colors of the spectrum which may be re-combined to form
white light, says that if the yellow and blue rays are combined they
produce green.
Chevreul also states in his invaluable book on color contrasts that
yellow and blue threads woven into a texture, side by side, produce
green. This statement is the more remarkable because the writer was a
very careful investigator and is but another evidence of the strong hold
which the Newton and Brewster theory has had on the public mind for so
many years.
The story is told of an artist who wished to introduce into a
composition of still life a blue vase with a bit of yellow lace thrown
over a portion of it, and having been educated to believe that yellow
and blue made green, gave a green effect to the portion of the vase
covered by the lace. Had he known that blue and yellow light combined
make gray instead of green he would have avoided the error.
The fact that gray is the product of blue and yellow light is sometimes
taken advantage of in forming backgrounds in lithographic printing, in
which a stippling of alternate dots of yellow and blue, very close
together but not overlapping, is used to produce a beautifully
transparent gray much more pleasing than any one tint of gray. This
result is due to the blending of the two colors in the eye with the same
effect as the colors of two rotating disks are mingled. The fact that
there is a difference between the color effects produced by mixing two
pigments and the mixing of the light reflected from similar colored
surfaces is a very strong argument for a system of color instruction
based on disk combinations, rather than on pigmentary mixtures.
In order to obtain the most truthful effects of color in nature the
artist should have sufficient knowledge of the principles which govern
the combination of colors by reflected light, so that his reason may aid
his eyes.
A little experimenting with the rotating disks and with pigments will
convince any one that the disk combinations form the only possible basis
at present known for logical color instruction.
Concerning the Complementary Colors.
Having shown that the three colors, red, yellow and blue, can not be
combined to make an orange, a green or a violet of a corresponding
degree of purity, we will consider the other claim which is set up by
the advocates of the Brewster theory, namely, that the secondaries are
complementary to the primaries in pairs, the green to the red, the
violet to the yellow and the orange to the blue.
As all color is contained in white light, if we take from white light
any given color, the color remaining is the complementary. If a small
disk of standard red paper is placed on a white wall and the eyes fixed
intently on it for a few seconds, and then the eyes slightly moved back
and forth, a ring of a bluish green tint will be seen surrounding the
red paper, or if the eyes are fixed intently on the disk for a short
time and the paper suddenly removed, a disk of the same blue green tint
will be seen in place of the red disk. This is called the accidental
color and is supposed to be identical with the complementary color,
although the image is too faint to give any very exact effect, but it is
sufficient to furnish a clue to the complementary, and we may infer that
a color between green and blue is that which is required. Now if we can
determine in what proportions red, blue and green must be united to
produce white light we may solve the problem. This is not possible in
the use of any pigmentary colors, because of the impurity of all
pigments as compared with spectrum colors. Although the mixture of
colored light reflected from the disks, which are made of pigmentary
colors, gives much purer color than the actual mechanical mixture of the
two pigments, still, because it is a reflection of pigmentary colors, it
is far lower in tone than the corresponding mixture of spectrum colors.
Therefore it can not be a pure white, but may be white in shade or a
neutral gray, which, as already shown, can be produced by the
combination of a white and a black disk.
Therefore if red, blue and green disks of medium size are joined on the
wheel and in front of them small white and black disks are combined, we
have a means for solving this problem. If these various disks can be so
adjusted that when rotated the effect of the three colored disks is a
neutral gray, (or white under a low degree of illumination) exactly
matching a gray that may be obtained by adjusting the small black and
white disks, then one step in the solution is taken, as shown in Fig.
12.
[Illustration]
With such an arrangement a very close match is produced, when the
combined disks show the proportions to be R. 41-1/2, B. 22-1/2, G. 36
for the larger disks, and for the small disks W. 15, and N. 85. Now if
blue and green are combined in the same proportions, as indicated above
and in quantities sufficient when added together to fill the entire
circle of 100 parts, blue will contain 38.3 parts and green, 61.7 parts,
as shown in Fig. 13, and the disks when rotated will give the color
which is the complementary of red: namely, a blue green.
In the same way the complementary of each of the other standard colors,
and in fact of any color, may be obtained.
The complementary of orange is another color between the green and blue,
but more largely blue. The complementary of green is a violet red, and
of violet a color between yellow and green, while yellow and blue are
very nearly complementary to each other.
These figures furnish the results in a very well-lighted room, with a
perfectly white interior. It is a well-established fact that this
experiment is somewhat affected by the degrees of illumination, and also
that colored light from the walls and ceiling of a room must of
necessity have its effect, but all these matters are so insignificant as
to be of no material consequence in the æsthetic study of the subject,
and they can be very nearly eliminated when necessary by a careful
selection of conditions. Whenever accurate experiments in pigmentary
color comparisons are to be made, either by the use of rotating disks or
otherwise, it is desirable to have a very well-lighted room, with a
northern exposure and to select a morning or noonday light from a
slightly overcast sky. These conditions obviate the unpleasant effect of
direct sunlight in the room and also the very slightly blue effect of
the clear sky. These precautions are unnecessary in experiments relating
to the ordinary æsthetic consideration of color combinations, but even
in such work it is important to exclude all light reflected from
neighboring trees or colored buildings. Also the interior of the room
should be as free from color as possible; a clean white surface is
especially desirable.
A Chart of Complementary Colors, shown in Fig. 14, has been found very
valuable in fixing in the minds of teacher and pupils the
complementaries of the six standards. In this chart, which is about
eighteen inches in diameter, the circles at the ends of the six
diameters are colored papers selected from the Bradley coated papers, as
approximating the true complementaries. In the majority of cases they
are not far from correct, but are least satisfactory in the blue and
yellow. Theoretically the complementary of the ideal standard blue is a
slightly orange yellow, and of the standard yellow a slightly violet
blue. But there is as yet no blue pigment in the market suitable for
commercial use which is free from a slightly violet effect. Therefore
the standard blue paper is practically as good a complementary for the
standard yellow as the violet blue paper. But notwithstanding these
slight imperfections which are at present unavoidable, the chart is a
valuable aid in fixing in the mind the positions of the complementary
pairs in the spectrum circuit.
[Illustration]
Each of the foregoing experiments furnishes an interesting class
exercise, and may be very closely repeated by the pupils with their
tops. Also the computation of the proportion of green and blue when
raised to the full circle may form a practical problem in proportion for
pupils of the higher grades. Taken together, these experiments prove
that the complementaries of the old primaries are not found in the
secondaries.
The last claim of the Brewster theory is that the secondaries by
combination form three lines of colors peculiar to themselves, called
citrines, russets and olives. It is asserted that the mixture of orange
and green makes citrine; orange and violet russet; green and violet
olive. Although these names may be very convenient terms to express
three general classes of colors, they must of necessity be too general
and indefinite to be of value for accurate expression of color effects,
and are in fact so vague that hardly two persons can be found in a large
company who will agree as to the best expression of either of them. The
following are formulas for a number of colors in each class, as made
from analyses of colors coming under these names. It is an interesting
exercise to produce some of these colors by means of the rotating color
disks and test the opinions of the different members of a company as to
which best represents to each one of them a tertiary color, as citrine,
for example. For this purpose three different formulas may be shown at
the same time, with three sizes of disks.
Citrines.
O. 7. Y. 13. W. 3-1/2. N. 76-1/2.
Y. 15. W. 4. N. 81.
Y. 13. W. 5. N. 76. G. 6.
O. 6. Y. 20. W. 4. N. 70.
O. 3. Y. 6. W. 8. N. 83.
Russets.
R. 37. O. 8. W. 8. N. 47.
R. 79. W. 10-1/2. N. 10-1/2.
R. 33. O. 20. W. 6. N. 41.
R. 36. O. 4. W. 9. N. 51.
R. 47. O. 7. W. 8. N. 38.
Olives.
G. 19. B. 11-1/2. W. 10-1/2. N. 59.
G. 13. B. 6. W. 12. N. 69.
G. 14. B. 12. W. 8. N. 66.
G. 10-1/2. B. 15. W. 8. N. 66-1/2.
G. 12-1/2. B. 5-1/2. W. 4. N. 78.
The term citrine theoretically covers all possible combinations of
orange and green, but as generally understood those colors which are so
near the orange or the green as to very decidedly approach either the
one or the other are not included, and, as shown in the above analyses,
a citrine is a very broken color ranging from an orange yellow through
yellow to a green yellow.
Although the russets would theoretically range from violet to orange,
yet the general conception of russet will hardly accept a violet red,
but will cover only the red and orange reds as above indicated, while
olives are confined to blue greens and green blues.
These tests are based on combinations of the Bradley standard orange,
green and violet pigments, and therefore are far stronger in color than
those colors usually termed citrine, russet and olive, made by mixing
the pigmentary secondaries. For example, if a yellow and blue pigment
are mixed to form a green, and red and yellow pigments to make an
orange, and then this green and orange are mixed to produce a citrine,
the result will be very much darker and more broken than the mixture of
the purer orange and green colors used as standards.
Restricted to these limits these names may become very useful terms for
general color expressions, as covering three different classes of broken
colors. If any one believes that these color formulas do not correctly
represent the three classes of colors indicated, a series of experiments
with even the small color top will prove very convincing.
When the subject of standards as a means for identifying colors is
mentioned artists frequently express the feeling that the names of
pigments are good enough for them, such as Ultramarine Blue, Prussian
Blue, Vermilions, the Siennas, Indian Red, etc. The following are the
analyses of several samples of Vermilion, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, and
Indian Red of the best tube oil colors in the market:--
Vermilion.
R. 80. O. 14. W. 6.
R. 87. O. 8. W. 5.
R. 50. O. 24. W. 26.
Burnt Sienna.
R. 1-1/4. O. 6. W. 3. N. 89-1/2.
R. 22-1/2. O. 11-1/2. W. 2. N. 64.
R. 25. O. 12-1/2. W. 5-1/2. N. 57.
Raw Sienna.
O. 18-1/2. Y. 6-1/2. N. 75.
O. 17. Y. 14. W. 1. N. 68.
O. 8-1/2. Y. 3-1/2. W. 2. N. 86.
Indian Red.
R. 11-1/2. O. 7. W. 4. N. 77-1/2.
R. 13-1/2. O. 13-1/2. W. 2-1/2. N. 70-1/2.
A careful examination of these formulas and a reproduction and
comparison of the colors on the color top will convince any one that in
no case does the commercial name determine the color with a degree of
accuracy sufficient for any valuable nomenclature.
Classification of Harmonies.
The theory of the harmonies of colors is a subject which awaits very
careful investigation and a general discussion by artists and expert
colorists. Such investigations must include many experiments based on
common standards and uniform methods of measurements and records.
Harmonies naturally seem to fall into a few general classes which are
convenient for comparison and discussion as well as for elementary
instruction, but no one person can set himself or herself up to decide
which are the _best_ harmonies. The practices and recommendations of
noted artists who have appeared to be gifted with intuitive perceptions
regarding color combinations have frequently included those for which
there seemed to be no recognized authority, and yet their beauty could
not be questioned. As the rules of grammar are but the correlation of
the practices of the best scholars, so the rules governing color
combinations must be the summary of the practices and recommendations of
the best artists, if they are to be generally accepted as final, and
hence we must patiently await the growth of similarly established laws
by the comparison of the opinions of critics of acknowledged ability in
various departments of the world of art. This has not been possible in
the past and can never occur until there is a language of color through
which color facts can be somewhat accurately expressed in verbal and
written language, and this language cannot exist until there is an
accepted alphabet of color on which it can be based. This alphabet is
now in part furnished by the spectrum standards and completed by the
pigmentary standards and the rotating disks made like them. Together
they form the basis for a nomenclature by the use of which the questions
involved in harmonies can be discussed and the results expressed in
written language.
In the investigation of any subject with a view to elementary
instruction, classification is an important factor, but one which
heretofore has been almost ignored as regards color education.
Consequently at present the more definite division of harmonies into
classes is very much a matter of personal opinion, but Mr. Henry T.
Bailey, State Supervisor of Drawing in Massachusetts, has suggested a
very useful classification in which he arranges all harmonies under
these five heads: Contrasted, Dominant, Complementary, Analogous and
Perfected.
_Contrasted._--The contrasted harmonies are those in which color is
contrasted with non-color, or more accurately in which an active color,
that is a tone from the spectrum circuit, is contrasted with a passive
color, white, black, gray or silver and gold; for example, a blue green
tint with white, or green blue with warm gray No. 1.
_Dominant._--By dominant harmonies we mean those in which are combined
different tones from one color scale. For example, red tint No. 1, and
red shade No. 1, or a green blue tint, green blue, and a green blue
shade. A dominant harmony composed of grays, or white, gray and black,
is sometimes called a neutral harmony.
_Complementary._--This term refers to those harmonies in which are
combined opposite or complementary colors in the spectrum circuit. The
best of them show not only opposition in color but also opposition in
tone. Thus, tints of one color with shades of its complementary produce
a more pleasing effect than do complementaries of equal value. The best
complementary harmonies contain one or more passive colors.
_Analogous._--This name is applied to those harmonies in which are
combined tones from scales of neighboring colors in the spectrum
circuit.
For example, in a composition of colors from that part of the spectrum
containing yellow, green yellow and yellow green the following simple
combination may be made: Yellow tint No. 1, green yellow and yellow
green shade No. 2.
_Perfected._--By perfected harmonies we mean those in which the general
effect of one analogous harmony is complementary to that of another.
The above classification of harmonies is very valuable for fixing in the
mind the various effects of color combinations, and yet they may seem to
somewhat merge into each other in their application, until the
underlying principles which govern them are understood. It is unwise to
suppose that because the above classification of harmonies is based on
the science of color we can infer that it furnishes definite rules for
producing best effects.
The Work of Chevreul Reviewed.
The good or bad effect of two or more colors in combination in
decorative designs or fine art depends very largely upon phenomena
which are elaborately explained in a book entitled "The principles of
Harmony and Contrasts of Colours" by M. Chevreul.[A] The first edition
of this book was prepared in 1835 and published in 1838. The author had
at that time been employed for a number of years as superintendent of
the manufactory of Gobelin Tapestries in Paris under the control of the
French government.
[A] The Principles of Harmony and Contrasts of Colours and their
Application to the Arts. By M. E. Chevreul. Translated from the French
by Charles Martel. Third Edition. London. George Bell and Sons. 1890.
In this book are described in detail the results of a great number of
experiments which were instigated by complaints regarding certain colors
produced in the dyeing department of the manufactory, and which afford
the most elaborate exposition of the subject ever published.
One of the first things which led Chevreul to make his investigation was
the complaint that certain black yarns used as shades in blue draperies
were not a full black but more or less gray.
The author says in his preface, "The work I now publish is the result of
my researches on Simultaneous Contrasts of Colours; researches which
have been greatly extended since the lectures I gave on this subject at
the institute on the 7th April, 1828. In reflecting on the relations
these facts have together, in seeking the principle of which they are
the consequence, I have been led to the discovery of the one which I
have named the _Law of Simultaneous Contrast of Colours_."
