Color Value Part 1

Color Value.

by C. R. Clifford.

FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS

LIGHT, COLOR, FORM, PROPORTION AND DIMENSIONS

Whatever is good in interior decoration is the result of consistent relations.h.i.+p between Light, Color, Form, Proportion and Dimensions. The choice of Color should be guided by the conditions of Light. The beauty of Form and the symmetry of Proportion can exist only by a balance with Dimensions.

Therefore, apart from any knowledge of historic or period decoration, effective or successful work must observe the technical laws governing conditions.

-LIGHT-

1. The white light of the sun is compounded of an almost innumerable number of color elements, as shown by the phenomena of the rainbow or by experimenting with the prism. (See -- 7.) When a ray of suns.h.i.+ne pa.s.ses through a gla.s.s prism it is decomposed or separated, and if the prismatic colors are received upon a white screen you will find on the spectrum among the colors generated a pure blue, a pure red and a pure yellow. These are the primary colors, and it is necessary when thinking color to bear these prismatic colors in mind as standards.

2. Color is an internal sensation originating in the excitation of the optic nerve by a wave action which we call light.

3. The theory of light, the wave theory, is based upon the a.s.sumption that throughout all s.p.a.ce there is an infinitely thin medium called ether. Scientists differ as to what this may be, but its movements const.i.tute light, a reflection from a luminous body.

4. Everything which we see is visible because it either emits light, like a flame, or reflects light.

5. A piece of black cloth upon a white plate reflects but a small proportion of the light. The plate reflects a large proportion. A piece of black velvet reflects less light than black cloth and gives the effect of absolute blackness, or an empty and dark s.p.a.ce.

6. In practical demonstrations the study of color will be confusing unless it is understood at the outstart that pure prismatic colors can seldom be found in manufactured pigments, hence any demonstration of the theory of color composition is usually unsatisfactory.

7. The theory which brings out of a ray of suns.h.i.+ne the disunited prismatic colors carries with it the deduction that before separation these colors const.i.tute white light; but it must be manifest to even the superficial reader that such colors are mere spectrum colors--vision colors--and any amalgamation of material or pigment colors, so far from producing white, produces almost black.

8. The theory that red and yellow make orange, and that a red and blue make violet, is correct; but if one attempts to demonstrate the theory with pigments, one is confronted not only by the lack of standard manufactured colors but by impurities, adulterations and chemical reaction in the pigments. The adulteration may not be perceptible in one primary color, but it is manifest when that color is brought into action with another primary, for it is seldom that a pure secondary results.

-COLOR NOMENCLATURE--HARMONIES-

9. Color nomenclature includes primary, secondary and tertiary colors, and innumerable hues, shades and tints. All these colors bear relations to one another, either relations of a.n.a.logy, or relations of contrast.

(See -- 18 and -- 19.)

The Circle Diagram I shows the manner in which the various colors are formed. (See also Diagram III.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM I]

The third circle shows how slate, citrine and russet are made. For instance, slate is one part of violet and one part of green. Hence, a tertiary color is made of equal parts of two secondaries.

The outer circle, buff, sage and plum, can be a.n.a.lyzed in the same way.

This Diagram I is arranged to show not only component parts of a color, but the parts that properly harmonize.

-CONTRASTS-

10. In music it is an established fact that certain notes used in pleasing combination produce sounds we call harmonies. The moment that more than one note is struck, there is danger of discord, and when ten notes resound to the touch of the player, they must be the right notes, or they jar upon the sensibilities. In the use of color the same immutable law applies.

11. In Circle Diagram II the letters RV mean reddish violet, being a violet having more red than blue in its composition. BV means bluish violet, being a violet having more blue than red in its composition. BG means bluish green, being a green having more blue than yellow in its composition. YG means yellow green, being a green having more yellow than blue in its composition. YO means yellowish orange, being an orange having more yellow than red in its composition. RO means reddish orange, being an orange having more red than yellow in its composition. Thus we may advance from red to yellow by graduations almost imperceptible, by the addition of yellow, to a reddish orange, and so on gradually to orange, continuing on to yellowish orange, finally revealing pure yellow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM II]

