VISUAL DICTIONARY

OF COLOUR
Colour Society of Australia NSW Division
International Colour Day exhibit,
National Art School, Sydney,
March 21st - 24th 2017
Text: Dr David Briggs, Chairperson,
NSW Division, Colour Society of Australia
Effective thinking and communication about colour depends on the existence of a
mutually agreed and unambiguous vocabulary. For fundamental terms relating to
what colour is and how it can be described and specified, by far the most
comprehensive and authoritative standard is the International Lighting Vocabulary
of the International Commission on Illumination (CIE, 2011)1. However the verbal
CIE definitions, including those of the six fundamental perceived colour attributes of
hue, brightness, lightness, colourfulness, chroma and saturation, can be difficult for
non-specialists to understand without additional explanation and illustration. In
addition, the CIE definitions do not cover many terms relating to applied colour that
are important to artists and designers. For such terms we often must acknowledge a
number of conflicting usages associated with different traditions .

To celebrate International Colour Day 2017 the NSW Division of the Colour Society
of Australia produced an exhibit on the theme Visual Dictionary of Colour at the
National Art School, Darlinghurst, Sydney. The bulk of the works to be exhibited
were produced by students at the National Art School in the Visual Dictionary of
Colour workshop that I conducted there in Margaret Olley Drawing Week at the start
of the academic year. The brief of the workshop was to contribute to an exhibition
illustrating specific colour-related terms using media of the students’ choice,
including drawing, painting, photography, digital illustration and 3D models. The
student works were supplemented with some digital illustrations made by myself for
a chapter on Colour Spaces for the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Philosophy
of Colour, and for my website The Dimensions of Colour
(www.huevaluechroma.com), and also with student exercises and teaching
demonstrations associated with the history of the National Art School.

The Colour Society is very grateful to the staff of the National Art School for their
assistance with the workshop and the exhibit, especially to Head of Drawing Dr
Maryanne Coutts for making available a space for the exhibit, to NAS archivist
Deborah Beck for making historical items available for photography and display, to
artist and teacher Jocelyn Maughan for permitting me to photograph many of her
teaching materials, and to the students from my workshop and Public Programs
classes at the National Art School who loaned their works for the exhibit. Materials
from the National Art School Collection are reproduced here by kind permission of
NAS archivist, Deborah Beck.

David Briggs

1InternationalCommission on Illumination/ Commission Internationale de L’Eclairage, (2011).

International Lighting Vocabulary. CIE S 017/E:2011. Searchable online at http://eilv.cie.co.at/
CONTENTS
Part 1: What is a Colour? 3

Colour (definition); perceived colour and psychophysical colour; metamerism;

spectrum; spectral reflectance; illuminant; simultaneous contrast.

Part 2: The Attributes of Perceived Colour 13

Lightness; value study; hue; unique hue; student hue circle exercises; chroma;
brightness and colourfulness; saturation; blackness; brilliance.

Part 3: Applied Colour 32

Colour space; Munsell system; digital colour spaces; value key; value interval;
value chord; colour chord; discord; monochromatic, analogous and complementary
colour schemes; triadic and tetradic schemes; restricted gamut; NCS nuance; tints
and shades; washes and glazes; subtractive mixing; subtractive primary hues;
colourant mixing paths.

Part 4: Historical Student Exercises from the NAS Archive 55

PART 1: WHAT IS A COLOUR?

Colour
Colour (perceived): "characteristic of visual perception that can be described by
attributes of hue, brightness (or lightness) and colourfulness (or saturation or
chroma)" (CIE, 2011, 17-198).

Colour (psychophysical): "specification of a colour stimulus in terms of

operationally defined values, such as 3 tristimulus values”1 (CIE, 2011, 17-197).

The view of the fundamental nature of colour embodied in the CIE definitions quoted
above may be said to have three elements. First, qualities of colour such as hue,
lightness and chroma are attributes of visual perception. Second, we must make a
distinction between colour perceptions and the properties of lights and objects that
we see as their colour. Third, the property of a light or an object that we perceive as
its particular colour is a psychophysical property, meaning that it is not simply
physical, but involves the perceiver as well as the stimulus in its definition.
1Tristimulus values are in turn defined as the "amounts of the 3 reference colour stimuli, in a given
trichromatic system, required to match the colour of the stimulus considered" (CIE, 2011, 17-1345).
Perceived Colour and
Psychophysical Colour
The distinction between colour perceptions and the properties of lights and objects
that we see as colour can be traced back to antiquity via Descartes, Locke and
Galileo, but begins in substantial detail with Sir Isaac Newton's researches into the
physical basis of colour. In the well-known passage from his Opticks (1704) shown
below Newton explicitly distinguishes between colour as a psychological perception
("sensation") and the properties we call colours "in the rays" and "in the object".
Below: Extract from Newton’s Opticks (1704).
Metamerism
For Newton, colours “in the rays” are their "power" or "disposition" to be seen as this
or that perceived colour, which for an isolated light depends on the relative balance
of the component "rays" (we would now say wavelengths), represented
approximately by their "center of gravity" in his colour circle (Fig. 7.1.5). This
position is neither a purely physical nor a purely psychological property, but involves
a relation between the two, now called psychophysical. A psychophysical colour
specification represents a class of physically varied stimuli that are indistinguishable
to an observer, such as the CIE 1931 standard colorimetric observer.

