Take a look at the rainbow above. Notice anything about the colors?
There’s an extra blue!
This rainbow follows the ROYGBIV (Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet) system. You’ve probably seen it, but if someone asked you to paint a rainbow, you probably wouldn’t paint it this way. You’d probably leave out the Indigo. The new standard rainbow of colors is ROYGBV. No indigo. This, I’m certain, is the fault of Gay Pride, Pink Floyd, and Sparkle Pony.
There have been many attempts to simplify and organize the color spectrum, but the most well known arrangement was Sir Isaac Newton’s color wheel, as he observed white light divided by a prism.
Newton’s sketch
Newton’s original idea of the simplified color wheel (sometime around 1665) was just 5 colors: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple. Then, 10 years later, in his revision Lectiones Opticae of 1675 he added two new colors: Orange and Indigo. With the two new additions, we were given ROYGBIV. In his words: “The originall or primary colours are Red, yellow, Green, Blew, & a violet purple; together with Orang, Indico, & an indefinite varietie of intermediate gradations.” Of these widely accepted seven colors, three are primary (red, yellow and blue); three are secondary (green, orange and violet) and only one is tertiary (hello indigo).
So why did Newton add the tertiary color Indigo? Newton might have included indigo as a 7th color because he wanted to match the colors in the rainbow to the notes in a Dorian scale of music.
In Newton’s “octave” of colors, orange and indigo are placed at the half steps, between E and F and between B and C.
Newton’s revised color wheel drawing shows the new orange and indigo. All colors were represented in exact proportion to their prominence when divided from the prism.
Red, yellow, and blue were the primary colors for hundreds of years, only recently replaced with cyan, magenta, and yellow. Essentially, we just took the color wheel and turned it a few degrees so our printer inks would work better.
Newton’s blue (originally called ceruleus) is different from our blue today, and could now more accurately be called… well… cyan. So, the blue drifted, and then we fixed it.
Feeling blue? You can get all the blue you want – Indigo is this Saturday!
[image_with_animation image_url=”10475″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Lucy Garnett These figure drawings were made in the last couple of sessions of my 5 week Beginning Figure Drawing Class. They are drawn with confidence, style, and sensitivity. Each week we practiced a different style of drawing, and a different way of approaching the figure. One style was …
One of Akira Kurosawa’s many gifts was staging scenes in ways that were bold, simple and visual. Here’s another short by Tony Zhou’s “Every Frame a Painting” series, with ideas for film that can be applied to your paintings. (3 minutes)
Mediums have an enormous influence on the products of art. Not necessarily because of how they look when the making is finished (though of course that is true) but more interestingly because of what they will do. The medium dictates not just the final look, but the process of how it’s made. Tip: Categorize art …
Hopper is known for his oil paintings, but he also made etchings… Hopper was not initially successful as an artist, so he made ends meet with freelance illustration work… Frank Rehn gave Hopper his first solo show in 1924. Hopper was 42. The Seattle Art Museum expected to receive Chop Suey after the death of …
Newton’s Revisions
Take a look at the rainbow above. Notice anything about the colors?
There’s an extra blue!
This rainbow follows the ROYGBIV (Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet) system. You’ve probably seen it, but if someone asked you to paint a rainbow, you probably wouldn’t paint it this way. You’d probably leave out the Indigo. The new standard rainbow of colors is ROYGBV. No indigo. This, I’m certain, is the fault of Gay Pride, Pink Floyd, and Sparkle Pony.
There have been many attempts to simplify and organize the color spectrum, but the most well known arrangement was Sir Isaac Newton’s color wheel, as he observed white light divided by a prism.
Newton’s original idea of the simplified color wheel (sometime around 1665) was just 5 colors: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple. Then, 10 years later, in his revision Lectiones Opticae of 1675 he added two new colors: Orange and Indigo. With the two new additions, we were given ROYGBIV. In his words: “The originall or primary colours are Red, yellow, Green, Blew, & a violet purple; together with Orang, Indico, & an indefinite varietie of intermediate gradations.” Of these widely accepted seven colors, three are primary (red, yellow and blue); three are secondary (green, orange and violet) and only one is tertiary (hello indigo).
So why did Newton add the tertiary color Indigo? Newton might have included indigo as a 7th color because he wanted to match the colors in the rainbow to the notes in a Dorian scale of music.
In Newton’s “octave” of colors, orange and indigo are placed at the half steps, between E and F and between B and C.
Newton’s revised color wheel drawing shows the new orange and indigo. All colors were represented in exact proportion to their prominence when divided from the prism.
Red, yellow, and blue were the primary colors for hundreds of years, only recently replaced with cyan, magenta, and yellow. Essentially, we just took the color wheel and turned it a few degrees so our printer inks would work better.
Newton’s blue (originally called ceruleus) is different from our blue today, and could now more accurately be called… well… cyan. So, the blue drifted, and then we fixed it.
Feeling blue? You can get all the blue you want – Indigo is this Saturday!
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_dye
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.0213
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