A Color Notation: A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, Value and ChromaMunsell, A. H. (Albert Henry)
Science
A Color Notation: A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, Value and Chroma
Munsell, A. H. (Albert Henry)
Color
(145) This makes it possible to collect in a convenient form two
contrasting and valuable records, one preserving such effects of color
as are generally called pleasing, and another of such groups as are
found unpleasant to the eye. Out of such material something may be
gained, more reliable than the shifting, personal, and contradictory
statements about color harmony now prevalent.
CHAPTER VII.
COLOR HARMONY.
+Colors may be grouped to please or to give annoyance.+
(146) Attempts to define the laws of harmonious color have not attained
marked success, and the cause is not far to seek. The very sensations
underlying these effects of concord or of discord are themselves
undefined. The misleading formula of my student days--that three parts
of yellow, five parts of red, and eight parts of blue would combine
harmoniously--was unable to define the _kind_ of red, yellow, and blue
intended; that is, the hue, value, and chroma of each of these colors
was unknown, and the formula meant a different thing to each person who
tried to use it.
(147) It is true that a certain red, green, and blue can be united in
such proportions on Maxwell discs as to balance in a neutral gray; but
the slightest change in either the hue, value, or chroma, of any one of
them, upsets the balance. A new proportion is then needed to regain the
neutral mixture. This has already been shown in the discussion of triple
balance (paragraph 82).
(148) Harmony of color has been still further complicated by the use of
terms that belong to musical harmony. Now music is a _measured art_, and
has found a set of intervals which are defined scientifically. The two
arts have many points of similarity; and the impulses of sound waves on
the ear, like those of light waves on the eye, are measured vibrations.
But they are far apart in their scales, and differ so much in important
particulars that no practical relationship can be set up. The intervals
of color sensation require fit names and measures, ere their infinite
variety can be organized into a fixed system.
(149) Any effort to compare certain sounds to certain colors soon leads
to the wildest vagaries.
+Harmony of sound is unlike harmony of color.+
(150) The poverty of color language tempts to a borrowing from the
richer terminology of music. Musical terms, such as “pitch, key, note,
tone, chord, modulation, nocturne, and symphony,” are frequently used in
the description of color, serving by association to convey certain vague
ideas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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