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The Dimensions of Colour

Basics of Light and Shade

Basics of Colour Vision

Additive Mixing

Subtractive Mixing

Mixing of Paints

Hue

Lightness and Chroma

Brightness and Saturation

Principles of Colour

Afterthoughts

Glossary

References

Contact

Links

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Modern Colour Theory for Traditional and Digital Painting Media

MODERN COLOUR THEORY FOR TRADITIONAL AND DIGITAL PAINTING MEDIA

by Dr David. J.C. Briggs,
National Art School and University of Technology, Sydney.
Past President, Vice President and NSW Divisional Chair, Colour Society of Australia.

NEW - DECEMBER, 2023: Colours of Objects and Colours of Light. This video is a recording of my keynote presentation for the Colour Society of Australia national conference Colour Sense and Sensibility held in Perth on October 12-15, 2023. It looks at how our visual system presents us with superimposed perceptions of colours of objects and colour of light, and how grasping this concept of perceptual layering can resolve a lot of the confusion that plagues discussions about colour. The full text of this presentation is available at http://www.huevaluechroma.com/1118.php

I recommend this presentation and The Elements of Colour (below) as an introduction to my recent work on the most fundamental yet widely misunderstood concepts relating to colour.

This website presents an account of the dimensions of colour and light perception, written for painters using either traditional or digital media at intervals between 2007 and 2017. The conceptual framework presented here was developed as a component of Colour, Light and Vision, a course in colour theory and practice for artists that I presented between 1998 and 2019 at the Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney, of Theories of Colour, a lecture course on the history of colour theory and practice that I presented at the National Art School, Sydney, in 2009-2011, and of practical painting classes at the both schools. My resources on colour developed since 2017 can be found in various presentations indexed on this page, and in my public eight-week online colour course Understanding and Applying Colour, now available through the National Art School, Sydney.
See also my new site Colour Online, a curated collection of about 500 colour-related links on topics comprising Basic Colour Attributes, The Physical Basis of Colour, Colour Vision, Light Mixing Processes, Colorants and Colorant Mixing, Colour Order Systems, Digital Colour Technology, Colour in Art and Design, History of Colour Studies, Colour Education and Further Information.
Comments on this website are welcome on the Dimensions of Colour Facebook page.
Unless otherwise indicated, all material on this website is copyright Dr David Briggs, 2007-2022, and is licensed for personal and commercial use under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia license. This means that if you wish to utilize and redistribute items from this website you may do so, but for each item you must give appropriate credit on the same page, including my name and a link to the source page on this website, as well as abide by the other conditions of this license, just as you would for content that you paid to use.

Site Contents

All pages published in 2007 unless otherwise stated; latest revisions indicated in red:

Home

1 The Dimensions Introduced

2 Basics of Light and Shade

3 Basics of Colour Vision

4 Additive Mixing

5 Subtractive Mixing

6 Mixing of Paints

7 Hue

8 Lightness and Chroma

9 Brightness and Saturation

10 Principles of Colour

11 Afterthoughts

12 Glossary

References

Contact

Links

Classes

The Elements of Colour is an online presentation I gave on May 18, 2023, for the Design Institute of Australia, focusing on the first of my two papers recently accepted for the Journal of the International Colour Association. The first part of the presentation provides illustrated explanations of eight attributes or dimensions of perceived colour - hue, lightness, chroma, brightness, colourfulness, saturation, blackness and brilliance - and the second part examines the connections between colour stimuli, colour perceptions and colour measurement to address the question of "what is a colour?". The third part gives a quick overview of some of the illustrations from the second paper, which analyzes colour perception in greater depth by discussing the major modes of colour appearance and the attributes of perceived colour and their interconnections in more detail. The full text of this presentation is available at http://www.huevaluechroma.com/1118.php

The Dimensions of Colour Today gives an overview of the alternative frameworks available to painters today for visualizing colour relationships, and highlights some of the positive developments that have emerged in the nearly fifteen years since I began addressing these issues on the pages of this website. The presentation was given as part of the Colour Society of Australia's International Colour Day 2022 online event, Progress in Colour Education. The text and accompanying links can be found on this website at http://www.huevaluechroma.com/1113.php.

This is a five-minute "mini-talk" on my public online colour course that is available four times per year through the National Art School, Sydney. I gave the talk for the 14th Congress of the International Colour Association, Milan 2021, as part of the AIC Study Group on Colour Education session called "Teaching Colour Virtually".