As Newton’s diagram implies, most colours of light can be evoked by many different
combinations of "rays" having the same centre of gravity. This means that a given
colour of light does not correspond to a single physical combination of "rays" but to a
whole class of combinations (we would now say spectral power distributions, Fig.
1.2.3) that happen to be indistinguishable to the human visual system. We now call
members of such a class metameric, and believe that they are indistinguishable to
human vision because they evoke the same relative response of the three cone cell
types on which our colour vision depends.
Below: 1. Newton hue circle (David Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour,
www.huevaluechroma.com/071.php). 2. Three metameric “warm white” lights in the CIE xy
chromaticity diagram, a modern descendant of Newton’s circle (David Briggs, The Dimensions of
Colour, www.huevaluechroma.com/012.php).
Spectrum
Spectrum: term originally introduced by Newton for the rainbow-like band of light
produced by splitting a beam of sunlight using a prism.

Newton’s solar spectrum, like the spectrum of the filtered incandescent bulb of a 35
mm slide projector (below), shows a relatively smooth distribution of energy (called a
spectral power distribution). Other white light sources such as fluorescent tubes
have a much more “spiky” spectral power distribution (see under Metamerism),
producing a spectrum of discrete coloured bands.
Below: 1. Photograph of the spectrum of a 35 slide projector by Clayton Croker, Visual Dictionary of
Colour workshop, 2017. 2. Spectrum painted in watercolour washes by Peta Minnici, Visual
Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017.
Spectral Reflectance
Spectral reflectance: reflectance of an object at each wavelength of the spectrum.

Newton also discovered that the particular colour of an object depends on the
object's "disposition to reflect this or that sort of rays more copiously than the rest".
We now call this disposition its spectral reflectance). As with colours of light, a whole
class of spectral reflectances are indistinguishable (metameric) to the human visual
system under the same illumination, so that the particular colours of objects are also
psychophysical rather than purely physical properties.

By shining a spectrum onto paint samples it is possible to directly demonstrate which

wavelengths each paint samples reflects and which wavelengths it absorbs. For
example, all bright yellow paints efficiently reflect most of the red, orange, yellow
and green wavelengths that fall on them.
Below: Red, yellow, green, blue and magenta paint samples under white light (above) and under the
spectrum of a 35 mm slide projector (below), photographed by Clayton Croker and Jess Amos Visual
Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017.

Illuminant
Illuminant: radiation with a relative spectral power distribution defined over the
wavelength range that influences object colour perception. NOTE In everyday
English this term is not restricted to this sense, but is also used for any kind of light
falling on a body or scene (CIE 2011, 17-554).

The reflectance of an object depends on the product of the balance of wavelengths

(spectral power distribution) of the light source (illuminant) and the spectral
reflectance of the object. The effects of coloured illumination follow the principles of
subtractive mixing, since only wavelengths present in the light source and not
absorbed by the surface can be reflected. Coloured lighting tends to neutralize and
darken complementary-coloured surfaces, while similar coloured objects increase in
lightness relative to neutral objects. Colours also shift towards the hue of the
coloured light.
Below: Six coloured spheres under different coloured illuminants, photographed by Clayton Croker,
Visual Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017.
Simultaneous Contrast
Simultaneous contrast: change in perceived colour when two areas with the same
colour specification (psychophysical colour) are placed in different surrounds. In
simultaneous contrast the perceived colour of an area tends to move away from the
colour of the surround in hue, value and/or chroma.
Below: 1. Two squares having the same psychophysical colour specification (R180 G108 B108 as an
sRGB screen colour, 5R 5/6 as a Munsell notation) have different perceived colours when viewed in
different contexts (A) but match when viewed in the same context (B) (David Briggs, Colour Spaces in
Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour, in press).

2,3. Demonstrations of simultaneous contrast using gouache. The same paint colour appears darker
against a light background and lighter against a dark background. Elizabeth Creixell, Visual
Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017.
PART 2: THE ATTRIBUTES OF
PERCEIVED COLOUR
The six attributes mentioned in the definition of perceived colour - hue, brightness,
lightness, colourfulness, saturation and chroma - are all defined perceptually, that
is, as attributes of visual perception rather than as physical properties of lights or
objects. None of the six are alternative names for the same thing: a perceived colour
can be described in terms of hue, lightness and chroma if it is seen as belonging to an
illuminated object, or in terms of either hue, brightness and saturation or hue,
brightness and colourfulness if it is seen as belonging to light.