The closing sentence of the preface to the first edition and dated 1835
is as follows:--
"I beg the reader never to forget when it is asserted of the phenomena
of simultaneous contrast, _that one colour placed beside another
receives such a modification from it_, that this manner of speaking does
not mean that two colours, or rather the two material objects that
present them to us, have a mutual action, either physical or chemical;
it is really only applied to the modification that takes place before us
when we perceive the simultaneous impression of these two colours."
It was not till three years later that a publisher could be found for
this book, which is still a standard.
The English translation comprises over five hundred closely printed
pages with many engraved and colored plates, and yet, it has been of
comparatively little value in _popular instruction_ because of the lack
of a generally accepted color nomenclature or list of well defined color
terms, by which the readers might have understood and repeated for
themselves the experiments described.
Unfortunately Chevreul was fully impressed with the Newton-Brewster idea
of three primaries, red, yellow and blue, and therefore some of his
deductions from his experiments seem to have been more or less
influenced by the attempt to make them harmonize with this theory, and
yet the subject which he has treated so exhaustively and intelligently
is one of the most important in the æsthetic study and use of colors. In
all expressions of colors in combination with each other, whether in
nature, fine arts or the decorative and industrial arts, every color is
affected by its surrounding colors, a fact which is exhaustively treated
in this book.
While with our present knowledge of the subject it does not seem that
the material use of color can be reduced to an exact science, this
should not prevent us from accepting all the natural and scientific aids
which have been or may be discovered toward this desirable result.
Because of this lack of scientific knowledge in Chevreul's time much of
the worth of his experiments is lost to us, yet there is very much of
value in his work, suggesting as it does experiments which may be tried
with present standards and modern methods.
If the use of Maxwell disks had been known to Chevreul his deductions
from his experiments would have been quite different in their details.
For example, in accepting the proposition that there are three
primaries, red, yellow and blue, which may be combined in pairs to make
the secondaries, orange, green and violet, he states that owing to the
impurities of the pigments the secondaries are not as pure as the
primaries. Consequently he believes that this may account for many of
the shortcomings which he was too observing to overlook; but
notwithstanding such an error in theory this wonderful investigator made
many practical experiments and established very valuable facts regarding
color contrasts.
The term Simultaneous Contrast seems rather restricted for a title
covering such a range of effects, and the author subdivides the subject
into simultaneous contrasts, successive contrasts and mixed contrasts,
which he defines as follows:--
Simultaneous Contrast.
"In the Simultaneous Contrast of Colors is included all the phenomena of
modification which differently colored objects appear to undergo in
their physical composition and in the height of tone of their respective
colors, when seen simultaneously."
Successive Contrast.
"The Successive Contrast of Colors includes all the phenomena which are
observed when the eyes, having looked at one or more colored objects for
a certain length of time, perceive, upon turning them away, images of
these objects having a color complementary to that which belongs to each
of them."
Mixed Contrast.
"The distinction of Simultaneous and Successive Contrast renders it easy
to comprehend a phenomenon which we may call the mixed contrast; because
it results from the fact that the eye, having seen for a time a certain
color, acquires an aptitude to see for another period the complementary
of that color, and also a new color, presented to it by an exterior
object; the sensation then perceived is that which results from this new
color and the complementary of the first." These last two effects may be
shown very clearly in simple experiments.
There are various phenomena which may be classed as successive
contrasts sometimes called "after images." The phenomena which Chevreul
groups under the term "Simultaneous Contrast of Colors" belong to a
class of physio-psychological effects termed after images, and more
definitely to the subdivision called negative images. The positive after
images are not important in the consideration of the theories of color
and therefore are not described here. The specific effect most directly
involved in the subject of harmonies may be observed if the eyes are
fixed upon a small disk of red paper on a white wall for a few seconds
and then the paper is suddenly removed, as there will appear on the wall
in place of the full red disk a faint tint of a blue green. This is
called an after image, and is nearly or exactly a tint of the color
complementary to red.
For making this experiment mount a circle of red paper, say three inches
in diameter on a square white card, four or five inches across, and
grasping the card by one corner hold it in front of a white wall or a
sheet of white paper pinned on any support. Tell the observer to look
intently at the red disk for a half minute, and then without giving any
notice suddenly remove it and ask what color is seen in place of it. At
the first trial the result may not be entirely successful, because the
eyes of the observer may naturally follow the red spot when it is
removed instead of remaining fixed in the original position, but a
second trial will bring the expected result. To illustrate mixed
contrast, fasten on the wall a piece of red tint No. 2 paper four or
five inches square. This may be very conveniently done by using a bit of
beeswax on each corner of the paper, which will not soil the wall. Then
having the three-inch circle of standard red paper mounted on a white
card somewhat larger than five inches square hold the card in front of
the red tint on the wall and repeat the experiment as before. The effect
now should be a three-inch disk of very light gray in the center of the
pink square, which is a "mixed contrast" according to Chevreul. The
reason is simple. The after-image or successive contrast of light
blue-green is projected on the red tint and being complementary the
resulting effect is a gray. If the red tint could be exactly graded to
the complementary effect in the eye the resulting gray circle would be a
true neutral gray. Another illustration of the same physical effect by
which the complementary is induced may be shown by substituting for the
tint of red a light tint of the blue-green paper retaining the full red
disk as before. The same blue-green after image is now projected on to
the light blue-green paper and hence a circle of more intense blue-green
is produced. Thus it is seen that Chevreul's successive and mixed
contrasts are both due to the same physiological effect, the only
difference being in the ground on to which the after image is projected.
It probably is unnecessary to state that these experiments may be made
with any color and its complementary and that red and blue-green are
used here merely as an example.
Another phase of the same physical effect is seen under other conditions
which may at first seem to be quite different from those described, but
which on examination appear somewhat similar.
It is a well established fact that when two surfaces approximating each
other in color, as red and orange for example, are placed side by side,
both are rendered less brilliant, an effect which might be reasonably
expected because in order to see both the eye is naturally directed
first to one and then to the other, and in each case the after image
induced is a green-blue or blue-green, which being approximately
complementary to both, dulls both. Or in other words, it is as though
one examines for a long time a line of goods of similar colors so that
the eye becomes fatigued and the color dulled. It is said that a good
salesman of colored materials will endeavor to occasionally attract a
customer's attention for a few moments to some other colors
approximating a complementary, so that when the attention is again
directed to the goods under consideration the full effect of the color
may be secured. If it is true that the phenomenon of the after image is
the cause of the peculiar effects expressed by the terms simultaneous,
successive and mixed contrasts, and that by these effects all harmonies
in color are governed, it is certainly profitable to understand them
while using color material with the children, for their good as well as
our own pleasure.
Contrasted Harmony.
Returning to our classification of harmonies, already stated, we find
the first to be Contrasted Harmony, which covers those combinations in
which a positive color, as a spectrum color for example, is combined
with white, black or gray, leaving out for the present silver and gold,
which may be confusing, and can at best be used only as outlines.
The simplest combinations of colors are found in this class, all of
which are not equally harmonious, and some may not perhaps be entitled
to be classed as harmonies, although not positively inharmonious. In
this class, as in all others, there is involved contrast of tone and
contrast of color, which may best be considered in several divisions.
Color with White.
According to the results of Chevreul's elaborate experiments the effect
of a combination of an active color with white is to render the color
more brilliant and to give to the white the effect of the complementary
of the active color. He admits that the modification of white is very
indefinite, but claims that, knowing what to expect, a complementary
effect may be seen which otherwise would not be noticed. There is also a
contrast of tone which in all cases tends to strengthen a color when
used with white.
Black with White.
White and black are both intensified by combination with each other, and
this is the type of "contrast of tone." Contrast of tone is very clearly
shown when two or more grays of different tones are placed contiguous to
each other. This experiment is easily tried by mounting side by side
several strips of gray papers of different tones. If more than two are
used they should be arranged in order from lightest to darkest. In this
case each band will appear to be graded in tone from one edge to the
other, each being lighter at the edge next to the darker paper.
This effect is plainly shown on the color wheel by producing several
rings of grays with white and black disks of several sizes graduated
from light at the center to darker at the circumference.
Color with Black.
In consequence of this law of contrast of tone the contrast of black
with active colors generally tends to intensify the black and lower the
tone of the color, i.e., to weaken it as though white or light gray was
mixed with it, but this effect is modified by contrast of color.
Contrast of color is perceptible in black when combined with color
simply because the black is not perfectly black but a very dark gray,
and hence there is the same complementary effect which shows in white
and the lighter grays, but in a smaller degree. This effect is most
clearly seen when the color used in combination is blue or blue-green,
which induces in the black, yellow or red complementaries and gives the
black a "rusty" appearance.
On the other hand, for example, red with black adds the complementary
green-blue to the black, which improves it. The orange and yellow have a
similar effect by their blue complementaries to relieve the black from
any rusty appearance and a green yellow induces a violet effect in the
black.
Colors with Gray.
When a color is contrasted with white the light from the pure white
surface is so intense as to very largely obscure the complementary
effect on the white, while on the other hand the feeble light from the
black is not favorable for the exhibition of a complementary. So it
might naturally be inferred that some tone between the white and black
would be much more favorable than either for the observance of this
effect, which is proved by experiment to be the case. This fact is
illustrated in the familiar experiment of placing a white tissue paper
over black letters on a colored ground, by which the black is
practically rendered a neutral gray and the color a light broken color,
and in appearance the gray letters receive a color complementary to the
color of the page on which they are printed. Each color has its own tone
of gray most susceptible to this complementary effect. The truth of this
proposition can be perfectly shown on the color wheel by forming with
three different sizes of disks a gray ring on a colored surface. For
example, select small disks of orange and white of equal size, then a
black and a white disk of the second size and an orange and a white disk
of the third size. First place the large orange and white disks on the
spindle, then join the two medium-sized white and black disks and put
them in front of it, and lastly add the small orange and white disks. By
rotation the result is the required neutral gray ring on a light orange
surface. By the joining of the white disk with each of the orange disks
the orange surface may be changed to a variety of tints for trial with
the different grays which may be made from the black and white disks, so
that the best tones of both orange and gray may be secured. When the
best proportions are obtained the effect will be surprising, because
when such disks are properly adjusted the complementary effect is so
strong in the gray that it appears as a very definite color, a broken
green-blue. It is said that the tone of gray should have the same
relation to the tone of the color that its complementary would have in
order to get best results.
For the same reason if a circle of lightest neutral gray paper, say four
inches in diameter, is placed on a piece of yellow paper about six
inches square, and another circle just like it is put on a piece of blue
paper of similar size, it will be quite difficult to convince any one
who has not previously seen the experiment that both gray circles are
from the same sheet of paper. The results observed in this experiment
are produced by a contrast of tone which causes one to look lighter
than the other, and a contrast of hue which gives one a blue and to the
other a yellow hue, in contrast to the color on which it is mounted.
Contrast of Colors.
If two colors contiguous in the spectrum circuit are placed in
juxtaposition the effect of the contrast of hue is to throw them away
from each other. For example, if orange red and the red orange papers
are put side by side the former will seem more red and the latter more
orange. Therefore, when colored papers are pasted up or laid in order to
form a spectrum, for example, the colors not only fail to blend together
but each line of contact is very disagreeably prominent.
If two colors are separated by a narrow strip of light gray, gold, black
or white, the effect is greatly improved. For this reason a design in
analogous colors is often improved by separating certain colors by a
fine line of black, gold or gray.
If two colors not closely related to each other in the spectrum circuit
are placed in juxtaposition, each is modified by an effect which is the
complementary of the other. For example, if red and yellow are placed
side by side, in contact, the red is rendered more violet by the added
effect of blue, which is the complementary of yellow, and the yellow is
modified by the blue-green complementary of the red, which tends to dull
the yellow and change it slightly toward green.
If blue and yellow are joined both are improved, as the two are so
nearly complementary to each other that each is intensified by
simultaneous contrast, blue being added to blue and yellow to yellow.
Dominant Harmonies.
In the use of colored papers those combinations classified as dominant
harmonies are the most simple to make because they are all in one
family, as the little children like to consider the relationship. The
red family consists of the standard red and its tints and shades, or in
other words the red scale. With the several papers ready made this
harmony becomes very simple, but in the use of pigments the production
of a true color scale is not a thing to be confidently undertaken by a
novice.
In a very elaborate color chart for Primary education prepared with
great care by Dr. Hugo Magnus and Prof. B. Joy Jeffries, and published
at large expense about ten years ago with hand-painted samples in oil
colors, this lack of classification of hues is very noticeable, although
at that time it was by far the best publication of the kind and was not
criticised on this point.
For example in a scale of five tones of red the following are the
analyses, beginning at the lightest tint:--
Tint No. 2, O.45, Y.20, W.18, N.17.
Tint No. 1, O.69, Y.3, W.7, N.21.
Standard, R.75, O.25.
Shade No. 1, R.85, O.15.
Shade No. 2, R.75, N.25.
In this scale according to the Bradley nomenclature the standard or full
color is a very fine vermilion expressed by R.75, O.25, i.e. an orange
red, and therefore in order to form a perfect scale both tints and
shades should be in the orange reds, but in fact the tints are both
broken colors, the lightest a very broken yellow-orange and the deeper
tint very nearly a light broken orange. The lightest shade is a pure
orange-red but with a larger proportion of red to the orange than the
standard, while the darkest tone is a pure shade of red. Thus in the
five tones we have the following arrangement, beginning at the lightest
tint:--
Broken yellow-orange, broken orange, orange-red; another pure orange-red
but more red, and lastly red shade, thus embracing in one orange-red
scale parts of four scales from yellow-orange to red. In these defects
in the best chart of its kind in the market only ten years ago is seen
the best possible evidence of the advance made since that time in color
perception, largely due to the use of the color disks in determining
scales. While in the use of colored papers the dominant harmony may be
the simplest and the one in which there is least danger of really bad
work, some of the combinations are much better than others, and
superiority is perhaps secured as much by the relative quantities of
each tone used in a composition as in the selecting of the tones. In the
entire range of the spectrum even this class of harmonies involves
problems too complex to be solved by a few rules, but it is a very
interesting field in which the children may safely be allowed to roam
and experiment.
Complementary Harmonies.
Complementary Harmonies may perhaps be classified next to dominant
because they are more easily described and more definitely limited than
those effects termed Analogous Harmonies. A pure Complementary Harmony
consists of the combination of tones from two scales which are
complementary to each other. For example, the red scale is complementary
to the blue-green scale, as also the green to the violet-red, and so on
throughout the entire range of the spectrum scales.