More than Three Dimensions is a 12-minute presentation that I gave on September 1 at the 14th AIC Congress Milan 2021. The text with linked references can be found on this website at http://www.huevaluechroma.com/1111.php.

Four Key Insights about Colour is a 30-minute overview of some fundamental but often poorly understood or poorly explained aspects of colour that I presented at the 2021 national conference of the Colour Society of Australia, Colour Connections. I suggest watching this video before looking at the material in more depth in the eight pages of the introductory section of this website. Full screen viewing on YouTube is strongly recommended.

Colour Constancy Illusions and Painting is a fresh look at colour constancy illusions that I presented at the previous national conference of the Colour Society of Australia in Melbourne in 2018.

About the author

Dr David Briggs (PhD [Geology], U Qld, 1989) is a painter and teacher of life drawing, anatomy, painting and colour for painters at the National Art School, the Julian Ashton Art School and the University of Technology, Sydney. His publications include his outreach websites The Dimensions of Colour and Colour Online, and a chapter in each of the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour and (with Prof. Stephen Westland) the Springer Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology. David is Vice President, NSW Divisional Chair and Colour Education Officer of the Colour Society of Australia, and is a committee member of the International Colour Association (AIC) / Inter-Society Color Council (ISCC) Colour Literacy Project, an international educational initiative to provide age-appropriate colour curricula and state-of-the-art resources for teachers across science, art and industry. David has been teaching classes and workshops on colour for painters for 20 years and has also written and presented a 2nd/3rd year elective in the Art History and Theory Department of the National Art School, Sydney, on the history of colour theory and practice. He gave an account of his unique approach to colour education for painters as an invited speaker and workshop presenter at the ISCC/AIC Munsell Centennial Symposium in Boston in 2018.

Acknowledgements

Warm thanks go to the "Dimensions of Colour team", Xavier Peria, Ray Kristanto, Noopur Patel, Atania Trinata, and Debolina Bandyopadhyay from the 2007 second year Multimedia course at the then Billy Blue School of Graphic Arts, Sydney, and their teacher Dave Agius, for creating the site, including the interactive animations. Thanks also to Ben Green for generously hosting the site during its first year online, and to ibiblio, "the public's library and digital archive" at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, for accepting the site into their collection and hosting it since then. Finally, thanks to the many individuals and organizations who have added links to this site on their websites, blogs and forum posts, and especially to the following for their published comments:

Mark Fairchild (USA), Professor of Color Science & Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, and author of the textbook Color Appearance Models (Wiley): Essentially an online textbook/tutorial on appearance, or "the dimensions of colour and light" written from the perspective of artists. The site is very nicely done and blends technical and artistic information well.

Robert Hirschler* et al, How much colour science is not too much?, Color Research and Application, 2018;1–16. "Another extremely useful source of information is David Briggs' “The Dimensions of Colour” web site, written by an artist–scientist for the nonscientist, explaining science in an easily understandable manner." (*Hungary, Chair of the AIC Study Group on Color Education).

Maggie Maggio (USA), co-chair of the AIC Study Group on Color Education and former member of the Board of Directors of the ISCC. (The Dimensions of Colour) site is one of the very best I know about color

Stephen Westand (UK),
Professor of Colour Science and Technology, Director of Research and Innovation, University of Leeds School of Design: And it was a pleasure to come across the fantastic resources of David Briggs for whom I have the highest regard – you can see his brilliant resource here – http://www.huevaluechroma.com/.
 

John Seymour (USA),
Color Science Consultant and Adjunct Professor at Clemson University. How about modern educators on color? David Briggs has a great site with real color science stuff. Here is his webpage on the Dimensions of Colour .

James Gurney (USA), illustrator, fine artist, author of numerous books including the Dinotopia series and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter: David Briggs is none other than the mastermind behind the website "Dimensions of Color." It's one of the best resources on light and color on the Internet. I owe much of what I've learned on the topic to [Dr] Briggs. ...His website "HueValueChroma" has that rare combination of depth and clarity.

David Gray (USA), fine artist and painting teacher: ... an absolutely indispensable source of color knowledge for the realist painter: HueValueChroma.com. All of you who have asked me about color really need to visit this site and get this information into your artistic thought processes. It's going to be a little rough going for some who shy away from technical language. It's also going to challenge some of the conventional color "wisdom" that has been taught in art schools for years. I personally find the information fascinating and VERY USEFUL ... I hope HueValueChroma will give you more control over your color choices as it has me.

Douglas Flynt (USA), fine artist and painting teacher at the Grand Central Academy of Art, New York: "Huevaluechroma.com" is a great resource to better understand color and how light affects color.