Another set of perceived attributes of object colours, not currently defined by the
CIE, consists of proportions of black, white and colour content considered as
perceived components of an object colour. Black content or blackness is however
used as a dimension in the historical Ostwald System and in the modern
Scandinavian Natural colour System, and in his book The Perception of Color (1974)
Kodak scientist Ralph Evans introduced the term brilliance for this scale from
blackness to luminosity.
Below: Attributes of colours perceived as belonging to (A) objects and (B) light (David Briggs, The
Dimensions of Colour, www.huevaluechroma.com/011.php).
Lightness
Lightness: "brightness of an area judged relative to the brightness of a similarly
illuminated area that appears to be white or highly transmitting" (CIE 2011, 17-680).

Lightness, value, greyscale value, and tone are all very closely related or identical in
meaning. Lightness, value and greyscale value refer to the scale from black through
various shades of grey to white, increasing in that order. The word tone as used by
painters refers (in one of its senses) to the same scale, but may be deemed to increase
from white to black. Lightness is how we perceive the luminous reflectance of an
object.

Painters most commonly specify lightness in terms of Munsell value in traditional

media and in terms of Lightness (L) in Lab colour space (based on CIE L*a*b* space)
in digital painting.

If the lightness information in an image is isolated from the chromatic information,

remarkably large amounts of the legibility and compositional structure are preserved
Below: 1. Lightness scales used by painters, David Briggs, NAS AHT elective Theories of Colour. 2.
Demonstration of importance of lightness content in a pictorial image. (David Briggs, The Dimensions
of Colour, www.huevaluechroma.com/014.php).
Value Study
A copy or study painted using a series of greyscale mixtures, with the purpose of
developing an awareness of absolute value (lightness).

Munsell-based value scales used by painters and painting teachers generally have
either nine or eleven levels, counting black and white paint as levels one and nine, or
zero and ten, respectively. A nine-level Munsell-based value scale was used at NAS in
the 1950’s in the colour course of Phyllis Shillito, and at Meadowbank TAFE in the
1970’s, under the evident influence of Maitland Graves’ 1941 book The Art of Color
and Design (see below under Value Key, Value Interval and Value Chord).
Below: 1. Painting copy exercise in Munsell greyscale values, Juliemma Moran. 2. Still life painting
exercise in Munsell greyscale values, Alexia Manzoni. Both from Oil Painting with Colour and Light
(NAS public programs course, teacher David Briggs), Term 1, 2017.
Hue
Hue: "attribute of a visual perception according to which an area appears to be
similar to one of the colours: red, yellow, green, and blue, or to a combination of
adjacent pairs of these colours considered in a closed ring" (CIE, 2011 17-542).

The hue of any colour is its closest match in the circuit of "pure" or "saturated"
colours known to artists as the colour wheel. Thus the hue of a brown object is the
particular orange-yellow to orange-red that it most closely resembles.

The CIE definition of hue attributes the cycle of hues to successive combinations of
four hues identified in a separate definition as the "unique" or "unitary" hues, in
acknowledgment of the widely accepted theory of colour opponency. By this theory,
hue perceptions are generated in the visual system in the form of red/green and
yellow/blue perceptions or “signals” based indirectly on information from the
relative cone responses of the retina. Colour opponency is also explicitly
acknowledged in the hue circle of the Scandinavian Natural Colour System (NCS).
Below: Generation of spectral colours according to the colour-opponent model of colour vision
(David Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour, http://www.huevaluechroma.com/014.php).
Hue is how we perceive the direction of bias of the spectral power distribution of a
light (its distribution of energy through the spectrum) or of the spectral reflectance of
an object (its reflectance through the spectrum). In general terms a yellow vs blue
perception is evoked by long or middle vs short wavelength dominance, while a red
vs green perception is evoked by long OR short vs middle wavelength dominance

