Artistic color harmony using the Munsell Color Wheel.
According to Wikipedia "In colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three color dimensions: hue, value (lightness), and chroma (color purity). It was created by Professor Albert H. Munsell in the first decade of the 20th century"
Dr Munsell measured color in a way that had not been known before. Being an artist and art teacher he wanted to find a better way of mixing colors and achieving better color harmony.
Color Harmony
Fast forward many years where I find an extremely well written book, "Color Harmony in you Paintings", written by Margaret Kessler.
Being an oil painter at the time, this book appealed to me for several reasons but one was because it demonstrated and used the Munsell System. Since this book came into my possession I've studied this system and used it to achieve more artistic color harmony in my paintings.
In this post how to use the discordant colors of blue and orange for an example, will be explored.
In her "Color Harmony in your Paintings" book, Margaret Kessler gives a wheel using tube color names and also furnishes a diagram to make and use with this particular color wheel. After using this method of painting my paintings stayed brighter, it was easier to decide which pigment I needed to use - where and so on.
So, now to the colors of today - Blue and Orange - and using Kessler's colors on the wheel. When the transparent diagram is placed over the wheel with Phthalo Blue being the dominant color, Cad Red Light is the complementary color. That is probably not too surprising to you but, the discordant colors could be a surprise. In this example they are Red-Violet and Yellow-Green.
"The Red-Violet could be Venetian Red, Rose Madder, Alizarin Crimson or Quinacridone Red
The Yellow-Green could be Lemon Yellow, Cad. Yellow Pale or Cad. Yellow Light." Margaret Kessler. When these analogous colors are used in a painting they are bright and cheerful, giving the painting an uplifting and happy feeling.
Neutrals and semi-neutrals created from this harmony are much brighter and more lively than when mixed with more traditional color harmonies.
It is not to be said that traditional or the Munsell system are any better or worse than each other. The Munsell system just presents more color harmony in paintings.
In the last post "Color Harmony Paintings Achieved Through a Split Complimentary Color Scheme" http://bit.ly/vYAZJH, a study of the color wheel and color harmony was started.
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