12. The contrasting color at any stage may be determined by proceeding in a direct line across the circle: Red has for its contrasting color green; hence, reddish orange would have for its contrasting color a bluish green, for the simple reason that if red contrasts with green and orange contrasts with blue, the color between the red and the orange would contrast with the color between the green and the blue. Let us determine the contrasting color for crimson. Crimson is simply a red slightly tinged with blue. If red contrasts with green, a shade a little to the left of red slightly tinged with blue would contrast with a shade a little to the right of green slightly tinged with yellow. In other words, crimson, RV, would contrast with yellowish green, YG. Determine at what point of the circle any color that you have in mind will come, and the contrasting color would be immediately opposite.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM III]

13. The harmony of a.n.a.logy consists of the harmony of related colors or tones of one color. (See -- 17.)

14. The harmony of contrast consists of colors in no way related. As an example of the harmony of a.n.a.logy, we would mention red and orange, because both of these colors have ingredients in common, red being one of the two component parts of orange. As an example of the harmony of contrast, we suggest red and green, because there is nothing in common between the two, red being a primary color, and green a secondary, composed of the other two primaries, yellow and blue. (See -- 17.)

15. Green is called the complement of red. The complement of blue would be orange, because orange is formed by combining the remaining primaries, red and yellow; and the complement of yellow would be violet, because violet is composed of blue and red, the other primaries.

16. In Diagram II we have arranged at opposite points the primaries 1, the secondaries 2, the tertiaries 3, the quaternaries 4.

But Diagram III goes further into the subject.

It is easy to understand the composition of secondaries, but it is not so easy to know the tertiaries and quaternaries. (See also Diagram I.)

-CONTRAST a.n.a.lOGIES-

17. Diagram III is of the utmost value to the colorist, ill.u.s.trating not only the composition of color, but showing the origin of each secondary from the two primaries, the origin of each tertiary from two secondaries, and of each quaternary from two tertiaries. It shows by groupings the harmonies of a.n.a.logy or related colors; also the harmonies of contrast: By moving on the board one color on one line to another color upon another line, like the moving of a knight in a game of chess, and confining the moves always to adjoining lines, like yellow to violet, violet to citrine, citrine to plum, plum to brown. Yellow and violet are true contrasts, the one color having nothing in common with the other. The citrine and the plum, however, are approximate contrasts.

For greater convenience, we have numbered the contrasting colors A's and B's. Absolute contrast is where the two colors have nothing in common.

For composition purposes, however, citrine and violet may be considered contrasts, or correctly speaking, contrast a.n.a.logies. (See -- 19.)

18. A harmony of contrast means the utilization of a primary color with its complementary, or a color in conjunction with another color in no degree related: a primary with a secondary. But when we soften these contrasting colors by the addition of white we have in the lighter tints a scale of chroma that is a form of a.n.a.logy.

19. All combinations of secondary and tertiary colors, while apparently harmonies of contrast (the tertiary being made by the composition of two secondaries), const.i.tute, in fact, contrast a.n.a.logies, because by a.n.a.lysis we find that all tertiaries possess color components occurring in the apparently contrasting secondaries. (See Diagram III.)

20. The harmony of contrast, literally, can only occur in the pure primary colors juxtaposed to the pure secondary colors, for in no case does the color formed by the combination of the two primaries have anything in common with the third primary; while a tertiary composed of two secondaries invariably has qualities possessed by the third secondary.

21. In a room which is small or dark, the light tints in harmonies of a.n.a.logy are advisable.

-PROPORTIONS-

22. In the use of one color with another of contrasting character the question frequently arises, what proportion of each should be used to obtain the best effect? Ill.u.s.trative color books show usually samples of color of the same size, leading one unconsciously to the error that contrasting colors should occupy the same surface dimensions.

23. In every room there must be a prevailing or dominant color, and the use of a contrasting color must be limited to proportions which give simply a pleasing emphasis. Let us a.s.sume that a room has a deep frieze p.r.o.nouncedly green. To treat the rest of the wall in red of a direct contrast would be ineffective.

24. If a rule can be applied we would say that no strong normal color should be used in large surfaces. If we were dealing with pigments we would say that if one-sixth of a side-wall is devoted to a frieze in green, the balance of the wall s.p.a.ce should be treated with the same amount of red, mixed with the same amount of gray.

25. For a room that is small and well lighted the fresh tints are not as desirable as the gray shades or tertiaries in conjunction with secondaries.