Feb 15
Warning: Severe geekiness follows!
The Ostwald Colour System
According to Ostwald there were three groups or classes of colours. The first group consisted of neutral colours; those which do not contain colour and are made only from black and white. The second group are pure ‘full colours’, and which contain no black or white. The third group contain mixed colours, combinations of colours with black and/or white. Ostwald identified that all of these groups had at their core four basic hues: yellow, red, blue and sea green. Four further hues - when placed in between the core hues - created orange (between yellow and red), purple (between red and blue), turquoise (between blue and sea green), and leaf green (between sea green and yellow). Finally, two further hues between these colours, created a circle of 24 evenly spaced colours.
The Ostwald Colour System, The Bauhaus and Winsor & Newton
More About Oswald (warned you)
Ostwald’s Basic Contributions to Colorimetry are:
the spectrum & the color circle (semichromes)
the mensuration of the color circle
the structure of the object color solid
the colorimetric color atlas
color & spectral signature
Colorimetry
