Page:A color notation (Munsell).djvu/34

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28

QUALITIES

needs a new set of expressive terms, appropriate to its qualities, before we can make an analysis as to the harmony or discord of our color sensations.

(47) This need is supplied in the present system by measured charts, and a notation. Their very construction preserves the balance of colors, as will be shown in the next chapter, while the chapter on harmony (Chapter VII.) shows how harmonious pairs and triads of color may be found by masks with measured intervals. In fact, practice in the use of the charts supplies the imagination with scales and sequences of color quite as definite and quite as easily written as those sound intervals by which the musician conveys to others his sense of harmony. And, although in neither art can training alone make the artist, yet a technical grasp of these formal scales gives acquaintance with the full range of the instrument, and is indispensable to artistic expression. From these color scales each individual is free to choose combinations in accord with his feeling for color harmony.

Let us make an outline of the course of color study traced in the preceding pages.[1]

PERCEPTION of color.

(48)

  • Hue-difference.
    • Middle hues (5 principals).
    • Middle hues (5 intermediates).
    • Middle hues (10 placed in sequence as SCALE of HUE).
  • Value-difference.
    • Light, middle, and dark values (without change of hue).
    • Light, middle, and dark values (traced with 5 principal hues).
    • 10 values traced with each hue. scale of value. The Color Sphere.
  1. See Part II., A Color System and Course of Study.