As explained on Page 50, the complementary of any color can be
determined by means of the color wheel, or nearly enough for æsthetic
purposes with the color top. But even though the colors complementary to
each other may be determined scientifically there will always remain
ample opportunity for the exhibition of color sense and artistic feeling
in the choice of colors because the difference between a very beautiful
composition in complementary harmony and an indifferently good one may
be found in the choice of tones, or in the proportions of each and their
arrangement with relation to each other. This harmony certainly contains
great possibilities with comparatively few limitations.
While it is perhaps approximately true that complementaries are
harmonious in combination, yet best authorities do not seem to fully
sustain this opinion and it is quite evident that pure tones of some
complementary pairs when combined are very hard in their effects, if not
positively unpleasant. This can be relieved very decidedly and
oftentimes very pleasing results secured by modifying the colors to
tints and shades or various broken tones.
But as has before been stated, and must be constantly reiterated, all
fine questions of harmonies can only be determined by a general
agreement of experts in color based on accepted standards.
Analogous Harmonies may seem to be more closely related to the dominant
than the complementary and hence, logically, should perhaps be
considered before the complementary, but there may be greater
difficulties involved in the analogous than in the complementary because
they are not so definitely limited.
Analogous Harmonies.
In an Analogous Harmony we may use tones from a number of scales more or
less closely related in the spectrum circuit. In some parts of the
spectrum it is possible to include a much wider range than in others. It
is comparatively easy to produce safe compositions through that part
bounded by the orange-yellow and the green scales, while from the green
to the violet experiments are much less safe.
In almost any section of the spectrum a range of three scales is safe if
the tones are properly selected and proportioned, and in some sections
as many as five or six may possibly be included, by an artist, with
striking and pleasing effect.
Perfected Harmonies.
The compositions which have been classified as Perfected Harmonies may
be defined as the combination of two Analogous Harmonies which as a
whole are approximately complementary to each other, or in which the key
tones of the Analogous Harmonies are complementary to each other. Such
compositions may be entirely composed of analogous colors with the
addition of but one complementary color, and this is in fact a very safe
harmony, especially if that one color is used as a border line or an
outline here and there in the design, in which case it may sometimes be
strong in color and tone.
The chart of spectrum scales as made from colored papers cut in squares
is of great value in explaining the classification of harmonies. Fig. 15
is a reduced copy of the chart of pure spectrum scales shown on page 41,
and which is here placed horizontally for convenience.
[Illustration]
The black zig-zag lines are designed as graphic illustrations of the
various classes of harmonies.
Contrasted Harmonies as defined are limited to designs in one active
color mounted on a background of one of the passive colors and thus need
no further explanation, although experience will prove that some
combinations are very much more pleasing than others.
The Dominant Harmonies which are defined as combinations of tones from
one scale cannot be made more clear by a diagram, which would be simply
a straight vertical line through any one of the eighteen scales,
indicating that the five tones in that scale or any selection from them
may be used in a Dominant Harmony.
The Analogous Harmony has given students the most trouble and the
diagram is principally prepared to illustrate the great variety in
harmonies of this class.
Commencing at the left, the first line indicates a harmony in three
scales beginning with red-violet shade No. 2 and passing to shade No. 1,
then to standard violet and thence to blue-violet tints No. 1 and No. 2.
The next is in two scales, beginning at violet-blue shade No. 2, thence
to blue shade No. 1; back to normal violet-blue; again into the blue
scale at tint No. 1 and back to violet-blue tint No. 2.
The next begins at green-blue shade No. 2 and ends in green tint No. 2.
Theoretically the line beginning in G. B. S. 2. and leading to G. T. 1.
and thence to Y. S. 2. may represent an Analogous Harmony, but it may be
doubtful whether a range of such an extent in that part of the spectrum
could be made very harmonious. This may be divided into two harmonies at
G. T. 1. and each part may be extended to G. T. 2.
The straight line from G. S. 2. to O. Y. T. 2., embracing five scales,
might be extended to include the joining broken line running into the Y.
O. scale and finishing at O. Y. S. 2.
The remaining lines at the red end of the chart may be considered as
indicating one harmony in six tones, or two harmonies in three tones
each.
If the two ends of the Chart of Spectrum Scales are joined so as to form
an endless band or a cylinder, bringing the violet-red scale adjoining
the red-violet, as in the spectrum circuit, the same graphic
illustration could be given of harmonies extending from violet to red.
The complementary harmonies require no diagrams, because they are
limited to the combination of two scales complementary to each other and
would be represented by two parallel vertical lines through any two
complementary colors, as for example vertical lines through the red and
green-blue scales.
The compositions termed Perfected Harmonies may be fairly well
illustrated in the diagram by the combination of the line in V. B. and
B. with the broken line commencing in G. Y. S. 2. and ending in G. Y. T.
2.; or again by the line in R. V. to B. V. combined with the straight
line from G. T. 1. to Y. S. 2.; or the broken line G. to Y. S. 2. Or
again, the entire range of the double combination O. S. 2., O. R. T. 2.,
V. R. and O. R. S. 2. with the broken line from G. B. S. 2. to G. T. 2.
Another sample of Perfected Harmony is found in the union of line O. R.
S. 2., V. R., O. R. T. 2., with line G. B. S. 2. to G. T. 2. These
diagrams are designed to show the range or extent which a single
composition may cover under its special definition and do not imply a
necessity for using at one time all the colors through which the line
passes, or that they are specially good harmonies.
A striking illustration in nature of a Perfected Harmony was seen one
bright autumn morning in a species of woodbine covering the side of a
red brick building, in which could be discovered an infinite variety of
colors in greens and violet-reds whose tones were increased in number
and intensified in effect by the reflections of the sunlight and the
corresponding shadows, producing very light tints and very dark shades
of various hues of the complementary colors, and forming a complicated
and wonderfully beautiful effect very definitely classified as a
Perfected Harmony.
Field's Chromatic Equivalents.
So much has been said and written about Field's Equivalents that there
is a very general impression among artists and others that they
constitute an important element in harmonious compositions of color.
This proposition as given in Owen Jones' Grammar of Ornament is as
follows:--
"The primaries of equal intensities will harmonize or neutralize each
other, in the proportions of 3 yellow, 5 red and 8 blue--integrally as
16.
The secondaries in the proportions of 8 orange, 13 purple, 11
green--integrally as 32.
The tertiaries, citrine (compound of orange and green), 19; russet
(orange and purple), 21; olive (green and purple), 24--integrally as
64."
In commenting on this in "The Theory of Color" Dr. Von Bezold says: "It
is often maintained that the individual colors in a colored ornament
should be so chosen, both as regards hues and the areas assigned to
them, that the resulting mixture, as well as the total impression
produced when such ornaments are looked at from a considerable distance,
should be a neutral gray. Starting from this idea, the attempt has been
made to fix the proportional size of the areas, which would have to be
assigned to the various colors usually employed in the arts, for the
purpose of arriving at the result indicated. This idea was especially
elaborated by Field, an Englishman, who gave the name of 'chromatic
equivalents' to the numbers of the proportions obtained, a designation
which has since been very generally adopted. In reality, however, these
'chromatic equivalents' have no value whatever."
The same writer also says: "It will always remain incomprehensible that
even a man like Owen Jones in the text accompanying his beautiful
"Grammar of Ornament" should have adopted this proposition in the form
given to it by Field, since among all the ornaments reproduced in the
work just mentioned there are scarcely any which will really show the
distribution of colors demanded by the proposition in question."[B]
[B] The Theory of Color in its relation to Art and Art Industry. By Dr.
William Von Bezold. Translated from the German by S. K. Koehler with
introduction and notes by Edward C. Pickering. Boston; L. Prang &
Company, 1876.
In accordance with this eminent authority any one familiar with disk
combinations will know by experiment that no combinations of red, yellow
and blue approaching the proportion named by Field can produce a neutral
gray effect in the eye.
Colored Papers.
For practical study of color some economic material is absolutely
necessary and nothing so well combines manual work with æsthetic
cultivation as colored papers, if specially prepared in standard colors
and with a dead plated surface.
In the manufacture of the colored papers adopted in the Bradley scheme
of color instruction, the effort has constantly been to produce the
closest possible imitations of natural colors consistent with the
material.
With this aim in view we have secured the brightest possible red,
orange, yellow, green and blue and have chosen a violet which has the
same relation to the other pigmentary colors that the soft beauty of the
spectrum violet bears to the other parts of the spectrum.
It however happens that in the pure aniline colors discovered in recent
years a line of purples and violets has been found so much purer than
the other pigments that we cannot with our red and violet make a perfect
imitation of the brightest aniline purples used in some of the goods now
in the market. Purple is a general name for the several modifications of
violet, red-violet and violet-red as Peacock Blue is a name given to the
beautiful hues of blue-green and green-blue. These aniline purples are
but another indication that we may expect such advance in the science of
pigment manufacture in the comparatively near future that a much purer
line of standards may be secured than is now possible in papers. But it
does not materially affect the value of the present standards as long as
they are accepted as indicating the kind of color, i.e., its location in
the spectrum, and the _artists_ certainly should not object to this lack
of purity, because their only present criticism is that the standards
are too "raw," which is but another term for pure.
In the glazed colored papers in the market we may find some of these
purples, especially in the tints or "pinks" which when placed beside the
unglazed surfaces of the standard papers render the latter quite
subdued. But in primary color education there is no place for these
purest purple papers, until chemistry discovers other colors
correspondingly brilliant to complete a purer chart of spectrum colors
than is now possible.
[Illustration]
Color Teaching in The Schoolroom.
In the preceding sections of this book the author has aimed to so guide
the teacher who is looking for aids in elementary color teaching that
she can by actual experiment determine for herself the truths regarding
color, and hence be able to choose such facts as are suited to the needs
of her pupils from time to time, and to present them in such a logical
order as to render them of the greatest value in practical results.
It should be possible to interest the children in color more easily than
in any other subject. Examples are always around them at home, in the
street, in the garden and the field, if perchance they are fortunate
enough to see the field, and those who see no attractive colors
elsewhere certainly should find them in the schoolroom. To a teacher who
is in love with the subject the world will be full of examples, every
day. The beautiful yellows and greens of the spring leaves, the flowers,
birds and butterflies of the summer, the autumn foliage, the sunsets and
blue and purple mountains of winter, are but hints of the multitude of
object lessons in color all around us; and if none of these are
available the more commonplace subjects found in the latest seasonable
colors of dress goods and house furnishings will be almost equally
valuable. When the children are once interested they will discover,
through their own observation, examples of such value as to surprise one
who has had experience with only the old methods of trying to teach
color, or rather the utter lack of all methods heretofore in vogue.
The value of kindergarten training has been so thoroughly demonstrated
as to be beyond controversy, and all progressive school boards must soon
recognize the necessity of adopting kindergarten methods in the lower
primary grades, until such time as it may be possible to introduce the
complete kindergarten for all the children, to precede the school
proper. The conditions prevailing in the kindergarten are peculiarly
favorable to the study of color, because of the opportunities afforded
for introducing it in connection with the manual exercises of the gifts
and occupations.
The first gift of the kindergarten, as originally introduced by
Froebel, consists of six soft worsted balls in six colors, which he
seems to have selected as standards without care or knowledge regarding
the theory of "three primaries and three secondaries," although no doubt
he may have indifferently accepted it, because it was the only one in
his day suggesting any logical scheme of color combinations.
The use of colored papers educationally in a systematic way originated
in the kindergarten, and comprised folding, cutting, pasting and
weaving, from which some color instruction was incidentally derived by
the children. But with the papers formerly in the market little special
training in the selecting, matching and naming of colors, such as is of
so great value at the present time, was possible. The call for better
colors in papers came first from the kindergartners, and the diversity
of ideas expressed by them caused the writer to institute a series of
investigations which have resulted in the system to which this book is
devoted. The occupations of paper folding, cutting and pasting have been
adopted into the primary school from the kindergarten, and there is no
question but the occupation of paper mat weaving as practiced in the
kindergarten should also be introduced in the lowest primary grades for
those who have not had kindergarten training, because of its value in
simple manual work and in designing symmetrical patterns and harmonious
color combinations.
By general consent colored papers have been chosen as the most available
material for this work, because while relatively cheap, the purest
colors possible in pigments are secured, and the material is adapted to
the most elementary manual training and education in form as well as
color. It is not the author's aim to here provide a definite course of
lessons to be given in a perfunctory way or in a fixed order, but rather
to furnish suggestions based on practical work in the schoolroom that
may be of value to those who have carefully examined the preceding pages
of this book and become familiar with the experiments described. The
suggestions are based on the experience of teachers who have been using
the system here advocated for several years and testing it in various
ways, and therefore it is hoped that they may be of value to any earnest
worker who is not fully satisfied with her efforts in teaching color up
to date. Consequently a brief outline of work is suggested for the
earliest years, according to a definite order, and then further
suggestions and experiments are introduced, somewhat in the order in
which they may naturally present themselves.
The time has passed when it is necessary to offer any argument for the
study of color in the schoolroom. Every child begins his school life
with many color impressions which he has been acquiring since the day
when his baby fingers first stretched toward some bit of color, and his
development demands a clear presentation to him during the earliest
school years of the fundamental facts concerning color upon which all
later work must be based.
The Glass Prism.
A glass prism is one of the first requisites in the appliances for
teaching color, and a prism which may be bought for a few cents will
work wonders in the hands of an interested teacher, although a more
perfect instrument, such as is sold with physical apparatus, will give
colors which are better defined.
Experience in many schoolrooms has proved that a spectrum can be shown
somewhere in the average room at some hour in every sunny day,
especially in the longer days of spring and summer, and it is well to
have the prism when not in use so fixed as to project the spectrum into
the room much of the time, so that it may become familiar to the younger
children. Observation of the spectrum enthuses the children with a
feeling for color which can be developed in no other way, and they never
tire with watching the wonderful vibrating effects of the liquid colors;
and by studying it the mental image of each of the six colors becomes as
distinct as that of the cube after it has been handled and modeled. If
the schoolroom is provided with shutters or dark curtains a much better
spectrum can be produced by closing them, as even a slight change from a
bright sunny daylight has a very perceptible effect in bringing out the
colors. A person who has never seen a carefully prepared spectrum in a
room almost perfectly dark can have no realizing sense of the purest
possible expressions of color.
Accident once disclosed a simple means by which one teacher secured a
very good spectrum. There was a deep, dark closet opening from the
schoolroom and one bright day when the prism was being used the spectrum
was accidentally thrown into this closet, and the sudden and
enthusiastic expression of approval by those pupils who were in position
to discover it was certainly interesting to the teacher of that country
school, with a dark coal closet.
In a spectrum such as can be produced in a dark room with the most
perfect form of prism, all the various colors can be separated and
carefully examined and by special appliances compared with pigmentary
colors. Experiments of this kind are exceedingly interesting and
instructive, and demonstrate the wonderful intensity and purity of the
spectrum colors as compared with the purest pigmentary colors that can
be produced. Such experiments were carried to a great degree of
perfection when the six standard colors for the Bradley Colored Papers
were selected.
