Introduction & Color History

Hi everyone! I’m Nina Nguyen — a current junior majoring in Biology with a minor in health care studies. Growing up, one of my primary hobbies has always been drawing/painting, but this hobby is drastically different from my area of study in the sciences. With this blog, I hope to explore — in a way that combines my hobbies with my studies — one of the most important aspects of art: color.

Incomplete halloween painting by me.

Rose painting drawn by me.

Color represents the expansive studies combined by both artists and scientists throughout several centuries. Studies on color is not limited to just the fine arts, but rather also spans throughout numerous scientific fields, such as chemistry, optics, mathematics, evolutional biology, and visual psychology (Koontz). These convergent studies provide insight on how color is produced in nature and synthetically and how varying color perception in humans influence behavior and evolution (Koontz). In this blog, I will be exploring traditional color theory, synthetic/digital color theory, psychological color perception, and the various applications of color both in an academic, scientific sense and in an artistic sense.

History

The first thoughts of a color wheel usually comprises of the three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. Like many other aspects of academia, there was initially no real standard in colors wheels and theory. The first color wheel was presented in the 17^th century by Sir Isaac Newton after discovering the visible spectrum of light (McManus). Newton tested the properties of white light to explain the phenomena of color (McManus). He noted that white light is composed of a variety of colors, that mixing primary colors would lead to secondary colors, and mapped out a color wheel based on his discoveries. 

In the 19^th century, German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began exploring color on his own. He disagreed with Newton’s idea that darkness is an absence of light; instead, Goethe believed that darkness was an active ingredient for color production (Koontz). Goethe explored the effects of light and dark on human color perception, such as how different ratios of light and dark produced differences in the color spectra (Koontz). Though his work is not as scientific as Newton’s, Goethe still managed to address the gaps within Newton’s theories, focused on the psychology of color, and paved way for future studies on how the human brain perceives color. 

Left image: Goethe's color wheel; Right image: Newton's color wheel. Retrieved from Koontz, Alison.

In the early 20^th century, color was standardized by American painter Alfred Munsell, whom as a teacher recognized the need for a systematic method to “communicat[e] and teac[h] color” (Koontz). To successfully educate different aspects of color, a system that easily defines and measures color is needed. Munsell added the dimensions of chroma (also known as saturation which is purity of the color) and color value (also known as brightness) as additions to hue (Koontz). These new dimensions are defined as the 3D color space, which is represented by Munsell’s Color Tree (Munsell). Munsell also defined standardized color notation (set up in a 3D graph space) so that precise colors can be relayed by naming specific coordinates (Munsell). His color space is used for arts education, but, more interestingly, his model is also applied in the field of optics and color mathematics. 

3D Rendering of Munsell's Color Tree. Retrieved from Wikipedia (open source artist)

With this brief, yet fundamental history set in place, we can now go further into depth about topics mentioned and begin exploring other modern day applications of color!

Works Cited

Koontz, Alison. "A History of Color." Caltech Letters, 29 May  2018. 

caltechletters.org/science/history-of-color-1. Accessed 1 Sep 2019.

McManus, Chris. "History Of Colour." Colouraffects. colour-affects.co.uk/history-of-colour. 

Accessed 1 Sep 2019.

Munsell, Albert. "The Munsell Color Tree." Munsell Color. munsell.com/color-blog/color-tree. 

Accessed 1 Sep 2019.