The Study Of Color-What Every Artist Needs To Know

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Although we spent a great deal of time in Art School studying color in first year, I must admit I have forgotten probably half of what I learned, and now that I am back engaged in painting I find myself in "study" mode once again, in order to improve the quality of my paintings.

So here is a quick post on some resources that I have been introduced to lately that I think will help artists in general to build upon their knowledge of the subject and hopefully provide some useful resources that you can come back to and rely on now and in the future.

This first link is to a website called The Dimensions Of Colour by David Briggs that is probably the ultimate resource in understanding the technical nature of the principles of color in a comprehensive fact filled manner with outstanding color illustrations.

Index Of The Dimensions Of Colour with links

Part 1: Introduction Starting with Colours in Space.
Part 2: Basics of Light and Shade
Part 3: Some Basics of Colour Vision
Part 4: Additive Colour Mixing
Part 5: Subtractive Colour Mixing
Part 6: Colour Mixing with Paint
Part 7: Hue
Part 8: Lightness and Chroma
Part 9: Brightness and Saturation
Part10: Principles of Colour for Painters

The above information is very detailed and will take you some time to get through, if you want to start off with something a bit less detailed, visit the
Free Color Painting Lessons by Richard Robinson.

Below are some book titles on color theory you might be interested in.

Colour: A Handbook of the Theory of Colour by George Henry Hurst
Goethe's Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Colour Dynamics Workbook Step by Step Guide to Water Colour Painting by Angela Lord
Theory of Colours by the MIT Press

If you find any other useful information on color theory, please comment and I will update this post, take a look at the link, and post it into this resource.

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