How the Bradley Color Standards Were Chosen.
After many months of labor in securing samples of material colors, and
many days spent with the spectrum, a committee of artists, scientists,
teachers, and artizans unanimously decided that æsthetically and
psychologically the colors adopted were the best possible material
expression of the six localities in the spectrum corresponding to the
feeling or psychological perception of red, orange, yellow, green, blue
and violet. Many subsequent experiments have apparently proved that
practically the same six colors best serve the purpose of primaries from
which to make all others by combination.
In accordance with these selections the educational colored papers have
been made, and since that time an expert scientist has accurately
located each of these colors in the spectrum by its wave length.
Consequently after the children have come to know the six colors in the
sun spectrum the six standard colors of the papers may be shown as the
best imitations possible. In studying the six colors from the spectrum
in a schoolroom it frequently happens that one color may be best seen on
the floor, another on the wall or even the blackboard, and another on
the ceiling, and after the order of the colors in the whole spectrum has
been observed, it is well to get each color where it can be best
secured.
Paper Color Tablets.
When the spectrum has been studied so that the children have some idea
of the six colors and their location relative to each other, give each
of the children a package of the colored paper tablets, one inch by two
inches, containing the eighteen normal spectrum colors, i.e., those in
the central vertical column in the Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales, Page
41, and tell them to select from the eighteen the six which they have
seen in the spectrum and which may be named to them as red, orange,
yellow, green, blue and violet.[C]
[C] Tablets of paper instead of cardboard are recommended because in
primary instruction the standards or types of color presented to the
child ought to be the purest possible expressions of the colors
represented, and a piece of color material cannot meet this requirement
after having been used one year by a child. The necessary expense of
cardboard tablets practically precludes a new supply each year. But the
papers can finally be used to form, by pasting, some chart or
combination which the pupil may be allowed to own as a sample of his
work.
If a sheet of neutral gray cardboard can be secured for use on each desk
all early color work will be more valuable, because of the undesirable
effect of the usual yellow or orange color of the wood of the desk.
If some of the pupils do not make the correct selection of the papers it
may be well to let the error pass for that time and have another
exhibition of the spectrum before the next trial. Get as many of them as
possible to make the selection of the six colors from the eighteen
solely by comparison with the spectrum. Later if some are still unable
to succeed, a paper spectrum may be shown to them, or what is better,
six bits of paper like their own, pasted on a card, with an interval as
wide as two papers between each two. When every child can readily select
the six standard colors from the eighteen then all of them may with
advantage be told to lay the six in a row on the gray cardboard or desk,
in their proper order, and sufficiently separated to allow room for two
other papers between each two. When all have made the attempt and some
have failed to arrange the papers correctly the card having them
properly mounted may again be shown and each one in error may make the
necessary corrections by comparison.
In a solar spectrum such as is possible in the ordinary schoolroom the
intermediate colors between the standards cannot be very distinctly seen
but the child can be shown that between the red and orange, with which
he is familiar, there are colors different from both and possibly he may
be led to see that these colors seem to be a mixture of the two. With
this impression in the minds of the children the following experiment
may be a very interesting psychological test of the natural color
perception of each child, or in other words his "color feeling."
Ask the children to arrange the remaining twelve papers between the six
standards in pairs and one outside of the red and violet at the ends.
This exercise will serve to bring each of the other colors to the
critical attention of the children so that they may not be entirely
strangers to them in the succeeding exercises. At this stage the color
wheel or color top or both will be most valuable.
Color Wheel or Top.
If the wheel is available let the teacher place on it combined red and
orange disks of medium size and in front a small red disk. Before
beginning the six papers should be laid on the desk in order, separated
by two spaces. Call attention to the fact that the red disks are like
the red sample of paper. Explain how the disks are joined and that the
two larger ones can be made to show more or less of the orange and the
red.
Then introduce a small amount of orange, perhaps not enough to cause the
effect to be perceived by the children when the wheel is in motion, and
rotate. Ask if they see any difference between the small disk at the
center and the larger surface. Add more orange till they see a
difference, and continue to add orange to the red until nearly one-half
the disk is orange or till it may be questionable whether the color made
by rotation is more nearly orange or red. This point will be reached
before the orange nearly equals the red, because the orange is more
luminous. Explain that all these colors which the children have been
seeing are orange-reds and ask the pupils to select that color from
their papers which is orange-red, or most like the orange and red. In
the meantime set the orange and red disks to the proportion of R. 85, O.
15, which nearly or exactly matches the orange-red paper. When the
children have selected the paper which they think is orange-red, put the
wheel in motion and ask them if their selection is like the color on the
wheel. If not, see that all understand and have selected the orange-red
paper to place next the red sample. When this has been done remove the
disks from the wheel and readjust the larger ones so as to show a
combination that is nearly all orange; then replace them and substitute
in front a small orange disk instead of the red one and proceed to show
a series of red-orange colors from the orange toward the red, as
previously shown from the red toward the orange. With experiments
before adults this break in the order of proceeding and the change of
disks would be unnecessary, but with children it is desirable to mark a
distinction between the orange-red and the red-orange colors, a fact
which is emphasized by the mechanical manipulation. When the children
have been asked to place their red-orange paper in its proper position
the disks may be set to R. 50, O. 50, and an imitation of their
red-orange paper shown.
If the school is provided with color tops their use may be begun at this
point by allowing the children to attempt to repeat the wheel
experiments with the tops and thus produce for themselves an imitation
of the two intermediate spectrum hues in the papers. In all combinations
of colors by disks as well as pigments there is some loss of purity and
hence the colors of papers in the intermediate hues may be a little
brighter in some cases than the results of two disks in combination.
This suggestion for the presentation of one pair of the intermediate
spectrum hues may serve to illustrate all the others, and the time which
can be devoted to the whole subject must determine the detail with which
each pair is treated.
If the tops are provided in a school but no color wheel then the teacher
must begin with a top as a substitute for the wheel and let the children
follow her with their tops by dictation. At first this will be much more
difficult than if the wheel could be used, but after the children have
become somewhat familiar with the handling of the top by dictation the
result will be quite surprising. There will be in every school some
children who are exceedingly awkward in the manipulation of the top,
until the happy day arrives when all school children are graduates of
kindergartens. At present the average kindergarten pupil will handle the
top better than the children in the lowest primary grades who have not
had the advantages of kindergarten instruction.
When all the hues except the red-violet and violet-red have been
located, the teacher should be prepared with a chart made by pasting
the eighteen paper samples, including standards and intermediate hues,
in their order on a strip of paper, so that by bringing the ends
together the children may see that when they place the violet-red at one
end of their row and the red-violet at the other they are really
completing a spectrum circuit and forming a chart of natural colors.
Ever since Newton's day it has been fashionable to speak of the spectrum
as nature's chart of colors. This expression is but partially true and
is entirely false if we mean that it contains examples of all the colors
in nature. The spectrum is valuable in color study only from the fact
that it enables us to establish permanent standard colors from which all
colors in nature and the arts may be named and by the combinations of
which such colors may be imitated.
Unless the standard colors in a system of color instruction are the
closest possible imitations of corresponding spectrum colors there is no
logical relation between such a system and a chart of colors based on
the spectrum, because the spectrum does not furnish a complete circuit
of colors and its only value is, as before stated, in furnishing a
permanent standard on which to found a nomenclature of colors.
Up to this time we have not suggested the practice of introducing any
natural objects or calling the attention of the children to various
colors found in their surroundings. Each teacher must use her judgment
regarding this matter, but as soon as miscellaneous colors are to be
considered the two questions of hues and tones are necessarily involved,
and experienced teachers have been divided in their opinions as to which
should be first considered, tone or hue. When it was thought necessary
to occupy a long time in presenting all the spectrum colors this
question assumed greater importance than at present, but very many
teachers have become convinced that we have not been giving the children
credit for nearly as much ability in the recognition of colors as they
deserve, and that with the methods at present in use the six standard
colors and twelve hues can be learned in a few weeks, during which time
it may not be necessary to discuss the complicated combinations of
colors in nature and our domestic surroundings. This is not intended to
mean that the child will in this time be able to name the various hues
when seen separately, but that having the eighteen paper tablets he may
feel their relations to each other to such an extent as to be able to
lay them in their spectrum order. Those pupils who seem to have no
natural perception of the proper relationship of colors will require
more experience than the rest of the class before they can be sure of
their colors and the teacher must exercise her judgment in deciding how
long to hold the class to this subject of spectrum hues on their
account.
As in other class work it is not necessary that the dull children
perfectly comprehend all that is told them at each step, because there
will always be some in a class who will comprehend and thus the others
may learn by observation, and in this subject particularly every step in
advance must necessarily include a continual review of all that has
preceded.
Consequently when a teacher has given as much time to the study of hues
in the arrangement of the papers as she deems profitable, considering
the entire time that can be devoted to the subject during the year, she
may well proceed to tones.
The Study of Tones.
It is unnecessary at the beginning to use the word tones with the
children, as "light and dark" colors will be understood more clearly.
The first lesson in light and shade may be given with some book bound in
a bright color, as red for example, which is common in cloth bindings.
For this experiment partially open the book and hold it vertically, with
back toward the class, in such position that a strong light from one
side of the room will fall directly on one cover while the other is in
the shade. If properly manipulated this simple experiment may be made
effective to an entire class by moving the book in various directions to
accommodate the several members, so that at different times all the
pupils may get very clearly the idea of light and dark colors in the
same scale.
This idea can be more clearly shown by means of a simple model very
easily made for the purpose. Take, for example, three pieces of standard
red paper, 4×4 inches, and mount them on a piece of cardboard side by
side, in a row. Trim the card parallel to the edges of the papers,
leaving a margin of uniform width, and with the point of a knife "score"
a line partially through the card from the front, at the joining of the
papers, so that it can be neatly bent to the form shown in Fig. 16 which
represents the model as seen by the class. By holding one of the rear
edges with each hand the faces can be folded to different angles with
each other and the model turned to different positions with relation to
the children. Possibly the windows at the rear of the room may be
partially darkened to advantage; they certainly can be if they have a
sunny exposure at the time. The object is to give a fair daylight on the
central surface for the standard, a strong light on one side to form a
tint of the standard and a shadow on the other for a shade of the same
color.
[Illustration]
By a trial before school, in company with some other teacher perhaps,
the best positions for different parts of the room as well as best
lighting of the room may be determined in advance and thus such a
success achieved with the first experiment that the whole idea of tint
and shade may be impressed on each child for all time and definitions
firmly fixed in his mind for these two most abused words in our every
day vocabulary. Added interest may be excited by showing similar models
in several other colors during the same lesson, thus avoiding the
possible impression on any mind that the term tint and shade apply to
any special color.
Tints and shades may also be shown very beautifully by some kinds of
colored materials. Colored satin ribbons, folded or crumpled, and
velvets and plushes give good object lessons. One of the most effective
exhibitions of tints and shades may be found in a material used for
upholstering furniture and technically called "crushed plush," which is
a worsted plush embossed in figures and very changeable in its effects
as its relation to the light is changed, giving at the same time very
light tints and very dark shades in different portions.
Having thus shown how real tints and shades in nature are produced, the
color wheel may be introduced with advantage. If it were practicable to
use opaque colors in the school they could be employed to show that the
effect of a tint is produced in pigments by mixing white with the
standard color and a shade by mixing black with it, but while the
mixture of white may produce the best imitations of some tints in
nature, the same result does not hold good in the use of black to form
shades, and black pigments are rarely used for this purpose, because
they impart various untruthful hues, according to the colors with which
they are mixed.
For this reason, and others which will appear later, the white and black
disks of the color wheel are found to be better than any other single
method for representing tones. In shades the black disk produces by far
the best imitation of nature, and so does the white disk for more than
half of the colors. But, as previously stated, there is an effect which
has never been satisfactorily explained by which the tints of red and
blue especially receive an unexpected violet gray tinge by rotation.
Therefore in showing tints on the wheel it is well not to show very
light tints of red or blue until the class has received some impressions
of tones in other colors. In the orange and violet the tints seem to be
practically perfect, and in the yellow and green not far from correct,
but in the green they run a trifle toward the blue and in the yellow
become a little gray or broken. But in the shades the black disk has
done wonders for color instruction, particularly in making standard
neutral grays which cannot be imitated by white and black pigments, and
in determining the shades of yellow, as has been explained. See Page 36.
Therefore, after having shown actual tints and shades with the folded
models, and perhaps the other materials suggested, place a colored disk
combined with a white disk on the wheel, and in front of them a smaller
colored disk of the same color as the larger one for comparison, and by
changing the relative proportions show various tints. Then substitute a
black disk for the white and show shades. If, for example, orange is
taken, all proportions of both tints and shades may be shown very
truthfully, the deeper shades being very rich browns. Having in this way
impressed on the children the terms tints and shades, give them the
paper tablets, Selection No. 2, in the deepest tints and the lightest
shades, reserving the lightest tints and deepest shades found in
Selection No. 4 for later use.
Let each member of the class lay the spectrum in the normal colors and
then select the six tints corresponding to the six standards. When all
of them think they have done this, tell them to choose the corresponding
shades. If a number fail in the attempt it may be well to set up three
sizes of disks on the color wheel in shade, standard and tint of red. In
showing a tint of red with the disks it is not a good plan to make a
tint lighter than R. 95, W. 5, which is about R. T. 1. If the wheel is
not available samples of papers may be held up in the three tones so
that the class can get the correct idea. There is no best method of
reaching all pupils in any class, but in some way at this point in color
education every pupil ought to acquire such knowledge of the subject as
to be able to select at least the six standard scales in three tones,
and this should be practically accomplished before much time is devoted
to the consideration of such materials as flowers, fabrics and
miscellaneous papers, because until the child understands both hues and
tones he can do nothing in either analyzing or naming colors.
As soon as these six scales are familiar to the pupil the selecting of
various objects and placing them in general families may be very
valuable work, but until that time the classification of colors cannot
be carried out very accurately, or at best the families will be very
likely to include some uncles, and cousins and aunts, and yet, on the
other hand, if even the distant relatives are recognized in preference
to strangers the choice will give evidence of a sympathetic feeling for
color relations, favorable to future progress and indicating something
of the natural color sense of the child.
If such occupations as paper cutting and pasting, or weaving of mats
have a place in the school, combinations in two or three tones of the
six standards can now be made. At this stage names are of little
importance, but they will come in play early, as it is natural to give
names to everything, and as soon as the child knows the definite names
which belong to colors they will be used.
Neutral Grays.