For example, paints that strongly reflect the middle and long wavelength parts of the
spectrum are seen as being strongly yellow, and either slightly greenish, slightly
reddish, or neither depending on the relative size of the middle and long wavelength
contributions. In Gamblin Cadmium Yellow Light (below) these contributions are
approximately evenly balanced and the paint is seen as middle yellow, neither
greenish nor reddish, while in Gamblin Cadmium Yellow Medium the contribution
from the middle (green-evoking) part of the spectrum is smaller, and so the paint
colour is seen as having a red component (Fig. 1.4.5). Titanium White is seen as
being neutral because its spectral reflectance has no substantial bias.
Below: Effect on perceived hue of a small difference in bias of spectral reflectance between two yellow
artists’ paints (David Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour, http://www.huevaluechroma.com/014.php).
Unique Hue
Unique hue: "hue that cannot be further described by the use of hue names other
than its own. Equivalent term: "unitary hue". NOTE There are 4 unique hues: red,
green, yellow and blue forming 2 pairs of opponent hues: red and green, yellow and
blue." (CIE, 2011, 17-1373).
Below: Left, paint swatches supplied by fifteen students of the 2017 Visual Dictionary of Colour
workshop as representative of the hue that appears unique red, yellow green and blue to them. Right,
photographed colours of all fifteen supplied colour swatches plotted in CIE L*a*b* colour space using
the program ColorSpace by Philippe Colantoni. The general positions of each hue group and the
particularly high variation in choices of unique green both align with published studies based on
choosing Munsell colour chips.
Student Hue Circle Exercises
1. Munsell hue circle exercises by Tony Tuckson, Sydney Technical College, 1947-49. The circles are
labelled with the Munsell principal hues (R, Y, G, B, and P) and abbreviations for specific pigments,
probably including alizarin crimson (“AC”), chrome yellow (“CrY”), cerulean blue (“CerB”), prussian
blue (“PrB”) ultramarine (“UL”), yellow ochre (“Yo”) venetian red (“VR”), indian red (“IR”), light red
(“LR”) and lamp black (“LBlack”). National Art School Collection.

2. Colour wheel exercise by Jocelyn Maughan from the colour class taught by Phyllis Shillito within
the Diploma course at East Sydney Technical College in 1958. Shillito’s “No 1” colour wheel is a
distinctive 15-hue arrangement with each of the three traditional “primary colours” represented by
two specified pigments representing a warm and a cool version of each, plus three “secondary colours”
and six intermediate “Sub-primary colours”. Collection of Jocelyn Maughan.

3. Colour wheel exercise by Jocelyn Maughan from the colour class taught by Phyllis Shillito within
the Diploma course at East Sydney Technical College in 1958. “Tertiary” colour wheel with concentric
discs representing double-primary, secondary, and nine “tertiary” each represented by eight tones.
Collection of Jocelyn Maughan.

4. Colour wheel exercise by Deborah Beck, Meadowbank TAFE, 1973. Fifteen-hue colour wheel very
similar to Jocelyn Maughan’s Shilltio wheel from 1958, apart from the cadmium yellows in place of
chrome and lemon yellow. National Art School Collection.

5. Colour wheel exercise by Deborah Beck, Meadowbank TAFE, 1973. Twelve-hue colour wheel with
similar primaries to 3. National Art School Collection.

6. Colour wheel exercise by Deborah Beck, Meadowbank TAFE, 1973. “Tertiary colour wheel”,
showing “shade, tertiary colour, tint, lighter tint” for nine “tertiary colours” mixed from three mixed
secondary colours. National Art School Collection.

7. Colour wheel exercise by Ann Roxburgh, Meadowbank TAFE, 1973. Colour star reminiscent of
Itten’s design but with 15 hues as in Jocelyn Maughan’s 1958 Shillito “No 1” wheel, with the six “warm
and cool” primaries repeated in the central disc. National Art School Collection.

8. Colour wheel exercise by student at Hornsby TAFE, 1970s. The diagram closely follows the design
of Itten’s twelve-hue colour circle from The Art of Color (1961). The “secondary” and “tertiary”*
colours appear to have been mixed from the three specified primary colours (cadmium [yellow] deep,
cadmium red and cerulean blue), and as is inevitable with paints of these hues the resulting purples
are very low in chroma. National Art School Collection.

9. Student colour wheel exercise by Rosemary Robins, Hornsby TAFE, 1979. Adaptation of Itten’s
design to include “warm and cool” versions of each primary colour, and a total of fifteen hues, as in
Shillito’s “No 1” wheel. The “warm and cool” primaries mix a much greater gamut of colours than the
single primaries of diagram 8, largely because of the presence of magenta and cyan subtractive
primaries as the “cool” red and “cool” blue respectively. National Art School Collection.

*The historical term "tertiary colour" was introduced by George Field in 1817 with the meaning of
greyed colours that in Field's view "contain" all three of the historical "primary colours", red, yellow
and blue, and “tertiary” is used in this sense in exhibits 3 and 6. An entirely different usage of
"tertiary colour", which dates at least to John Ruskin in 1877, refers to the six third-order hues of a 12-
hue "colour wheel", and “tertiary” is used in this sense in exhibit 9. Both conceptions of "tertiary
colour" are absent from standard CIE colour terminology, in which greyed object colours are simply
said to have low chroma.
Exhibits 1 and 4-9 reproduced by kind permission of NAS archivist Deborah Beck.
Chroma
Chroma: "colourfulness of an area judged as a proportion of the brightness of a
similarly illuminated area that appears white or highly transmitting"(CIE, 2011, 17-
139).