Paul Foxton (UK), fine artist, author of website Learning to See: ... this site has more information than any site should really be allowed to have in one place. David's site is nothing short of incredible. There's so much information there, and it bears such careful and close reading, that I can only take it in bite sized chunks. I read half a page and have to think about it for a week. This the best site about colour I know of. The relevance of all of it to painting may not be apparent to you straight away, and it may appear too scientific for 'feeling' types. But I find myself mulling over things I've read there as I work, and it always results in deeper insights into the way we perceive light and colour. Very highly recommended.

Anthony Waichulis (USA), fine artist, curriculum developer, head instructor at Ani Art Academy Waichulis. The Dimensions of Color by David Briggs is an excellent (and easy-to-read) online resource for all things color. Highly recommend!

Slade Wheeler (USA), fine artist. His site hosts a large amount of well organized/concise information coupled with informative illustrations, including 3D modeling and animations, all of which make this one of the best online color theory resources that I've been able to find.

Colour Research Society of Canada/Societe canadienne de recherche sur la couleur (Canada). Excellent overview of the dimensions of colour and light perception for painters & digital media artists;

The Ohio State Universities Research Guides: Art- Color Theory (USA),. This website looks at color and light perception. It was created by David Briggs and has applications for artists working in both physical and digital formats.

Danny Pascale (USA), CEO of BabelColorR colour measurement and analysis: A well illustrated site on light, color, and its perception. The content is a course in applied color science optimized for artists but useful for all. The language is clear, with just a few simple equations and lots of descriptions.

Mary-Angela Papalaskari (USA), lecturer, Department of Computing Sciences, Villanova University, Pennsylvania. ... a set of webpages that give a great overview of color as it is perceived, from the artist's perspective.

William Cromar (USA), artist, lecturer and Art Program Coordinator, Abington College, Penn State University. "Color is a fascinating topic which we've only been able to scratch the surface of in this title" [ART 314 - Material Culture: Light and Color]. "If you wish to go in greater depth, visit David Briggs' comprehensive website The Dimensions of Colour."

Thomas Scholes (USA), digital artist and painting instructor, moderator of Futurepoly forum: I think the best advice I can give is to study light in terms of physics, this website is a great resource in those regards.

Ryan Struhl (USA) generative artist , software engineer. A great resource if you’re interested in some of the mechanics of color vision, which can be super helpful for thinking about things like color contrast, difference and mixing.

Josh Yavelberg, Professor, Art Institute of Washington (USA). The Dimensions of Color: an in-depth guide on the concepts of the various color systems and how to move within each color space by David Briggs. I urge you to go to the second, and onward, pages of each area as there are interactive flash demonstrations of the various color spaces.

Chris Raadjes (UK), game artist at Auroch Digital Ltd. Probably the most intensely scientific approach to light for painters [that's] available on the web. ... I'm struggling myself, but it's worth it.

Daz Watford (UK), video game developer, concept artist: Now this website is big and intimidating; but it's a great explanation of how colour created by light works. It's quite sciencey and took me three goes to start to "get it", but it's worth the struggle. It will change your understanding of colour with a "mind = blown" Inception ...

Donald Lambert (USA) , New World School of the Arts, Miami, Florida. It's a great resource for understanding color theory and it's development. Don't worry if you don't understand it all- there is a lot of information here.

ALISON online training (UK): This course is ideal for any learner who practices the visual arts, either professionally or as a hobby, and who wants to greatly enhance their knowledge and understanding of colour theory.

Atelier Art Classes, Brisbane (AUS): An incredible resource for the painter [and] a fascinating and informative resource for anybody who has an interest in the perception of colour.

Bjoern Gschwendtner, Classical Atelier @HOME (Germany): Read more about color on huevaluechroma.com. This is THE RESOURCE for color in the internet for artists.

Michael Hosticka (USA), recent Game Art & Design graduate, Ringling College of Art and Design: I learned more about practical application of color within 10 minutes of reading that than I have in all of my art classes combined.... I would highly recommend the website to anyone who wants to improve their understanding of light and color and doesn't mind technical reading.

Georges Hattab et al. Ten simple rules to colorize biological data visualization. PLoS Comput Biol. 2020;16(10):e1008259: For further information on these dimensions, the website of David Briggs entitled The Dimensions of Color is a trove of information on color theory and usage: huevaluechroma.com.
Colours of twenty two common artists pigments at various thicknesses over a white ground. Photographed colours displayed in YCbCr space using the program ColorSpace by Philippe Colantoni.

Next: Colours in Space


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