Immediately following the first idea of tints and shades or tones, the
grays should have attention, because in the occupations with papers they
will play an important part. For this purpose white, black and the
neutral gray papers are included in Selection No. 2 of the paper tablets
and should be made familiar to the children while the tints and shades
are being studied. The suggestion that a neutral gray is a tint of black
or a shade of white may or may not aid a child to better understand the
relation of the neutral grays to the color chart, but it is a thought
worthy of the attention of the teacher, as expressing a fact important
in the consideration of color impressions. This gray may also be
illustrated on the wheel by the union of white and black disks, and
should be early presented in this way, because this is the only means by
which we can secure standards for pigmentary neutral grays, and the fact
that this special and peculiar gray is so important in all color
investigation furnishes sufficient argument for making it prominent
before the other grays.
Even at this early period in his color education a child may be shown
that white in shadow is a gray, and the fact that it is a neutral gray
is not essential to him, as he has no knowledge of any other gray and
probably it may not be desirable to call attention to the various
classes of grays until after the broken colors have been studied. A
sheet of white card or heavy paper may serve to show that white in shade
or shadow is a gray.
For this experiment fold the card or paper very sharply and hold it with
the folded edge vertical and projecting toward the class, and in such a
position relative to the windows that half of the paper is in very full
light and the other in shadow.
A comparison of neutral gray paper No. 1 with a true shade of white or
white in shadow, as explained on Page 36, will serve to connect the gray
papers with the shades of white. After the idea of tones is made clear
to the children, so that they can readily form the six standard scales
in three tones, the completing of the Chart of Spectrum Scales in three
tones will be merely a matter of drill, as no new principles are
involved.
When the pupils can lay the Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales in three tones
correctly, the thoughtful teacher will naturally ask herself what is the
next logical step, and it may at first seem as though the completion of
the chart in five tones ought to immediately follow. But it is very
desirable that the pupils begin as early as possible to make a practical
application of their knowledge of colors to the familiar objects around
them; and it is evident that before any very accurate comparison of
miscellaneous colors can be intelligently undertaken the child should
be able to recognize the effect of mixing gray with a color, in
distinction from the pure tints and shades of that color.
Explanation of Broken Colors.
Very few of the common colors seen in fabrics and house furnishings are
either full pure colors or their tints and shades, but nearly all are
broken colors. Therefore it seems desirable to introduce the study of
broken colors, before considering the extreme tones of the pure colors
as represented in tints and shades No. 2 in the Chart of Pure Spectrum
Scales in five tones.
This order of presentation seems specially advisable, because the
distinguishing of the extreme tones where the color is lost to so great
a degree is more difficult than anything connected with the subject of
broken colors. Therefore at this point paper tablets, Selection No. 3
are introduced. From this collection of tablets when properly arranged a
Chart of Broken Spectrum Scales of twelve colors in three tones may be
made, and in addition there are tablets illustrating the several classes
of grays other than neutral grays.
The first result desired is a definite distinction in the mind of each
pupil between a broken color and any tint or shade of the same color. In
order that the explanation of this distinction shall be intelligently
comprehended each child must have such a clear idea of the meaning of
the terms "tints" and "shades" that he shall not fail to readily
understand any statement regarding them because of confusion as to the
definite meaning of these terms. The child should know clearly that a
"tint" is a color in a strong light or mixed with white either in
pigments or disks, while a "shade" is a color in shade or shadow, i.e.
with less than the normal illumination, or mixed with black. When this
has been fixed in the mind of a pupil, and he has also been shown that
neutral gray, the only gray he has learned anything of, is the result of
the combination of white and black, it will not be difficult for him to
see that a broken color is produced by the mixture of both white and
black with the pure color. Much later it will be possible for him to
think of a broken color as a tint thrown into a shade or shadow, as may
be observed by casting a strong shade or shadow on to a piece of colored
paper in some one of the _tints_ of the spectrum scales.
The color wheel and tops furnish the simplest and most effective means
for the presentation of broken colors, because they automatically
analyze every color shown, so that the pupil sees for himself just what
has been done.
An Exercise in Broken Colors.
After having refreshed the minds of the class as to tints and shades and
grays by a brief restatement of the conditions involved in these terms,
the idea of broken colors may be shown with disks on the color wheel or
top. For this experiment place on the spindle, for example, a
combination of orange, white and black disks, and in front of these
disks put combined orange and black disks of smaller size. Make the
proportions of the larger disks, O. 15, W. 4, N. 81, and the smaller, O.
26, N. 74. In rotation the larger ring will show a dark broken orange
and the inner one a dark shade of orange, and the difference in quality
will be readily seen and felt. The effect is more valuable as a lesson
if the tones of the two are nearly equal, although this is not
necessary.
A very much lighter pair of colors is secured by using the following
formulas, O. 43, W. 26, N. 31, and O. 77, W. 23.
Both these experiments may be made with the primary color wheel or color
top. If the High School Color Wheel is in use so that the four rings of
color can be shown at one time, the two larger rings may show two tones
of broken color and the smaller rings a tint and shade of pure color.
In the use of tops two may be spun at once as near together as possible,
the two broken tones on one top and the tint and shade on another.
In green similar experiments may be tried, with the following
formulas:--
G. 20, W. 6, N. 74.
G. 36, W. 13, N. 51.
G. 34, N. 66.
G. 82, W. 18.
Practically the same methods may be adopted in the study of broken
colors as were employed with the pure colors.
The paper tablets contained in Selection No. 3, comprising broken colors
and grays, will now come into use to accompany experiments with disks in
broken colors. The tablets in the broken spectrum colors number
thirty-six, comprising twelve scales of three tones each, thus producing
but one intermediate hue between each two standards, instead of two, as
in the chart of pure colors.
Exercises in selection and arrangement of these tablets to form a chart
may be employed to familiarize the pupils with the new kind of colors.
The colors are not so pronounced as in the pure scales, and for this
reason the arranging may be more difficult, but the smaller number of
hues simplifies it somewhat, so that, with the better-trained color
perception which the child will have acquired at this stage, no greater
effort will be required than in the earlier lessons.
When the Chart of Broken Scales can be laid with reasonable accuracy by
the majority of the class the two charts as far as studied, each in
three tones, may be laid on the desk at the same time for comparison and
thus the difference in quality or character emphasized.
All kinds of materials may now be considered and classified, and great
interest inspired in the subject generally. Flowers, autumn leaves,
dress goods and anything with color can be studied and the colors
analyzed. Before the study of broken colors was taken up some few
flowers could be quite accurately matched with the disks and analyzed,
but now very many more of the flowers and plants as well as other
material can be accurately analyzed and a definite nomenclature given to
each sample.
Selection No. 3 of tablets contains, in addition to the twelve scales of
broken colors, six colored grays, which must at some stage be considered
in connection with gray colors or broken colors, to which they are
closely related. As has already been stated, there is a point where by
the continued addition of gray to a color, the color is so far obscured
that its identity is practically lost and the result becomes a colored
gray.
Although the line between gray colors and colored grays cannot be
definitely drawn there are so many grades visible beyond the point where
the exact color used with the gray can be determined, that the term
"colored gray," which covers the three classes, warm, cool and green
grays, is convenient for common use.
It is very desirable that a distinction be observed between the terms
"colored grays" and "gray colors," and therefore broken colors may be a
better term to apply to the gray colors because a distinction is thus
more strongly emphasized between these two classes of colors.
The following table furnishes formulas from which the colors of the
Chart of Broken Spectrum Scales may be very nearly imitated on the High
School Color Wheel. Each scale should be shown by the three smaller sets
of disks, namely, the smallest for light tone, next size for standard or
medium, and the third size for darkest tone.
This list of disk combinations is furnished here for the convenience of
teachers who may have occasion to illustrate the compositions of the
various classes of colors comprised in the Chart of Broken Spectrum
Scales, which covers the entire range of the æsthetic colors and from
which by modifications every subdued color in material substances can be
analyzed and definitely named.
Owing to the color usually found on the interior of a schoolroom and
the lack of pure white light from outside it is not probable that these
proportions will exactly match the papers, but the formulas will enable
the teacher to approximate the color, and then the more accurate match
in conformity to the conditions in each case may be secured by making
changes in accordance with suggestions from a majority of the class, an
exercise which will afford valuable practice for the pupils.
Formulas for a Chart of Broken Spectrum Scales.
LIGHT. MEDIUM. DARK.
RED.
R.68, W.18, N.14. R.59, W.5, N.35. R.22-1/2, W.5, N.72-1/2.
ORANGE RED.
R.51, O.17-1/2, W.23, N.8-1/2. R.47, O.16, W.8-1/2, N.28-1/2. R.15, O.7-1/2, W.7-1/2, N.70.
ORANGE.
O.43, W.22-1/2, N.24-1/2. O.34-1/2, W.10, N.55. O.15, W.5, N.79-1/2.
YELLOW ORANGE.
O.23, Y.15, W.27, N.35. O.24-1/2, Y.17-1/2, W.15, N.43. O.10, Y.4-1/2, W.6, N.79-1/2.
YELLOW.
Y.34, W.30-1/2, N.35-1/2. Y.24, W.12-1/2, N.63-1/2. Y.12-1/2, W.5, N.82-1/2.
GREEN YELLOW.
Y.24, G.13, W.28, N.35. Y.25, G.10, W.17, N.48. Y.11, G.13, W.10, N.66.
GREEN.
G.16, W.9, N.75. G.34, W.19, N.49. G.23, W.41, N.36.
BLUE GREEN.
G.8-1/2, B.7-1/2, W.7, N.77. G.22, B.18, W.12, N.48. G.24, B.25, W.23, N.28.
BLUE.
B.22-1/2, W.6, N.71-1/2. B.38, W.13, N.49. B.36, W.29, N.35.
BLUE VIOLET.
B.13, V.9-1/2, W.6-1/2, N.71. B.13, V.25, W.15, N.47. B.20, V.15, W.29, N.39.
VIOLET.
V.20, W.13, N.67. V.51, W.24, N.25. V.61, W.32, N.7.
RED VIOLET.
R.17, V.10, W.5, N.68. R.16-1/2, V.45, W.13, N.25-1/2. R.23, V.40, W.26, N.11.
In preparing the papers for the Chart of Broken Spectrum Colors the
selection of the tones of the several colors has been made in accordance
with the æsthetic color feeling of those to whom the matter was
intrusted, but the hues of the colors are based on the standards of the
pure spectrum colors.
If these colors are considered independently of their relation to a
general system of color education, it may seem that a stronger and purer
line of colors would be more beautiful; but the more broken or subdued
colors have been chosen after very careful consideration, because they
are intended for elementary instruction and therefore should be so far
removed from the pure color scales as to impress themselves on the minds
of the children as a distinct and representative class of colors. When
the color sense of the pupils has been sufficiently cultivated to
observe smaller distinctions, a variety of color scales much less broken
may be shown with the disks.
Different selections for a score of charts could be made, all beautiful
and representing broken colors, but after much consideration these
thirty-six were selected from a very large number of hand-painted
samples made for the purpose, as furnishing a sufficient number of
typical broken colors for elementary color instruction, and in such hues
and tones as to form a harmonious chart for comparison with the Chart of
Pure Spectrum Scales.
Certain "Color Puzzles."
When the children have advanced far enough to understand the analysis of
a color, i.e., to correctly name a color, exercises which may be called
color puzzles can be introduced from time to time with great interest
and profit.
The idea is simply to suddenly show to the class a series of disks in
rapid rotation and ask them to guess what colors it is composed of,
i.e., what the definite name of the color is.
The following is a suggestion for this exercise, supposing that a broken
green yellow is to be shown:--
Select a green, a yellow, a white and a black disk of medium size and
combine them as follows: Y.20, G.10, W.10, N.60. Then, having previously
removed the nut from the spindle of the wheel and laid it in a
convenient place, take the combined disks and lay on the top of them any
other disk of a larger size, with the center holes of all corresponding
with each other and place all these disks on the spindle of the wheel
with the larger disk still covering the face of the others. Having
previously furnished an assistant with a sheet of cardboard of
sufficient size to conceal the disks from the class have it held in
front of the wheel while the disk which conceals the combination is
removed, the nut screwed to place and the disks put into rapid rotation;
then order the card taken away and ask the class what color they see,
still continuing the rotation.
The correct answer should be broken green-yellow, and not a shade of
green-yellow, a broken yellow-green, a tint of yellow or a yellow shade;
for there is but one true name and that should be stated. Definite
expressions of color are as possible as the terms used regarding other
scientific subjects, and should be encouraged.
Much interest can be inspired and valuable instruction imparted to the
children by experiments with the color wheel, but whenever color
analysis is the object in view, if disks of more than one of the
standard colors are used in the same combination they must be of colors
adjacent to each other in the spectrum.
For example, if a blue and a yellow disk are united and placed in
rotation the result may be a blue gray, a yellow gray, or perhaps very
nearly a neutral gray, because blue and yellow are so nearly
complementary to each other. But a nomenclature of the resulting color
effect expressed in terms of blue and yellow is not of practical value,
because it is evident that in the analysis of a gray-blue, yellow has no
logical place. If in an attempt to match a color which seems to be a
broken blue, something else besides the blue, white and black is
required, it must be either green or violet, i.e., one of the two
standard colors adjacent to the blue in the spectrum. In other words,
every color in nature is a spectrum color, i.e., either a pure spectrum
color, a tint or a shade of a spectrum color, or a broken spectrum
color. Hence every color can be matched, and therefore analyzed by the
combination of one disk of a standard color with a white disk, a black
disk or both, or else by two adjacent spectrum standards with white and
black or both.
There are many combinations of disks outside the limitations above
named which are valuable and interesting in color investigation when not
used for simple analysis, but if they are presented as pleasing
experiments before the pupils can understand their logical relation to
the subject of color education, the result may be entirely misleading
rather than instructive.
In making experiments in broken colors with the wheel the most
satisfactory results are secured in orange, violet, green and yellow,
while the red is fairly good and the blue less satisfactory than the
others because of the slight effect of gray or violet which comes into
the lighter tones by rotation, to which reference has already been made.
As explained on Page 54, the so-called tertiary colors, russets,
citrines and olives were formerly supposed to be classes of peculiar
colors to which these names were given. The fact that these are all
broken spectrum colors was first demonstrated by the use of the color
wheel and they are now quite generally accepted as such by those who
have given heed to modern methods of color instruction.
As already shown the disks have also seemed to correctly define the
several scales of colors, so that in contrast to the color charts of a
dozen years ago a distinction is clearly drawn between the colors in the
yellow and the orange scales, or even between the yellow-orange and the
orange-yellow scales, so accurately do the disks determine the hue of a
color.
When the pupils have progressed so far that they can arrange the paper
tablets to form the Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales in three tones and
also the Chart of Broken Scales, they will be prepared to intelligently
begin the use of papers in cutting and pasting designs in the several
classes of harmonies, but before most effective results can be produced
the lightest tints and deepest shades of the full chart of pure scales
in five tones must be considered.
Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales Completed.
The entire mastery of these extreme tones will be quite difficult
because they are so far removed from the standards, and the children
can hardly be expected to recognize and name them when seen separately.