Chroma is the chromatic strength of an object colour, the perceived amount of

difference from a grey of the same lightness (value). The formal definition above is
based on the idea that when a chromatic light-reflecting object is increasingly
strongly illuminated, the colourfulness of its appearance increases, but the
brightness of a similarly illuminated white object increases proportionately, so its
intrinsic strength of colour or chroma can be defined as the colourfulness judged
relative to this brightness.
Below: 1. Effect on chroma of a difference in amount of bias of spectral reflectance of two yellow
artists’ paints (David Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour, www.huevaluechroma.com/015.php). 2.
Value-chroma chart (below, with tint-shade scales above) by Jocelyn Maughan, used as teaching
material at Meadowbank TAFE. Collection of Jocelyn Maughan.
Brightness and Colourfulness
Brightness: "attribute of a visual perception according to which an area appears to
emit, or reflect, more or less light. NOTE The use of this term is not restricted to
primary light sources" (CIE, 2011, 17-111).

Colourfulness: "attribute of a visual perception according to which the perceived

colour of an area appears to be more or less chromatic" (CIE, 2011, 17-233).

Consider a stripe of red paint passing between shadow and light. By virtue of the pre-
conscious processes that equip our vision with a high degree of colour constancy, we
instantly, effortlessly and automatically see the stripe as being the same colour, that
is, as having the same red object colour, over its whole length. This red colour can be
specified in terms of an object colour notation such as Munsell hue, value and
chroma, and we could confirm that the stripe matches the same Munsell chip placed
beside it in the shadow and in the light. Nevertheless, the appearance of the stripe is
brighter and more colourful in the light than in the shadow. The colour attributes of
brightness and colourfulness pertain to the perceived colour of the light reaching our
eyes from different parts of the stripe, rather than to the object colour seen as
belonging to the stripe itself. Brightness is how we perceive the amount of light
emitted, transmitted or reflected by an area. Colourfulness is how we perceive the
absolute amount of spectral bias of a light; it is the cumulative effect of its saturation
(q.v.) and brightness.
Below: Demonstration of distinction between lightness and chroma vs brightness and colourfulness.
David Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour, http://www.huevaluechroma.com/016.php).
Saturation
Saturation: "colourfulness of an area judged in proportion to its brightness" (CIE,
2011, 17-1136).

The word “saturation” is often used loosely for chroma or for some form of relative
chroma, but is defined by the CIE as a distinct attribute of perceived colour. For an
object colour, saturation is in effect chroma judged relative to lightness. In the first
diagram below, the dark ruby reds R1 and R2 have lower chroma that R3, but their
chroma relative to their lightness, or saturation, is similarly high.

On a Munsell hue page, lines of uniform saturation radiate from near the black point,
in contrast to the vertical lines of uniform chroma. These lines of uniform saturation
are important because they define the colours of a shading series, that is, image
colours that evoke the appearance of a uniformly coloured diffusely-reflecting object
turning under a light source.
Below: 1. Pair of diagrams explaining CIE definition of saturation. 2. Lines of uniform saturation on
Munsell hue pages from the Munsell Book of Colour and for digital colours. 3. Demonstration of
shading series, that is, lines of uniform saturation (David Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour,
www.huevaluechroma.com/017.php).
Blackness
Blackness: the perceived amount of black in the [object] colour relative to pure
black. A colour with the notation S 2060-Y10R has a blackness value of 20. Colours
with the same blackness are found along the straight lines parallel to the side W-C on
the NCS Colour Triangle (NCS UK glossary,
http://www.ncscolour.co.uk/information/ncs-glossary.html).

The Scandinavian Natural Colour System (NCS) and the historically important
Ostwald system both use an attribute of perceived object colour, known as black
content or blackness, not currently defined by the CIE. In both systems object
colours are considered to be divisible in black, white and full colour components,
represented on triangular hue pages that together make up a double-cone space,
although in the NCS system this space is only partly filled with colour samples. The
NCS differs from the Ostwald system in being based purely on colour perception.
Lines of uniform NCS blackness descend obliquely outwards on Munsell hue pages at
an angle that varies according to hue.
Below: 1. Diagram of NCS system. 2. Lines of uniform NCS blackness on four Munsell hue pages
paints (David Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour, www.huevaluechroma.com/018.php).
Brilliance
Brilliance: relative brightness of an area judged on a scale proceeding from black
through decreasing blackness (or "greyness") to fluorent (fluorescent-looking) and
then self-luminous. Brilliance "may be considered negative for grayness and
positive for fluorence, or simply continuous from the black point" (Evans, 1974, p.
100).

