Book Description

Color is addressed to artists and art students in all media, in both fine and applied arts. It provides an informative but non-dogmatic introduction to the many different approaches to understanding color, including aesthetics, science, psychology, and history. Illustrations for the chapters on color concepts are taken from all media. Special aesthetic and practical considerations for color usage in each medium such as ways that graphic designers use and specify printers' inks are also explored.  The realities of color use are accentuated by direct quotes from working artists.  Technical terms are carefully defined in the text and also in a glossary. Those appearing in the glossary are printed in boldface when first introduced in the text.

 

This fourth edition of Color reflects the tremendous range of color choices in the studio and the marketplace. There are now millions of colors available through computer graphics, more than the human eye can even distinguish. The section on computer-generated colors includes the complications of color matching when designers are working with both computer and printing technologies. Color choices in such crafts fields as ceramics, glass, and fibers are also mushrooming as they cross the soft boundary between fine and applied arts. Optical color effects continue to be an area of artistic experimentation, and these are illustrated and discussed in detail. In the midst of these burgeoning choices, students are given a clear and solid foundation for understanding uses of color. Some 35 lively new images have been added to this edition, from cave paintings to twenty-first century virtual reality installations. Illustrations of points under discussion reflect the great variety in color applications, including historic and contemporary paintings, sculpture, installation pieces, crafts, photographs, advertisements, cartoons, commercial design, computer art, video, architecture, landscape design, interior design, and clothing. The work of women and multicultural art are naturally interwoven throughout the text.

 

For this edition, new visual demonstrations have been added, such as the effects of different lighting sources, reflective qualities of different surfaces, the Bezold Effect, and the phenomenon of color constancy. There is new material on the emotional and physiological effects of different hues, and on the spatial effects of colors. Cutting-edge virtual reality and video installations are illustrated and discussed. Website design and current printing technologies are included in updated discussions of computer-based art. Technical sections have been modified for greater clarity and ease of understanding. Technical material is provided in ways that can form take-off points for artists' own explorations of the intriguing world of color. A special characteristic of this book is its extensive use of artists' own words about their use of color. More such quotations have been incorporated into this edition, and a new feature has been added: artists' quotations introducing each chapter. Another special new feature of this edition is an appendix of Studio Color Problems. These comprise a great treasury of practical experiments with color based on the experiential teaching methods of the great colorist Josef Albers. Those using his experiential method might like to assign the first two chapters of the text to develop a general orientation and a basic vocabulary before launching into studio work, and then continue with the more theoretical and practical material introduced later in the book once students have made some discoveries on their own.

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