If a pupil is able to correctly arrange them in connection with the
other tones of the chart, his accomplishment will show a high grade of
color perception. But these extreme tones are introduced because their
use in the more advanced work of paper cutting and pasting produces
stronger and more beautiful harmonies and a higher degree of color
training than would result were the tints and shades nearer the
standards in tone.
No detailed rehearsal of the lessons for this work is necessary to
enable a teacher who has pursued the course of instruction thus far to
complete it in a logical way, and relatively little time will be
required by the pupils to become sufficiently familiar with these tones
for practical purposes, because of their more acute color perception
which will be developed at this period.
The Work of Cutting and Pasting.
In the study of color the work of cutting and pasting designs in
educational colored papers affords the earliest and best practical
expression of the color feeling which has been acquired and stimulates
the further development of color perception. The order in which the use
of these papers can be most profitably taken up in the occupations of
cutting and pasting may be determined by a careful consideration of the
subject of harmonies as explained quite fully in the foregoing section
entitled "Practical Experiments," Pages 67 to 73.
The first in order is Contrasted Harmony, in which cut papers in one
color may be mounted on a ground of some passive color as white or gray.
In selecting the gray, analogy is usually preferable to contrast, while
neutral gray is fairly safe for all colors. According to this suggestion
the warm grays may be used with the warm colors and the cool grays with
the cool colors, and in a majority of the cases the lightest tone of
gray is preferable.
Without question Dominant Harmonies or the arrangement in families are
the most profitable and safe for early practice. In this class a light
tint may be used for the background on which to mount any of the other
tones of the same scale. Beyond these two classes of harmonies the order
of presentation must be determined by the teacher. If the complementary
is attempted with simple geometrical forms a light tint may most safely
be selected for a background in the least aggressive of the two colors
and the design or pasted forms in some of the complementary tones other
than the normal color. Do not attempt to combine full complementary
colors in elementary work.
The Analogous Harmony may be used in simple designs with beautiful
effects when judicious selections are made, but owing to the latitude
necessarily involved in the definition of this class of combinations the
children cannot very early be trusted to make their own selections.
It is evident that nothing can be attempted in the Perfected Harmonies
in any of the ready-cut forms, but beautiful results can be produced in
this class with well-drawn and accurately cut ornamental designs in
colored papers, which may even surpass in strength and beauty any
effects which can be produced in water colors such as can be used by the
children.
For earliest practice in making designs in colored papers the ready cut
forms of the kindergarten, technically called "parquetry papers" are
very convenient and may be procured either with or without gum on the
back. These are prepared in various geometrical forms based on the
one-inch standard, among which the most useful for pasting decorative
designs are the circle, half-circle, square, half-square and equilateral
triangle. Where models and tablets are used in form study the tablets
may serve as patterns from which the children can mark out the papers
which they can then cut for themselves, and thus the oval and ellipse
may be added to the forms, and also practice in accurate cutting
secured.
In the use of tablets as patterns the outlines should be made on the
backside of the paper, by holding the tablet in place with one finger
and working carefully around it with a well-pointed pencil. The marking
to the pattern and cutting to the line provides valuable elementary
practice in manual training. As it is the prime object of these papers
to treat of color no attempt is here made to give directions for
designing units of ornament or for folding and cutting designs. All such
exercises furnish the best possible practice in both designing and
manual work, but they belong more directly to the department of drawing
and are fully treated in the hand books explaining modern systems of
drawing. We offer here a number of simple arrangements of such forms as
may be found in ready-cut papers or may be marked from the form study
tablets as before mentioned, with the addition of a few other figures
which involve some very simple designs for free-hand cutting.
A Variety of Designs.
The accompanying illustrations show a number of simple arrangements of
such forms as are found in ready-cut papers or may be marked from the
form study tablets already mentioned, with the addition of a few other
figures which include some very simple forms requiring free-hand
cutting. Suggestions for more elaborate designs and specific directions
for paper cutting can be found in elementary books treating of
decorative drawing and those devoted solely to paper cutting.
[Illustration]
Figs. 17 to 25 show arrangements of one-inch kindergarten parquetry
papers in one color, used as units to form border designs in contrasted
harmony on a white or a gray ground, in all of which there is repetition
of form as well as color. A narrow strip of paper in the same color as
the units may be used at top and bottom to finish the design.
[Illustration]
Figs. 26 to 37 show border designs, each of which is made with one form
in two colors or tones in alternation.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Figs. 38 and 39 show border designs in one color, with forms marked from
the elliptical and oval tablets and cut by hand. In Fig. 39 borders are
made by combining half-squares which may be used with or without narrow
strips of the same color.
[Illustration]
Figs. 40 and 41 are made by using one form with alternation of tone and
of position. Fig. 41 is derived from Fig. 40 by laying the dark squares
with the corners in contact and placing the light squares over them.
Fig. 42 shows alternation of form and color or tone, which is also the
scheme employed in Fig. 43 in a design less simple with the addition of
the half-circles.
Figs. 44 and 45 show two other simple and pleasing designs with
alternation of both form and tone or color.
Figs. 46, 47, 48, and 49 comprise designs in two forms and two tones or
colors, in which some hand cutting is necessary on the part of the
pupils.
[Illustration]
Figs. 50 to 54 are rosettes made from parquetry papers with the addition
of a small circle or square at the center cut by hand.
[Illustration]
Figs. 55 to 60 are principally hand-cut forms, and 61, 62 and 63 show
surface patterns made from parquetry squares and half-squares.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Colored papers can be used more advantageously in decorative designs
than in imitations of natural objects, for which water colors are much
better suited, but some copies of natural flowers and autumn leaves have
been made in colored papers which were exceedingly close imitations of
water color paintings when seen at a little distance, rivaling in the
case of the autumn leaves the best water color effects in brilliancy and
depth of color.
There need be no definite rules governing the continuation of color
study from this point by a teacher who is interested in the subject and
has tried the experiments suggested in the preceding pages. The work
will become very interesting at this stage, because now all sorts of
material may be introduced for analysis and classification and from this
point forward, to the highest achievements of the artist, nature will
furnish abundant stimulus to color thought and investigation, if the
foundation has been laid according to the true theory of color
perception which it is the object of this system to explain.
Analysis of Color Materials.
A valuable and interesting phase of color investigation and color
training may be found in the analysis and naming of the natural colors
found in flowers, minerals and the plumage of birds. The necessity for
a definite and adequate nomenclature which naturalists experience in
this department of education has been emphasized by the publication
within a few years of a book entitled "A Nomenclature of Colors for
Naturalists, and a Compendium of useful knowledge for Ornithologists."
This book has been prepared with great care by Robert Ridgway of the
United States National Museum, and contains a large number of
hand-painted plates showing nearly two hundred colors which represent
selections from three hundred and fifty names of colors which are given
in English, Latin, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Norwegian or
Danish.[D]
[D] A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists and Compendium of useful
Knowledge for Ornithologists by Robert Ridgway, Curator, Department of
Birds, National Museum. Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1886.
The fact that a book involving so much technical knowledge and the
expenditure of so much time and money was deemed justifiable is an
evidence of the great need for some definite nomenclature.
In the introduction the author says: "Undoubtedly one of the chief
desiderata of naturalists, both professional and amateur, is a means of
identifying the various shades of colors named in descriptions, and of
being able to determine exactly what name to apply to a particular tint
which it is desired to designate in an original description. No modern
work of this character it appears, is extant,--the latest publication of
its kind which the author has been able to consult being Syme's edition
of 'Werner's Nomenclature of Colors,' published in Edinburgh in 1821. It
is found, however, that in Syme's 'nomenclature' that the colors have
become so modified by time, that in very few cases do they correspond
with the tints they were intended to represent."
The following are the opening sentences of the preface: "The want of a
nomenclature of colors adapted particularly to the use of naturalists
has ever been more or less an obstacle to the study of Nature; and
although there have been many works published on the subject of color,
they either pertain exclusively to the purely scientific or technical
aspects of the case or to the manufacturing industries, or are otherwise
unsuited to the special purposes of the zoologist, the botanist and the
mineralogist."
In the same book the Chapter on Principles of Color opens with the
following sentences: "The popular nomenclature of colors has of late
years, especially since the introduction of aniline dyes and pigments,
become involved in almost chaotic confusion through the coinage of a
multitude of new names, many of them synonymous, and still more of them
vague or variable in their meaning. These new names are far too numerous
to be of any practical utility, even were each one identifiable with a
particular fixed tint. Many of them are invented at the caprice of the
dyer or manufacturer of fabrics, and are as capricious in their meaning
as in their origin; among them being such fanciful names as 'Zulu,'
'Crushed Strawberry,' 'Baby Blue,' 'Woodbine-berry,' 'Night Green,'
etc., besides such nonsensical names as 'Ashes of Roses' and 'Elephant's
Breath.'"
These extracts from this valuable and interesting book by an author of
large experience are quoted here to emphasize the practical necessity
for more definite color education based on analysis and nomenclature.
With the color wheel or color top, the colors of flowers and leaves as
well as all other objects in nature and art may be analyzed and named,
and the names definitely recorded in the terms of a nomenclature based
on permanent standards.
The following list of flowers and leaves of plants and trees with their
analyses in terms of our nomenclature is taken from a recently published
paper entitled "On the Color Description of Flowers," by Prof. J. H.
Pillsbury, to whom the writer is indebted for some of the earliest
suggestions regarding the practical application of the scientific facts
of color to color teaching, and also for valuable scientific work which
he has done including the exact location of the six color standards in
the solar spectrum by their wave lengths:--
"With these standards to work from, I undertook to determine the color
analysis of certain of our common flowers. The following results, will,
I think, be interesting to botanists. The numbers given indicate per
cent. of color required to produce the hue of the flower:--
Common forsythia, F. viridissima: Pure spectrum yellow.
Fringed polygala, P. paucifolia: R. 48, V. 52.
Wistaria, W. frutescens, wings: R. 11, V. 89.
Wistaria, W. frutescens, standard: R. 9, V. 79, W. 12.
Flowering quince, Cydonia japonica: R. 95, V. 2, W. 3.
Wild cranesbill, Geranium maculatum: R. 28, V. 66, W. 6.
The variations of color in the early summer foliage is also interesting.
The following analyses are for the upper side of fresh and well
developed healthy leaves. It is not impossible that a little attention
to these variations in the color of foliage on the part of artists would
save us the annoyance of some of the abominable green which we so often
see in the pictures of artists of good reputation:--
White oak: Y. 7.5, G. 11.5, N. 81.
Apple: Y. 5, G. 13, W. 2, N. 80.
Copper beech: R. 17, V. 2, N. 81.
Hemlock: Y. 2, G. 9, N. 89.
White pine: Y. 2.5, G. 11, N. 86.5.
White birch: Y. 5.5, G. 11.5, W. 1, N. 82.
Hornbeam: Y. 5.5, G. 12.5, N. 82.
Shagbark hickory: Y. 4.5, G. 9.5, N. 86.
These analyses were made in a moderately strong diffused light with
Maxwell disks of the standard hues referred to above."
These are but a few of the numerous flowers the colors of which may be
perfectly imitated and consequently analyzed and named with the color
wheel or the top. In fact for individual work in natural history the top
is more convenient than the wheel and sufficiently accurate for all
practical purposes, while it is a very fascinating occupation for child
or adult.
In the use of disks for analyzing colors it must be remembered that
every material color is some quality of some color in the spectrum
circuit, and therefore may be matched with not more than two standard
disks, either alone or with white or black or both. If more than two
color disks, besides white and black, are used they will neutralize each
other more or less, and a neutral gray or a gray and some spectrum color
will be the result. For example, if yellow and blue in nearly equal
parts are introduced in connection with red and orange, the yellow and
blue being nearly complimentary to each other will produce practically a
neutral gray, and the result will be the same as if only red, orange,
white and black were used.
[Illustration]
Owing to the recent advances in the art of dyeing there are some textile
goods which are too intense in color to be exactly imitated by the disk
standards, but this fact need not prevent a practical analysis of such
colors, because by very slightly reducing with white the color to be
examined the same color is retained, the modification making it, of
course, somewhat lighter. Fig. 64, showing a small circle representing a
disk of the material mounted on thick paper, illustrates this statement.
Suppose we have a piece of rich brown cloth, so intense in color that
when red, orange and black are combined in the proportions of R. 22, O.
16, N. 62, the material is still a little richer in color than can be
made with the disks of the color wheel. If we introduce a small amount
of white into the brown of the material we may hope to match it with the
disks and this may be done by cutting a bit of fairly heavy white paper
in the form shown in the diagram and loosening the nut of the color
wheel slightly, after which we insert the point of the triangle under
the nut so that when tightened the white paper may be held in front of
the brown disk, as in the illustration. Trim the outer end even with the
disk and then rotate. If the effect of the white is too great trim off a
little from the side of the white paper to make it narrower, until a
perfect match is secured.
The small disk in rotation is then of the same color but not quite so
intense as before, or in other words, is a very deep tint of the color.
In this way the Nomenclature can be recorded as follows: Brown 95, W. 5,
= R. 22, O. 16, N. 62.
This result does not often occur, but the subject is noticed here in
detail that no one may be in doubt when such cases do come to light, as
they will sooner or later.
The aniline colors give some purples which are much more brilliant than
either the violet or red which otherwise should by combination produce
them, so that with these standards they cannot be made, but must be
reduced with white, or possibly with white and black.
If a color wheel is not available many of these experiments may be tried
on the color top, but not as satisfactorily, because of the accuracy
necessary in cutting so small a disk in a woven material. In using the
top for analysis of all ordinary colors, the best plan is lay the
material on a table or other level surface and spin the top on it. If
quite an accurate test is desired the cardboard disk of the top may be
trimmed down to the size of the largest paper disk, so that there will
be no intervening ring of light color to separate the color of the
rotating disks from the material on which it is spun.
Practical applications of the color top are already being made, as for
example, in the selection of house furnishings. For this purpose disks
of the top are combined at home to produce the desired colors to match
the wood finishings and papers or draperies in a partially completed
room, the top being used as a guide in preliminary selections of
additional materials from the stores.
If a number of colors are required it is convenient to use several
combinations of disks, each set being slightly gummed together. In this
way standards for various colors with a top spindle for rotation in the
salesroom may be carried in a very small space.
The Bradley Colored Papers.
As every competent artisan must understand the use for which each
implement is designed, in order to secure the best results with it,
possibly a brief explanation of the principles on which the colors in
the Bradley Educational Colored Papers are selected and classified may
be of value. In the sample books of these colored papers there are four
sections. The first section of the book, following the title leaf called
"Pure Spectrum Scales" consists in part of the six standard colors, red,
orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, with two intermediate hues
between each two standards, which eighteen colors form the central
vertical column in the Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales shown on Page 41.