In his book The Perception of Color (1974) Kodak scientist Ralph Evans introduced
the term brilliance for a scale from blackness to luminosity. Evans found that for a
given surround luminance, a central stimulus below a certain luminance was
perceived as being black, and increasing the luminance above this threshold evoked
decreasing perceived black content up to a point where the latter disappears. This
point of zero black content occurs at varying lightness for stimuli of different hues
and different saturations. Increasing the luminance above this level results in the
perception of a fluorescent object colour (fluorence) and eventually the perception of
a light source.

What makes Beau Lotto's remarkable "Cube I" illusion (below) so striking is that the
same image colour is perceived as a black-containing object colour and as a highly
fluorent or luminous colour in different parts of the image.
Below: 1. Illustration of scale of brilliance: the same three ellipses vary in brilliance in different
contexts. 2. In Lotto's cube illusion the same image colour is perceived as a black-containing object
colour and as a highly fluorent or luminous colour in different parts of the image (David Briggs, The
Dimensions of Colour, www.huevaluechroma.com/018.php).
PART 3: APPLIED COLOUR
In this section we illustrate a miscellany of terms relating to the scientific, technical
and aesthetic aspects of colour practice. We are grateful to be able to include student
exercises and teaching materials associated with the history of the National Art
School illustrating various subjective concepts of colour design. Materials from the
National Art School Collection are reproduced by kind permission of NAS archivist
Deborah Beck.

Colour Space
Colour space: geometric representation of colour in space, usually of 3 dimensions
(CIE, 2011, 17-226).
Below: 1. Comparison of gamut (colour range) of an artists’ acrylic paint range with sRGB colour
space. image, David Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour, www.huevaluechroma.com/015.php.

2. A standard digital colour space (sRGB) represented in various colour spaces. David Briggs (in
press, from Chapter 8, Colour Spaces in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour.
Munsell System
Munsell system: system for specifying object colours in terms of perceptually even
scales of hue (Munsell hue) lightness (Munsell value) and chroma (Munsell chroma),
invented by the artist and art teacher Albert Munsell in the early 20 th century.
Below: 1 On left, response to the concept of a tree of colours by Helen Coates-Milton and other
students in the Visual Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017, and on right, model of Munsell colour
space, Nina Price, Lilly Marshall, Clayton Croker, Samuel Briant and Jess Amos, from same workshop.
2. Another view of the model of Munsell colour space. 3. Munsell hue circle exercises by Tony
Tuckson, Sydney Technical College, 1947-49. National Art School Collection.

Cleland's illustration of Munsell's

conception of his system as a tree of
colours (T. M. Cleland, 1921, A
practical description of the Munsell
color system.
Digital Colour Spaces
RGB: cubic digital colour space specifying colours according to relative red, green
and blue components, usually on a nonlinear scale.

HSB: digital colour space classifying RGB colours according to hue angle (H),
relative saturation (S) and relative brightness (B).

CIE L*a*b* colour space: three-dimensional, approximately uniform colour space

produced by plotting in rectangular coordinates L* (CIE lightness) and a* and b*
(chromatic coordinates corresponding roughly to redness/greenness and
yellowness/blueness respectively). A version of CIE L*a*b* called Lab space is of
central importance in Photoshop.
Below : Models of RGB, HSB and Lab digital colour space in air-drying clay by Rachel Seeto, Visual
Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017 (painted by David Briggs).
Value Key
Low key: “A composition in which the dominant [Munsell] value is approximately 1,
2 or 3” (Graves, 1941, The Art of Color and Design, p. 281).

Intermediate key: “A composition in which the dominant [Munsell] value is

approximately 4, 5 or 6” (Graves, 1941, The Art of Color and Design, p. 281).

High key: “A composition in which the general or prevailing tonality or dominant

value is approximately [Munsell value] 7, 8 or 9” (Graves, 1941, The Art of Color and
Design, p. 280).

Maitland Graves, 1941, The Art of Color and Design, p. 137. The value scale is a nine-
value Munsell scale.
Value Interval
Major: “Large or great interval, strong contrast, such as between values that are 5, 6
or 7 [Munsell value] steps apart” (Graves, 1941, The Art of Color and Design, p. 281).

Minor: “Small interval, closed up, muted. Subdued, muffled or weak contrast such
as between values that are three [Munsell value] steps apart or less” (Graves, 1941,
The Art of Color and Design, p. 282).
Below: 1. Value key and value interval chart exercise by Deborah Beck for the colour course taught at
Meadowbank TAFE in 1973. 2. Value key and interval composition exercise by a student from the
colour course at Hornsby TAFE in the 1970s. 3. Value key and interval composition exercise by Ann
Roxburgh from the colour course at Meadowbank TAFE in the 1970s. 1-3 Collection of National Art
School. 4. Value key and interval composition exercise (intermediate minor) by Kim Macnaught,
Visual Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017.
Value Chord
Value chord: “A value combination in which the values and the intervals between
the values or the value rhythm is planned according to the principles of design. This
term distinguishes such an organized value relationship from a value combination in
which the Value Rhythm is not so planned” (Graves, 1941, The Art of Color and
Design, p. 285).

