The laws of contrast of colour : $b and their application to the arts of painting, decoration of buildings, mosaic work, tapestry and carpet weaving, calico printing, dress, paper staining, printing, military clothing, illumination, landscape, and flower gardening, &c.Chevreul, M. E. (Michel Eugène)
Science
The laws of contrast of colour : $b and their application to the arts of painting, decoration of buildings, mosaic work, tapestry and carpet weaving, calico printing, dress, paper staining, printing, military clothing, illumination, landscape, and flower gardening, &c.
Chevreul, M. E. (Michel Eugène)
Color
120. Before entering into the details of these applications, I think
it necessary to offer some considerations which will enable me to
establish some propositions or principles, to which I shall have
frequent occasion to refer. I propose to give—
121. 1. Definitions of several expressions applicable to colours and
their modifications. 2. The means of representing and defining colours
and their modifications by the aid of diagrams. 3. A classification of
the harmonies of colours. 4. A view of some arrangements of the primary
colours with white, black, and grey.
SECTION I.
_Definition of the words Tones, Scales, and Hues._
122. The words _Tones_ and _Hues_ recur continually, both in common
language and in that of artists; yet they are not so well defined as to
be free from ambiguity, or to be well understood.
123. The word TONE of a colour will be employed exclusively to
designate the various modifications which that colour, in its greatest
intensity, is capable of receiving from white, which _lowers_ its tone,
or of black, which _heightens_ it.
124. The word SCALE will be applied to the assemblage of tones of the
same colour, thus modified. The pure colour is the normal tone of
the scale, if the normal tone does not belong to a broken or reduced
scale—_i.e._, to a scale, of which all the tones are made dull with
black (149).
125. The word HUE will be applied exclusively to the modifications
which a colour receives from the addition of a small quantity of
another. We shall speak, for example, of the _tones_ of the blue
scale, the _tones_ of the red scale, &c. We say the _hues_ of blue
to designate all the scales whose colours, still remaining blue,
yet differ from pure blue; each hue comprehending the tones which
constitute a scale more or less allied to the blue scale.
126. I have defined the tones of a colour to be the various
modifications, which that colour at its maximum of intensity is capable
of receiving from black and white; it must be observed that the
condition “maximum of intensity for receiving black,” is absolutely
essential to this definition; for if black be added to a tone below the
maximum, it would pass into another scale. Artists distinguish colours
as _pure, broken, reduced, grey_, or _dull_.
127. Pure colours are those termed _simple_, red, yellow, blue, and
those which result from their binary compounds, orange, green, violet,
and their _hues_. (150.) _Broken_ colours are the pure colours mixed
with black, from the tone of the lightest to the deepest. According to
these definitions, it is evident that in all the scales of simple and
binary colours, the tones which are above the pure colour are _broken_
tones.
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