Color HistoryHere are some color history facts. Throughout the ages man has used his ingenuity to utilize as a source for color; plant life, leaves, berries, and roots. Bones and fluids of fish, birds and insects provided a base for pigment. Clays and minerals also made valuable contributions. The challenge to man was in finding the best method of extracting the color from these sources. Color History and Color SourcesThe Phoenicians produced the Tyrian purple dye from the gland of the murex snail, found in the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of these snails were required to make small amounts of this purple dye. The ink sac of the cuttlefish supplied man with sepia. From a tiny insect called cochineal, Mexicans and Peruvians obtained carmine red. Amoung the most important minerals supplying pigment was lapis lazuli, which was pulverized to give an ultramarine. Malachite was powdered to produce green. For application, pigments are always mixed with a liquid, which is called a vehicle. Egg yolk and water were mixed with powdered pigments by Italian painters. A few common vehicles are water, mineral and vegetable oils, natural and synthetic gum varnishes, cellulose solutions and solvents. PLEASE SEE "SITE LINKS" BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT; COLOR, THE COLOR WHEEL, DECORATING WITH COLOR, COLOR THERAPY AND DESIGN AND DECORATING TERMS How We See ColorColor activity is in four stages.First there must be light, the source of color. Secondly, the object for the light rays to act upon. Thirdly, the eye which receives the reflected light from the object, and last, the brain which interprets this sensation. This gives us the following sequence; light, object, vision, consciousness. Man as a primate has color vision, but most animals see the world in shades of gray. Exceptions are birds, lizards, turtles, and some higher species of fish. The most prevalent type of color blindness is the inability to distinguish red and green, which appear very neutral. Defective color vision can result from an injury but is primarily inherited through the distaff side. (the female branch or side of the family) The origin of all color seen in the world is light. Light in the form of sunlight travels to us in waves. In the seventeenth century when Issac Newton, the English Scientist, permitted a small ray of sunlight to pass through a glass prism and discovered a visible rainbow of colors refracted to the opposite wall. He concluded that colors were not qualities of the object, but were contained is sunlight itself. The three hues, red, green and blue are known as light primaries and they overlap to form intermediate hues. When dealing with light on a colored surface, a different phenomenon takes place. The colored surface filters or subtracts some of the colors from the white light, leaving the others visible to the eye. This ability is know as selective absorption. When a beam of light strikes a red surface, the green, yellow, blue and violet rays are absorbed, and the red is reflected. When we mix red, blue, and yellow pigments, the pigment primaries, in the right proportion, we get dark gray. Any two of these three primary pigment hues, when combined as described, give us our secondary hues; orange, purple, and green. Color System...The Color WheelDecorating with color: A designer must learn a system of color identification to communicate color. They use a "color wheel". A rainbow is a continuum of hues which includes all the intermediate hues produced as each hue overlaps it's neighbor. The twenty four basic hues may be divided into what are termed primaries, secondaries, tertiaries, and quaternaries. These divisions, indicated on the color wheel, are as follows: 3 Primaries; blue, red and yellow. 3 Secondaries; a combination of any two primaries. 6 Tertiaries; a combination of a secondary color with any additional quality of one of it's constituent (one of the parts) primaries. The generally accepted designations are: plum or blue violet; mulberry or red violet; russet or red orange; flame or yellow orange; citron or yellow green; slate or blue green. 12 Quaternaries; a combination of a tertiaries with either it's constituent primary or secondary. There are no standard names for these intermediate hues and they vary only slightly from their adjoining hues. An Interior Designer has to recognize the relative position on the color wheel of the particular hue he/she is using. This location on the color wheel indicates the hue family which is the first of the three qualities of color. The second quality of color, the lightness or darkness, is referred to as value or "tonal value". The third quality is the degree of purity, intensity, or saturation. A patch of color may be dark, medium, or light. The normal eye is said to be capable of differentiating one hundred steps from black to white. Site Links:Back to top of Color History pageGo to Color Therapy See the Color Wheel and More Terms Decorating with Color Design and Decorating Terms Bella Bath and Body Store Skincare Information and Tips Home Did You find this page helpful? Please Reply here! |