Maitland Graves, 1941, The Art

of Color and Design, p. 156.
The value scale is a nine-value
Munsell scale.

Colour Chord
Colour chord: “A colour combination in which the colors and the intervals between
the colours, or the color rhythm, is planned according to the principles of design.
This term distinguishes such an organized color relationship from a color
combination in which the Color Rhythm is not so planned” (Graves, 1941, The Art of
Color and Design, p. 285).

The colour course taught by Phyllis Shillito at the East Sydney Technical College
included exercises in value chords and colour chords that closely follow diagrams
from Maitland Graves’ book The Art of Color and Design (1941, 1951). These
concepts had also been emphasized in the first decades of the twentieth century by
Denman Ross and his former student Arthur Pope.
Below: 1, Value chord and 2, colour chord exercises by Jocelyn Maughan from the colour course
taught by Phyllis Shillito within the Diploma course at the East Sydney Technical College in 1958.
Collection of Jocelyn Maughan.
Discord
1. “Extreme contrast or opposition” (Maitland Graves, 1941, The Art of Color and
Design, p. 279).

2. “reversal of the natural order” of colours (H. Barrett Carpenter, Suggestions for the
Study of Colour, 1915). “Reversal” here refers to the order of values representing
different hues relative to the order of values of their “full” colour versions; Carpenter
considers such reversals “unendurable” in large quantities but to add much to
brilliance in small quantities.
Below: Teaching materials on discords (in second sense) by Jocelyn Maughan, Meadowbank TAFE.
Collection of Jocelyn Maughan.
Monochromatic, Analogous and
Complementary Colour Schemes
Monochromatic, analogous and complementary colour schemes feature widely in
systems of “colour harmony”, the most important early source being Chevreul.

Chevreul [tr. Spanton, 1857], The Laws of Contrast of Colour.

Triadic and Tetradic Schemes

Symmetrical triadic and tetradic colour schemes also feature in various “colour
harmony” systems, and seems to derive ultimately from the suggestion by Ogden
Rood that “colours less than 80 or 90 degrees apart suffer from harmful contrast,
while those more distant help each other” (Modern Chromatics, 1879, p. 292).
Below: Triadic and tetradic colour schemes used in exhibits 3 and 4 below in Munsell 40-hue circle.

Next two pages: 1, 2, Abstract compositions using analogous and complementary (“Harmonious”
and “Contrasting”) hue schemes, Ann Roxburgh from the colour course at Meadowbank TAFE in the
1970s. Collection of National Art School. 3. Abstract composition using triadic hue scheme. 4.
Figurative composition based on tetradic hue scheme. Maria Constantinescu, Visual Dictionary of
Colour workshop, 2017.
Restricted Gamut
A restricted gamut automatically results from mixing all colours from a limited
palette consisting of a very small number of colourants (often three), especially if
these are far from the ideal subtractive primaries.
Below: 1. Two student design exercises, possibly by Rose Vickers, East Sydney Technical College,
1962. Collection of National Art School. 2. RGB colours from photographs of 1, plotted in CIE*L*a*b*
space.
NCS Nuance
Nuance: “a colour's relationship to black and to maximum colour intensity or
chromaticness. The other element needed to describe a colour would be the hue.
Colours that have the same nuance but a different hue will be found in exactly the
same location of the NCS Colour Triangle” (NCS UK glossary,
http://www.ncscolour.co.uk/information/ncs-glossary.html).

A concept of “colour harmony” associated with the historical Ostwald system and the
modern Scandinavian Natural Colour System is that of unity of “nuance” in these
systems, that is equality of black, white and colour content for different hues (see
Blackness). In addition to the unity imparted by their shared black/ white/
chromatic content, such sets of colours maintain the relative lightness relationships
shown by the full colours of each hue (yellow lightest, etc.). Sets of colours related in
this way have long been labelled a "concord", in contrast to a "discord" (q.v) where
the "natural order" of lightness of the different hues is disrupted.
Below: Comparison of colour set of identical “nuance” with set of identical value and chroma (David
Briggs, The Dimensions of Colour, www.huevaluechroma.com/018.php).
Tints and Shades
Tint: object colour perceived to consist of a pure colour plus white, without any
black content.