In addition to these eighteen normal spectrum colors, there are two
tints and two shades of each, thus producing eighteen spectrum scales of
five tones, in which the normal colors as indicated in the central
column aim to be the purest possible pigmentary expressions of the
spectrum colors represented.
In determining the number of colors to adopt in the preparation of the
papers enough have been selected to furnish types of all the colors in
the spectrum, and also the hues between red and violet, but at the same
time the number has been so restricted as to secure a reasonably simple
nomenclature of the intermediate hues. A hue of a color is defined as
the result of the admixture of that color with a smaller quantity of
another color; thus a hue of red approaching the orange is an orange hue
of red, or an orange-red. If a small amount of red is added to orange
the result is a red hue of orange, or a red-orange.
Therefore in selecting two hues between each two standards, rather than
a larger number, the simplest nomenclature possible is secured, and one
in which no mental effort is necessary to recall the color indicated by
each symbol. For example, we have four colors indicated as R, OR, RO, O;
red, orange-red, red-orange, orange; or more extended, red, orange hue
of red, red hue of orange, orange. Thus by using as symbols familiar
terms, no effort of the memory is required to recall the color indicated
by each symbol, as would necessarily be the case if there were a greater
number of hues and therefore more arbitrary symbols.
The use of rotating color disks on the wheel and the top by which an
infinite variety of intermediate hues can be made and accurately named
by the pupils reduces the required number of papers to those types
necessary for first primary work, and thus prepares the child for the
use of pigments at an earlier age than would be possible without such
color instruction.
The second section of the sample book contains white, black and grays as
indicated on the separating fly leaf. In these the best pigmentary
expression of black and white are furnished. In material colors as found
in industrial products, there are various so-called blacks and whites.
For black there are blue-black, green-black, and brown-black; and in
white, cream-white and pearl-white. Cream-white is a yellow-white and
pearl-white a blue-white. In fine white papers either blue, red or
yellow is generally added to the pulp to counteract or cover up the gray
tone of the natural material. The standard black here presented is the
best possible pigmentary imitation of a very deep black hole, as for
example, the projecting end of a large iron water or sewer pipe of
considerable length buried in the ground, which is the blackest thing
known. The white is an imitation of new-fallen snow. Neither of these
standards can be very nearly approached although we often hear of things
as "white as snow" and as "black as night." In the same group and
following the black and white are two examples each of the four kinds of
grays: Green gray, warm gray, cool gray and neutral gray. A pure white
in shadow is the true neutral gray and a perfect imitation of this is
made by the rotation of combined black and white disks on the color
wheel. If to the black and white disks we add a blue disk we have cool
grays. With red, orange or yellow the warm grays are produced, while the
use of a green disk gives green grays. In the papers two tones of each
gray are furnished.
The papers found in the first two sections comprise all the colors
necessary for earliest primary color instruction, and should become
familiar to the children before explanation is made of the colors in the
succeeding collections.
In the third section, designated "Broken Spectrum Scales" will be found
a collection of gray colors or broken colors. As has before been stated,
a broken color is a pure color mixed with a neutral gray. In the
combination of pigmentary colors a tint of a color is the pure color
mixed with white, a shade is the color mixed with black, and a broken
color is a pure color mixed with both black and white, which is a
neutral gray. Therefore if with red, for example, we mix a certain
amount of a given neutral gray and call that the normal tone of a broken
scale of red, for the tint in that scale we must mix with the standard
red a lighter gray and for the shade a darker gray.
When a comparatively small quantity of neutral gray is combined with a
pure color the result is a "gray color," as above described, because the
color is quite definitely retained, but more or less modified by the
gray. On the other hand, if a relatively small quantity of color is
added to a neutral gray, the resulting color is properly called a
"colored gray," because it is still a gray modified by color, and in
this class we have warm grays, cool grays, etc., according to the color
combined with the gray. The gray colors are quite generally termed
"broken colors" and this seems a very useful practice, because it avoids
the confusion of the somewhat similar terms "gray color" and "colored
gray."
By reference to the Chart of Broken Spectrum Scales on Page 41 it will
be seen that we have only twelve scales and but three tones in each
scale, instead of eighteen scales and five tones, as in the pure scales,
for which there is a good reason.
For educational purposes in the elementary grades, which is the only
place where there is a legitimate use for colored papers, the steps in
gradation of hue or tone must not be too short, and if the saturation or
intensity of the normal colors in the several scales is reduced by
adding gray, as in the broken colors, there is not the possibility for
as many steps in either hues or tones without leaving those colors
adjacent to each other too nearly alike. Therefore in the broken colors
there are but thirty-six, instead of ninety, as in the pure scales.
The distinction between pure colors with tints and shades, and broken
colors in various tones, should be made very plain to the children
whenever the subject is brought to their notice, because it is a vital
point in the classification of colors. Educationally this is one of the
most objectionable features in the old red, yellow and blue theory of
color composition, because no distinction is observed between pure and
broken colors in classification. In the Bradley colored papers the
distinction is made very decided for educational purposes, so that no
one would for a moment tolerate the mixture of the normal colors from
the pure scales with the normal colors from the broken scales in the
formation of a spectrum.
This may be illustrated by a selection as follows: First lay in order
the normal spectrum colors with the pure colors found in the first
section of the sample book, thereby forming the central vertical column
of Fig. 10. Then substitute for the orange, green and violet, those
colors selected from the collection of broken colors, and the result
will seem to render the operation absurd, but it is the same in
principle as the results produced in the attempt to form a spectrum by
the combination of three primary pigments, red, yellow and blue, because
so produced the orange, green and violet, show by disk analysis from 54
to 80 per cent of black and white and are therefore as much broken as
the corresponding colors in the papers of the broken scales, but not
exactly the same in tone.
Engine Colored Papers.
Those papers which are termed "Engine Colored Papers" are so named from
the process of manufacture as distinguished from "coated papers" which
comprise the first three sections of the book. In coated papers a white
paper is covered with a coating of colored pigment "fixed" with a small
amount of white gum, gelatine or glue, and in this way the pure color of
the pigment is obtained. In the engine colored papers the color is mixed
with the paper pulp in the process of making the paper. In a paper mill
the tub or vat in which the pulp is kept stirred up and perfectly mixed
is called the engine, and hence this technical term has been applied to
such papers as are colored in the pulp. In this class of papers both
sides are alike, and for this reason in some of the folding exercises
these papers are preferred, also because they are thinner and tougher.
Heretofore, it has been impossible to obtain engine colored papers in
"families" or scales, but in this assortment the numbers from one to
six, furnish six scales of three tones each, comprising the normal tones
with tints and shades. Following these from seven to sixteen are a
collection of unclassified colors including grays which are much used.
All these can be analyzed and classified by the color wheel. Black and
white complete this class. It is impossible to make any close
approximation to a black in this class of papers, as when they are
compared with the coated blacks the result is a very gray black, or very
dark gray. All the colors in these papers from No. 1 A to No. 13 are
quite light broken spectrum colors, but less broken than the coated
papers designated as broken spectrum colors. While great care has been
bestowed on the original selection of the colors of all these
above-described papers and every effort is constantly exercised to keep
them the same from year to year, the subject is materially complicated
by the guarantee required of the manufacturers that no arsenic colors
shall be used in the preparation of any of the papers. This guarantee is
strictly insisted on, because, while the writer has never been able to
learn of any authentic case where a child has been injured by the use of
plated or glazed papers, he believes that the opinions of parents and
teachers should be respected in the matter, although the arsenic colors
are often the most permanent and the aniline substitutes which are
necessarily used belong to a class which is the most fugitive of all
colors.
The line of colored papers now in use is the result of many experiments
on the part of the writer and careful tests by experienced teachers for
several years, and in its present condition affords but small indication
of the time and care which has been expended on it. This has been
inevitable, because the peculiar system on which the colors are based
has been one of growth and the papers have been designed to afford the
necessary material colors for this special scheme of instruction.
In preparing the tints and shades in the papers many experiments have
been made to determine the true effect of light and shadow on each
normal color, and then to imitate these effects in the papers.
All this is independent of the professional tricks which artists use to
heighten their effects, some of which are legitimate, while others may
be questionable on sound principles.
It is a common habit with artists to introduce very warm effects into
all sunlight by the use of orange or yellow in the warm colors. This
extreme tendency has been intentionally avoided in the preparation of
these papers, however desirable or allowable it may be considered in
heightening effects. So also in the shades as in the tints, the aim has
been to keep all the tones of one color in the same scale, even though
artists often run the various tones of the same piece of color into two
or three analogous scales.
It is the object of color education to train the eye to see color
wherever or however it may be produced, either by actual color
reflection or contrasted effects, and in order that these effects may be
understood as explained under Simultaneous Contrasts it is necessary
that the prepared material be truthful to nature, the more so because
these effects are sometimes greatly exaggerated by artists.
Water Colors.
When the subject of color was introduced into the curriculum of the
common schools of this country, the use of paints was a novelty. So
little was known regarding the possibilities of water colors as a means
of education, that the teachers may be excused for having had grave
doubts about the practicability of the scheme. Very few teachers in the
lower grades of schools had received at that time any definite
instruction in the harmonies of colors or the manipulation of pigments;
and what little thought had been given to the subject was based on the
three-color theory of Brewster, which was the only one available at that
time.
During the intervening years much has been done to make entirely
feasible the introduction into school and kindergarten of this pleasing
and educating occupation.
Color standards have been adopted, which are nothing less than
selections from the solar spectrum itself, and the manufacture of
pigments has improved so much that it may almost be said to be a new
industry. In the training of teachers, also, color instruction is now
given an important place, so that the kindergartner and primary teacher
can give the attention that it deserves to a subject which is so
interwoven with all that is beautiful in the material world around us.
Passing from one form of color work to another, it is exceedingly
important that children of any grade should find the same principles
obtaining in each step of the way, and also that the knowledge gained in
the earliest stages of the work should be available in the higher forms.
This is particularly true of color instruction as it is now found in the
best schools, and the principal reason why water colors are so much
better adapted to use in the schools to-day than in former years, is
because paints are now made to correspond in color with the standards
with which the children have become familiar in the colored papers and
other material of the kindergarten.
At present it is generally conceded that these six colors, Red, Orange,
Yellow, Green, Blue and Violet, which stand out so prominently in the
solar spectrum, are pre-eminently adapted to serve as standards and as
the basis of an alphabet of color. There should, therefore, be no
question as to the adoption of these same colors as the palette of
paints for the earliest color work, even with the babes in the
kindergarten, when anything beyond the colored papers and the usual
kindergarten occupations is wanted.
Not very long ago it was the practice to give the child a box of colors
and let him paint at random without any definite instruction as to the
relation which each color should bear to the others. In fact, with the
usual cheap box of paints then in the market there was no decided
correlation of the colors nor any educational selection, both of which
we have to-day.
Water colors are now furnished which so closely approach the standards
of the colored papers that they are of the greatest assistance in
developing the æsthetic taste and judgment of the pupils, and it is
remarkable how early in the training of children paints can be used with
advantage.
In some of the previous pages of this book we have treated of the false
theory of Sir David Brewster, who supposed that there were three primary
colors in the solar spectrum and that all the other colors were produced
by the overlapping or mixing of these in pairs.
This error, being applied to pigments, has worked much harm and has
greatly retarded the progress of color study. Even now some teachers
recommend the use of the red, yellow and blue palette on the ground of
simplicity and economy.
All the recent scientific writers on color treat this three-color scheme
as already exploded, because the simplest as well as the most complex
experiments with colored light prove its falsity. Nevertheless, the fact
that yellow and blue, which with light make very nearly white, do in the
mixture of pigments produce a green, has deceived many persons. But the
best green that can be so procured is a very broken color and not to be
successfully compared with the beautiful and brilliant green of the
spectrum. Why then, should we not have in our paints imitations of the
solar green, orange and violet as well as the red, yellow and blue? It
is not well to sacrifice so much for alleged simplicity, and as for
economy, it will take but a moment's reflection to see that it would
take no more paint to cover a given surface with six colors than with
three.
Oil colors, of course, are out of the question and pastels almost
equally so, for although full colors may be produced in both these
mediums, they are not suited to the use of young children, and at best
are neither neat nor convenient, while colored pencils are not
sufficiently satisfactory in results. Therefore water colors seem to be
better adapted to primary work than any other pigmentary material.
Of necessity the pupil must later be able to recognize any pigment he
may meet and to classify it according to its color value and also to
give it a definite name, other than the one by which it is sold.
More than one professional artist has already worked successfully from
nature in oil colors with a palette consisting of only close
approximations to the six standard colors with white and a few grays. A
person whose color perception has been trained by the use of the color
disk in six standard colors with colored papers to correspond, will
undoubtedly be able to more truthfully reproduce the colors which he
sees in nature, on the canvas or paper by means of such a palette than
if he had been taught by any other system and used the ordinary
pigments.
Color Blindness.
The subject of color blindness has received much attention because of
its practical importance in the affairs of our daily lives. The use of
colored lights as signals on ships and railroads has necessitated very
strict regulations regarding the employment of persons whose color
vision is defective, and therefore in some states specialists have been
employed by the state authorities to examine from time to time the
school children regarding their perception of colors.
Possibly this condition of things may not at present be considered a
serious reflection on the methods of color instruction, or lack of such
instruction in our schools because it has become so common as to attract
little attention. But if it were necessary for the same course to be
pursued in any other department of our public education that fact would
not fail to occasion very uncomplimentary remarks regarding the methods
employed.
For example, if a state official were necessary to determine whether
pupils are deaf or not after they have been through our grammar schools,
and preliminary to accepting positions of responsibility, it would seem
that something was wrong, and yet after a child has had instruction in
color according to a logical system there should be no more necessity
for an examination regarding his ability to properly distinguish colors
than there should regarding his ability to hear.
Color blindness has quite generally been divided into three classes,
red, green, and violet blindness, those afflicted with red blindness
being most numerous, and the cases of violet blindness being very rare,
if indeed there are any which may properly be so called.
This classification, known as the Holmgren system, seems to have been
based on the Young-Helmholtz theory that all color perceptions are the
result of three primary effects in the eye, namely, red, green and
violet, rather than on any analytical classification of actual
experiments concerning color blindness.
Color tests should be so arranged as to detect either a defect in the
brain which renders it difficult for the pupil to remember the names of
the several colors, or in the eye, by which he cannot see a difference
between two dissimilar colors.
A person totally color blind would see in the solar spectrum a band of
gray in various tones, and hence if a red and a green should seem to be
of the same tone of gray he would call both either red or green, and
after much experience would come to give color names to various tones of
gray.
Such cases, however, are exceedingly rare, if in fact they exist. Other
scientists and physiologists have doubted the truth of the claims made
by both Holmgren and Helmholtz, and some have made extended experiments
regarding color blindness which seem to oppose the Holmgren theory. In
view of these conditions it does not seem necessary for a teacher in the
elementary grades to attempt to grasp the situation very fully, and much
less to aid in the solution of the problem. Very fortunately this is
unnecessary, because in all the scientific tests proposed for adults
nothing is accomplished which any primary school teacher will not be
easily able to determine during the first two or three years of ordinary
school work, if the modern system of color instruction is pursued.
