5 Colouring Materials

This section concerns pigments and dyes, colour behaviour in ideal subtractive and actual paint mixture, and the colour technology of paints for fine art and the built environment, printing inks, film, and textiles.

Pigments and Paints

Pigment based art materials & Color theory (Tamas Majoros)

• https://artistpigments.org/ 

• Formerly at https://m.sadtuna.org/paints

• Information on 67206 art products (colored pencils, pastels, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, oil paints etc.) with 17027 color samples which you can browse, sort, view as a chart, and compare.. Non-commercial but sign-in required for full access including advanced tools, including their collection of 17000  spectral reflectance curves.

The color of art - Pigments (David Myers)

• http://www.artiscreation.com/Color_index_names.html

CAMEO database (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

• http://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Main_Page

• The Conservation and Art Materials Encyclopedia Online (CAMEO) is an electronic database that compiles, defines, and disseminates technical information on the distinct collection of terms, materials, and techniques used in the fields of art conservation and historic preservation.

Paint List (Melissa Carmon and Jonathan Myers )

• Oil, acrylic and watercolour paints indexed by pigment, plus articles and videos 

• https://www.paintlist.com/ 

Handprint guide to watercolor pigments (Bruce MacEvoy)

• http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/waterfs.html

Wild Pigment Project (Tilke Elkins )

• https://wildpigmentproject.org/

Colour theory in two minutes (Stephen Westland)

• https://colourware.org/2018/06/25/6-dyes-and-pigments/ (6. Dyes and Pigments)

The dimensions of colour (David Briggs)

• http://www.huevaluechroma.com/045.php (object colour)

Pigments through the ages (Webexhibits).

• http://webexhibits.org/pigments/

The Pigment Timeline Project (UCL)

• https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/pigment-timeline/

Colorwell (John Morfis)

• http://colorwell.org/ 

• Find oil paints of a given Munsell notation, and find shading series for any Munsell notation.

Pigments for paints, coatings and inks (Special Chem)

• https://coatings.specialchem.com/selection-guide/pigments 

• Excellent overview

Coatings and color chemistry

• http://cocoachem.blogspot.com.au/

Colour Context (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)

• https://arb.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/node/1

• Database on historical colour practice and knowledge including glossaries and links to online versions of original sources

Toch, Maximilian, Materials for permanent painting (1911)

• http://www.archive.org/details/materialsforperm00tochrich

Laurie, Arthur Pillans, The painter's methods & materials (1926).

• http://www.archive.org/details/paintersmethodsm00lauruoft

Gettens, Rutherford J, and Stout, George. L., Painting material - Short encyclopaedia (1942)

• http://www.archive.org/details/PaintingMaterial 

Useful glossaries and lexicons (MITRA)

• https://www.artcons.udel.edu/mitra/Documents/Useful-Glossaries-and-Lexicons.pdf 

• Great collection of links to glossaries and lexicons of terms related to artwork conservation, painting, printmaking, photography, glass and ceramics.

Subtractive Mixing Theory

Paint Mixing

The dimensions of colour - Section 6 Mixing of paints (David Briggs)

• http://www.huevaluechroma.com/061.php (mixing paints)

• http://www.huevaluechroma.com/063.php (paint-mixing principles)

Frank Reilly, The Reilly papers (John Ennis)

• http://ennisart.blogspot.com/2010/12/reilly-palette-reilly-neutrals.html 

• http://ennisart.blogspot.com/2010/12/reilly-palette-palette-of-convenience.html 

• Entries on the palette and paint mixing from the hand-written lecture notes of Frank J. Reilly, a highly influential American teacher from the mid-20th century, who devised an elaborate system of representational painting based on the Munsell system.  

Munsell unlocked my palette Part 2 - How artists can mix any colour they want  (Paul Foxton)

• https://munsell.com/color-blog/mixing-paint-colors-paul-foxton-part1/ 

• https://munsell.com/color-blog/mixing-paint-colors-paul-foxton-part2/ 

• Principles of colour matching in paints using the Munsell framework.

Colour mixing for oil and acrylic painters (Paul Foxton)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPDmhcKZhjU 

• Practical demonstration of colour matching in paints using the Munsell framework.

Colour mixing tools (Zsolt Kovacs-Vajna)

• http://zsolt-kovacs.unibs.it/colormixingtools

• Suite of free programs comprising: Color2Drop (a program to convert RGB, Lab or Munsell HVC color coordinates into paint mixing recipes), Drop2Color (a program to visualize the color of mixed paint recipes) and RS2Color (a program to visualize the color of reflectance spectra).

Golden Paint Mixer (Golden Paints)

• https://www.goldenpaints.com/mixer 

• Online program that predicts mixtures of various Golden Paints ranges needed to match a selected RGB colour.

Sensual logic paintMaker (Christian Skeel)

• http://sensuallogic.com/

• Online program that predicts mixtures of various ranges of artists' paints needed to match a selected RGB colour, based on various ranges of Zsolt Kovacs-Vajna's colour mixing tools.

Subtractive color mixture computation (Scott Burns)

• http://scottburns.us/subtractive-color-mixture/ 

Oil painting assistant (Mike Rozak)

• https://web.archive.org/web/20130409032856/http://mxac.com.au/

• Pioneering attempt at an oil painting app.

Colour in Printing

Color printing in the nineteenth century. An exhibition at the Hugh M. Morris Library University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, August 27 - December 19, 1996.

• http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/color/

CMYK history (Brian Gamm)

• https://cmykhistory.com/

• A new blog "uncovering the history of color in the graphic arts and beyond".

Colour in Painting

Artists' pigments 1780-1880: history and uses (Studio Mara)

• http://www.lilinks.com/mara/history.html

Behind the scenes (The National Gallery)

• https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/behind-the-scenes/making-colour 

• https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/behind-the-scenes/chemistry-of-colour-malachite

The creation of color in eighteenth-century Europe (Sarah Lowengard)

• http://www.gutenberg-e.org/lowengard/print.html

Taylor, John Scott. A descriptive handbook of modern water-colour pigments (190?)

• https://archive.org/details/gri_c00033125012285439/mode/2up 

• Includes four pages of watercolour wash samples at the front and an extensive catalogue of art supplies at the end.

Ways of pointillism  (video, Cast Your Art, 2016)

• http://www.castyourart.at/podcasts/265_pointillismus_technique.mp4 

ColorAcademy - Artists' palettes and colour mixing (Don Pavey and Roy Osborne)

• https://web.archive.org/web/20150312013900/http://www.coloracademy.co.uk/Online/index.html 

• Comprehensive survey of historical palettes from archived version of the extensive but otherwise unavailable website by Don Pavey and Roy Osborne. 

Oil color palettes (Aaron Miller)

• http://oilcolorpalettes.blogspot.com.au/

Colour in Textiles

Digital archive of documents related to color in textiles

• https://web.archive.org/web/20190316032758/http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/topic_color.html 

Colour in Film

Timeline of historical film colors (Barbara Flueckiger)

• http://zauberklang.ch/filmcolors/

The history and science of color film: From Isaac Newton to the Coen Brothers (Filmmaker IQ)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRheZ_MUYiY

• Good detailed discussion of history of colour technology in cinema (following a very muddled account of Young, Helmholtz and Maxwell!).