Shade: object colour perceived to consist of pure colour plus black, without any
white content.
Below: 1. Tint-shade scale by Rose Espinosa, Visual Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017. 2.
Exercise in tints and shades of progressive mixtures of two paint-mixing complementaries. Student
exercise by Deborah Beck for the colour course taught at Meadowbank TAFE in 1973. Collection of
National Art School.
Washes and Glazes
Wash: Layer of colourant applied with a flowing, liquid consistency. Washes are the
dominant mode of watercolour application and may be built up in many
superimposed layers.

Glaze: generally “a thin transparent layer of oil color of a darker value applied over
either an opaque or transparent layer of oil or tempera underpainting of a lighter
value” (Mayer, 1991, The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques, Fifth
edition).
Below: Demonstration of superimposed watercolour washes, Peta Minnici, Visual Dictionary of
Colour workshop, 2017.
Subtractive Mixing
Subtractive mixing: “colour mixing” (strictly, colour stimulus synthesis) “brought
about by the transmission of light through two or more superimposed transparent or
semitransparent colorants” (Burnham, Hanes and Bartelson, 1957, Color: a Guide to
Basic Facts and Concepts).
Below: Demonstration of subtractive mixing of superimposed crimson and blue watercolour washes,
Peta Minnici, Visual Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017.
Subtractive Primary Hues
Subtractive primary hues: Optimal hues for mixing a large gamut of colours in
processes primarily involving subtractive mixing, including physical intermixture of
paints and superimposition of transparent colourants (glazes and washes).
Colourants close to yellow, magenta and cyan are optimal for such processes in all
media.
Below: 1. Comparison of gamut of cyan, magenta and yellow pigmented inks with gamut of inks of
the historical “primary” hues (red, blue and yellow). Diagrams on right show ranges of photographed
colours in CIE L*a*b* colour space; some ink colours near yellow are beyond the RGB gamut of the
photograph and so are clipped. Helen Morgan, Visual Dictionary of Colour workshop, 2017. 2. Similar
comparison to 1, using artists’ watercolours. Helen Morgan, Visual Dictionary of Colour workshop,
2017.
Colourant Mixing Paths
Mixing paths of paints visualized as paths through a three dimensional colour space,
such as a hue-lightness-chroma space like the Munsell system.
Below: 1. Predicted colourant mixing paths for white and yellow acrylic paints calculated using the
program drop2color by Zsolt Kovacs. Note hue shifts of some paints. 2. Three-dimensional model of
colourant mixing paths in Munsell space of titanium white paint (left) and lemon yellow (right) with
other paints from the NAS first-year student recommended list. 3, 4. Detailed views of models. Visual
Dictionary of Colour workshop team including, Owen Morgan, Rachel Seeto, Helen Morgan and
others, 2017.
PART 4: HISTORICAL STUDENT
EXERCISES FROM THE NATIONAL
ART SCHOOL ARCHIVE

Back row, colour theory exercises, left to right:

1. Munsell hue circle exercises by Tony Tuckson, Sydney Technical College, 1947-49.

2. “Green grid”, student colour theory exercise by Tony Tuckson, Sydney Technical
College, 1947-49.

3. Colour wheel exercise by Ann Roxburgh, Meadowbank TAFE, 1973. Colour star
reminiscent of Itten’s design but with 15 hues as in Jocelyn Maughan’s 1958 Shillito
“No 1” wheel, with the six “warm and cool” primaries repeated in the central disc.

4. Colour wheel exercise by Ann Roxburgh, Meadowbank TAFE, 1973. “Tertiary

Colour Wheel + Tints & Shades”.

5. Colour wheel exercise by student at Hornsby TAFE, 1970s. The diagram closely
follows the design of Itten’s twelve-hue colour circle from The Art of Color (1961).
The “secondary” and “tertiary”* colours appear to have been mixed from the three
specified primary colours (cadmium [yellow] deep, cadmium red and cerulean blue),
and as is inevitable with paints of these hues the resulting purples are very low in
chroma.

6. Student colour wheel exercise by Rosemary Robins, Hornsby TAFE, 1979.

Adaptation of Itten’s design to include “warm and cool” versions of each primary
colour, and a total of fifteen hues, as in Shillito’s “No 1” wheel. The “warm and cool”
primaries mix a much greater gamut of colours than the single primaries of diagram
5, largely because of the presence of a magenta subtractive primary as the “cool” red.

Front row, colour and design exercises, left to right:

1. Student design exercise by Jean Weir, Sydney Technical College, 1948.

2. Student design exercise by Miriam Deen, East Sydney Technical College, 1970s.

3, 4. Two student design exercises, possibly by Rose Vickers, East Sydney Technical
College, 1962.

5. Student design exercise by J. Cox, Hornsby TAFE, 1970s.

6. Student design exercise Ann Roxburgh, Meadowbank TAFE, 1973.

All works from the National Art School Collection, reproduced here with kind
permission of NAS archivist Deborah Beck.