The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood
The value of a color refers to its position in a scale from dark to light. The tints and shades are therefore various values of the color itself. Black or white may be mixed with a color, and a change of value is the result; but there is no change in the hue or color itself otherwise.
Tone usually refers to the general effect, as "painted in dark tones" means that the effect is dark. Tone has reference to the degree of luminosity or power of reflecting light possessed by a color. Adding black or white to a normal color changes its tone.
Saturation of a color refers to its purity, or to the amount of white light which is contained in the color. White in the form of pigments, of course, has no hue and no saturation.
Warm colors are the fire colors represented by red, orange, and yellow. Red is sometimes called a hot color.
Cold colors are the ice colors of blue, and its neighbors in the spectrum, green, and violet. A yellow-green may be called a warm green, and in the same sense a red-violet is a warm violet.
53. Colors of the Prismatic Solar Spectrum.—White light or sunlight has been known to be composed of seven prismatic colors, at least since the time of Newton who pointed out this fact in the year 1666. When a beam of white sunlight is passed through a prism, refraction breaks it up into a band which shows the seven colors of the rainbow, namely: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Some of these colors arc not primary colors, however, for they can be produced by mixing other colors together.
54. The Three Primary Colors.—For many years red, yellow, and blue have been called the primary colors because it was thought that they cannot be made by mixing pigment-colors together. A statement of this fact is found in the writings of Aristotle who lived about 2300 years ago. The name primary colors still clings to red, yellow, and blue, although it is now claimed that these so-called primaries can be made by mixing colors adjacent to them on the color-circle.
Sargent says that red can be made by mixing violet and orange; that blue can be made by mixing green and violet; and that yellow can be produced by a mixture of orange and green.1 The three so-called primary colors which are produced by mixtures of adjacent colors on the color-circle are apt to be what most people call tertiary colors. They are dull and low in brilliancy, and appear like bright colors that have been grayed. Practically it is best for the pigment-color mixer to have brilliant reds, blues, and yellows to start with, and then to make the other colors, considering the three hues just named as base, fundamental, or primary colors.