There is no better material than colored papers for testing the color
perceptions, and the exercises of selecting, matching and arranging the
spectrum colors by means of the small color tablets generally in use in
the first years of school are the very best that can be devised without
regard to any of the abstract theories concerning either the cause or
the possible classification of color blindness.
For some reason the most common form of color blindness occasions a
confusion between red and green, as for example, we are told, by some
people, that in picking wild strawberries in a field the fruit can be
distinguished from the leaves and grass only by the shape, and the green
fruit from the ripe by the touch or taste.
If a teacher discovers that a child is unable to readily give the name
of a color it may not indicate want of color vision, but merely
inability to remember names, and therefore various tests which will
naturally suggest themselves can be made to aid in reaching a decision
on this point. Should the results of the tests seem to indicate some
defect in color vision, the nature of the trouble should be sought and
memoranda made from time to time for future reference, and if the final
result shows a radical lack of color perception the parents should be
informed of the fact and a physician consulted.
It is probable that the number of color blind women is very much less
than that of men, and much time has been spent in debating the matter,
but some doubt remains as to whether this opinion does not obtain
because the girls are brought so much more intimately into relation with
colored materials in selecting their articles of dress, and consequently
come to know the names of colors much better, and in fact enjoy a much
better color education than the men. A more correct decision regarding
this question can better be reached when both the boys and girls receive
a systematic color education and their color sense is more equally
cultivated.
Outline of a Course in Color Instruction.
[Illustration]
The course of color instruction suggested in the preceding pages is not
arbitrarily divided into lessons or even years, because the conditions
in the city and rural schools in the various states of this country are
so varied that no uniform allotment or division of time can be suggested
which will be satisfactory to all.
The number of hours that can be devoted to any subject must be
determined by those who prepare the school programme and the progress
must be more or less rapid, with instruction correspondingly superficial
or complete at each stage, according to the time allowed, the
preparation of the teacher and the natural ability of the pupils.
The teaching of color is usually classed with drawing because both
relate directly to art, but inasmuch as color enters into our every day
experiences so much more largely than the graphic arts there seems to be
good reason for teaching it very fully where little attention is given
to drawing.
Every competent teacher can and will become expert and even enthusiastic
in teaching color, if she fully understands the system which it is the
object of the foregoing pages to explain.
The following brief outline suggests the order in which the facts
concerning color may be presented and the material which can be used in
an elementary course, beginning with the first primary grade pupils, who
for the most part have not had kindergarten training.
As a part of the material the Bradley Educational Colored Papers, cut to
tablets each 1 x 2 inches, are prepared and put up in four small
envelopes which are enclosed in one larger envelope. On the larger
envelope these words are printed: "The Bradley Paper Tablets for
Primary Color Education, Selections 1, 2, 3, 4 for Complete Course." The
four small envelopes are labeled in this way: "Selection No. 1, eighteen
pieces from Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales, the Normal Spectrum Colors."
"Selection No. 2, forty pieces from Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales, Tint
No. 1 and Shades No. 1, with White, Black and Neutral Grays." "Selection
No. 3, forty-two pieces comprising complete Chart of Broken Spectrum
Scales and Warm, Cool and Green Grays." "Selection No. 4, thirty-six
pieces from Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales, Tints No. 2 and Shades No.
2."
The Solar Spectrum.
MATERIAL.
A Glass Prism, the cost of which need not exceed a few cents, as almost
any lamp or gas pendent in the form of a prism will serve the purpose.
By the use of such a prism a small spectrum can be shown on the wall of
any schoolroom having a sunny exposure during any part of the day. This
spectrum will make plain the fact that sunlight is composed of many
colors.
METHOD.
Show to the pupils the best solar spectrum that can be produced under
the controlling conditions.
Call attention to the six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and
violet, and the order of their arrangement in the spectrum.
Present the colors separately as far as possible, selecting the best
conditions available for each one.
Pigmentary Spectrum Colors.
MATERIAL.
Neutral gray or white card to cover desk top for a background.
Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales.
Colored Paper Tablets, Selection No. 1, embracing the six standards and
the intermediate spectrum hues, eighteen pieces.
Color Wheel or Tops.
METHOD.
Ask the pupils to separate the six standards from the twelve spectrum
hues. Standards to be arranged in spectrum order.
Teach the names of the standards.
Test natural color perceptions by the attempts of the pupils to lay the
spectrum in the eighteen papers.
Explain the intermediate hues by the color disks, and drill with the
tablets. Continue the practice of having the pupils lay the entire
spectrum with the papers until it is familiar to them.
PRACTICAL OCCUPATIONS.
Pasting simple designs in either of the six standard colors, on white or
gray background, with ready-cut papers. Marking forms from tablets and
cutting and pasting them on backgrounds.
Study of Tones.
MATERIAL.
Folding models to show light and shade. Crumpled satins and plushes.
Standard color disks with white and black, on wheel or tops.
Paper tablets, Selection No. 2, Tints No. 1, Shades No. 1, White, Black
and Neutral Grays.
METHOD.
Ask each pupil to lay spectrum in eighteen normal colors. Lay tints and
shades of the six standards.
Have the children complete tints and shades No. 1 of entire spectrum
circuit.
Illustrate neutral grays by white in shadow with folding model, also
with white and black disks combined.
Begin to classify into families the miscellaneous color material brought
by the pupils.
PRACTICAL OCCUPATIONS.
Pasting of ready-cut papers in standard and shade on a background of the
tint of same scale. Paste designs in three tones of one scale on white
or neutral gray background.
Mat weaving in tones of one scale.
Mat weaving in neutral gray and one or two tones of one color.
Broken Colors.
MATERIAL.
Disks on wheel or top. Paper tablets, Selection No. 3. Chart of Broken
Spectrum Scales.
METHOD.
Illustrate broken colors by disk combinations.
Let the pupils lay paper tablets to form Chart of Broken Scales.
Compare this chart with the Chart of Pure Scales laid with the papers.
Classifying of miscellaneous materials with reference to pure and broken
colors. Analysis of samples of pure and broken colors in cloths and
flowers.
PRACTICAL OCCUPATIONS.
Paper cutting and pasting to be continued.
Following the broken colors in three tones which form the Chart of
Broken Spectrum Colors, the three kinds of colored grays, warm, cool and
green, may be considered preparatory to their use in contrasted effects.
Complete Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales in Five Tones.
MATERIAL.
Paper tablets, Selection No. 4. Chart of Spectrum Scales in five tones
may be introduced for observation when the children are able to lay it
with their papers.
METHOD.
Continue the study of tones with pure spectrum scales in five tones, as
was done in the first three tones.
From the Chart of Spectrum Scales the study and classification of
harmonies can begin in a simple way.
From this time on free-hand paper cutting and pasting may be introduced
at pleasure, employing the colored papers in five tones when required.
Advanced Study of Harmonies.
By taking advantage of the instruction imparted in a course of color
study such as has been outlined in the preceding pages the pupil will be
able to advance in his ability to perceive colors and to make definite
analyses of colors in natural and manufactured material. In this way the
advanced study of harmonies can be greatly facilitated so that it will
be possible for the student to apprehend and appreciate many delicate
and subtle color effects in art and nature never before imagined. In
fact the foundation of color study will have been laid in such a logical
and fascinating manner that its further advance will be but a pleasure
to the pupil and teacher, so that no arbitrary plan will be necessary,
because so many lines of work will suggest themselves to all who are
interested in the subject.
Water Colors.
This outline would not be complete without a reference to water colors,
but this is not the place to give definite instructions as to their use.
Kindergartners and primary teachers are now generally competent to
direct the children in this work, if they will avail themselves of such
aid as is furnished by recently published books on the subject.
Non-poisonous paints, cheap and still of fair quality, can now be
obtained in standard colors and put up in various forms. The moist
paints in collapsible tubes are the most convenient as well as the most
economical for school use. This form should be accompanied by a small
mixing palette containing several compartments, which can be bought at
so small a price that each pupil can have one. The paint in the tubes
can then be dealt out only as required for each day's use.
$MATERIAL FOR COLOR INSTRUCTION.$
Where the price is preceded by a star the article is too large
to be sent by mail. In other cases where no postage is given the
goods are sent postpaid on receipt of price.
$WATER COLORS.$
In ordering it will be necessary to give only
the number of the box.
No. Price
1. An enameled box containing eight pans of
semi-moist colors, six Standards and two Grays,
one brush, per box $ .35
2. An enameled box containing ten pans semi-moist
colors, six Standards, Black, White, Cool
Gray and Warm Gray, one brush, per box .50
3. Same box as above, containing five pans semi-moist
colors. Red, two Yellows, Blue and Gray,
one brush, per box .30
4. Enameled box containing four pans semi-moist
colors, Red, Yellow, Blue and Gray, one brush,
per box .20
5. Same as above, Red, two Yellows and Blue,
per box .20
6. A decorated box containing eight cakes of dry
colors, six Standards and two Grays, one brush,
per box .25
7. A decorated box containing four large cakes of
dry colors. Red, Yellow, Blue and Gray, one
brush, per box .20
8. Same box as above. Red, two Yellows and
Blue, two brushes, per box .20
9. Nine tubes moist colors in strong paper box.
Six Standards, Warm Gray, Cool Gray and Black,
per set .90
10. Photograph Colors. A box of eight colors, the
six Standards and a Chinese White and a Brown,
with one brush. These colors are expressly
prepared for coloring photographs, half tone
prints, maps, etc. .25
Bradley's School Colors, moist in Tubes. The most
economical form for school use. These colors are
so prepared that they remain moist out of the
tube. The set comprises the following colors: Postage
Carmine, Crimson Lake, Vermilion, Gamboge,
Chinese Yellow, Hooker's Green, No. I, Hooker's
Green, No. II, Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, Sepia,
Warm Sepia, Burnt Sienna, Payne's Gray, Ivory
Black, Chinese White and the six Standards,
with Warm, Cool and Neutral Gray, Black and
White, per tube .10
Little Artist's Complete Outfit, comprising a Mixing
Palette with its seven compartments filled with
semi-moist colors and a brush, the whole enclosed
in a strong cardboard case .15 .03
$ACCESSORIES.$
Standard Mixing Palette, with seven compartments
for paints and two for mixing. Almost indispensable
in using tube colors. Extra deep,
per doz. .60 .25
Water Cups. An enameled metal cup, practically
indestructible, per doz. .60 .13
Camel's Hair Brushes, Quill, per doz. .30 .02
Camel's Hair Brushes, Long Handles, per doz. .60 .03
Japanese School Brushes, per doz. .60 .05
Artists' Camel Hair Brushes, No. 6, Wooden Handles,
per doz. .75 .03
Milton Bradley Co.'s Water Color Pads--Made of
extra quality paper for water color work.
No. 1, Pad of 50 sheets, 6×9, each .10 .09
No. 2, Pad of 25 sheets, 9×12, each .10 .10
$APPARATUS.$
High School Color Wheel, with Disks in box *10.00
One set of Disks for above, in box *2.00
Primary School Color Wheel, with Disks *3.00
One set of Disks for above in portfolio .75 .06
Color Top, by mail, each .06
Color Top, by mail, per doz. .50
No. 1 Prism, at buyer's risk .10
No. 2 Prism, at buyer's risk .15
No. 3 Prism, at buyer's risk .30
Rainy Day Spectrum, made from colored papers,
mounted on cardboard, one inch by 13, each .10 .04
Large Spectrum, 5 by 30 inches, mounted on cloth,
each .25 .04
Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales, No. 1 X, on
cardboard, 9x24 inches, hinged and folded.
Ninety papers one inch square, each .50 .10
Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales, No. 2 X. Size,
12x48, folded and hinged. Ninety papers two
inches square, each .75 .15
Chart of Broken Spectrum Scales, No. 1. Size, 9x12
inches, with paper 1-1/2 inches square,
comprising twelve scales of three tones each .50 .10
Chart of Broken Spectrum Scales, No. 2. Size,
12x48 inches, with the same papers as No. 1,
three inches square, each .75 .15
Chart of Complementary Colors. On cardboard 18
inches square, each *.50
Standard Color Chart. On two cards 11x28 inches,
hinged and eyeleted for hanging. This is a
combination chart comprising "Spectrum Standards,"
"Pure Spectrum Scales," "Complementary
Contrasts," "Broken Spectrum Scales," and
"Grays." Printed suggestions for using the
charts on the back, each 1.25 .15
$BOOKS ON COLOR.$
Water Colors in the Schoolroom, by Milton Bradley,
boards .25
A new book of practical suggestions, valuable to
every one who would undertake to teach the use
of water colors.
Elementary color, by Milton Bradley, cloth .75
Gives the principles on which the Bradley System
is based and an explanation of the use of the
Glass Prism, Color Wheel, Maxwell Disks, Color
Top, Colored Papers, Color Charts and Water
Colors.
The Little Artist by Marion Mackenzie, cloth .75 .15
A practical book of water color work for children,
with 12 beautiful, colored plates. Size of
book, 12 by 14 inches.
Color in the Kindergarten, by Milton Bradley, paper
covers .25
A manual of the theory of color and the use of
color material in the Kindergarten.
A Class Book of Color, by Prof. Mark M. Maycock.
Teachers' Edition, cloth 1.00
Pupils' Edition, boards .50
A very complete teachers' handbook in color.
Practical Color Work, by Helena P. Chace, paper .25
A handbook for the educational use of colored
papers in teaching color in primary and ungraded
schools.
The Color Primer, by Milton Bradley, paper.
Teachers' Edition, 80 pages .10
Pupils' Edition, 24 pages .05
Simple and direct teachings.
$MISCELLANEOUS MATERIAL.$
Paper Tablets, Set No. 1, 1x2 in. .02
Paper Tablets, Set No. 2, 1x2 in. .02
Paper Tablets, Set No. 3, 1x2 in. .03
Paper Tablets, Set No. 4, 1x2 in. .04
Sample Book, one by four inches, containing the
full assortment .05 .01
Package, 4x4 papers, 100 pieces .20 .04
Package, 5x5 papers, 100 pieces .30 .05
Fun, Physics and Psychology in Color. A box of
material for simple experiment, each .25 .07
Complementary Color Contrasts. A box of large
material for popular experiments in color
vision, each .75 .20
The Dunn and Curtis Illustrative Sewing Cards, in
color. Two sets: A. Literature Illustration. B.
Cards for Special Occasions.
Set of eight cards .25
Dozen of any Design .40
$MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY,$
$Springfield, Mass.$
Transcriber's Note
_Italic text_ has been enclosed in underscores.
$Bold text$ has been enclosed in dollar signs.
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