EIJI
SEKINE Representative of the Art
Laboratory LE BEAU
CG ; Tadashi Utsunomiya, the ATELIER LE BEAU
The
Basic Color,the Primary Color,its Number and the
Order.
The Color systems can be classified primarily depending on selected basic colors(black/white)
and primary colors (pure colors in chromatic colors), and those numbers, and
correlation of their order and causality.
1.
One Basic Color ; BLACK or WHITE / Lightness or Darkness a)
Infinitude (Fusion) = In the Oriental philosophy, the phenomena
caused by individuality and relativity like black and white
or lightness and darkness are called "color" and
are regarded as vacancy. Namely," color (phenomenon)
is vacancy itself, vacancy is color(phenomenon) itself",
as Hannya Singyo（般若心経）says.
In that sense, achromatic color is the origin
of all colors, as symbolized in the Oriental black-and-white
drawings.
By the way, in the Occidental EccL says,"vanity of vanities ;
all is vanity."
b) Darkness BLACK = "Xuan"of Lao-tse
(ancient Chinese philosopher) defines the darkness as the origin
of all
substances and phenomena. "Xuan Yuan (dark origin)" is of
the same concept of Xuan.
c) WHITE = White (ray) of Newton's optics is possible to be divided
into the light of all wave-lengths (spectrum colors).
2. Two Basic Colors ; BLACK and WHITE
/ Lightness and Darkness
a) Yin Yang (negative/positive) = In the ancient Chinese philosophy(divination),
all things in nature are regarded as existence in the pair of Yin
Yang two spirits. Accordingly, Yin Yang is black and white as well
as darkness and lightness and also a nothingness and an existence.
b) Lightness and Darkness (WHITE and BLACK) = Aristotle defined that "All
the colors are generated by composition of light and darkness or
white and black". (Leonardo Da Vinci also followed this.)
c) Lightness and Darkness = Goethe defined that "Colors are
generated on an edge between lightness and darkness" .
It is the proposition gained from phenomenon of his edge spectrum.
d) BLACK and WHITE = Chemist Ostwald is color scientist who considered
black most important. His color system consists mainly of black,
white and full(pure) color.
The above-mentioned one basic color and two basic colors are in
the dimension of achromatic color, and the philosophies of life and
the world are the basis of color system. The so-called theories of
primary colors are of the concepts of chromatic color. This theory
of primary color defines the elemental color as the origin of all
colors and the natural light (white light).
3. Three
Primary Colors
a) BLUE, YELLOW, RED = Ancient Chinese divination "Yin Yang Five
Phases" added three primary colors to the basic colors of Black(Yin)
and White(Yang).
b) WHITE, YELLOW, BLACK = Aristotle defines in his metaphysical color
theory that the individual color (primary color) was the property of
four elements. While air, water and soil are White, fire is Yellow.
And Black is generated in accordance with the loss of air and water
by fire.
c) RED, GREEN, BLUE = In the "Theory of Rainbow", Aristotle's
empirical science, he mentioned optical three primary colors.
d) RED, YELLOW, BLUE = Three primary colors of Goethe's edge spectrum
are more precisely defined as Magenta, Yellow, Cyan. He made a hue
circle of six colors with these three primary colors and corresponding
three opposite colors ; Green, Violet and Orange.
In the case of "Red(carmine), Yellow and Blue" by the painter
Otto Runge, three primary colors are defined as pigments systematically.
Runge is in the same era with Goethe or Chevreul , and his theory was
followed by Klee and Itten.
e) VIOLET, GREEN, RED = The physiology of Young-Helmholz's color perception
theory and the physics of Maxwell's electromagnetic wave theory determined
three primary colors of the light as V, G, R.
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4.
Four Primary Colors
a) WHITE, YELLOW, RED, BLACK = Leonardo Da Vinci
b) YELLOW/BLUE, RED/GREEN = Hering. The theory of opposing color of
physiology and psychology regards that color perception is due to the
resolution and synthesis caused by photochemical reaction of retinal
visual pigments such as Yellow/Blue, Red/Green. And then, the color
can be sensed by composing them with black-white retinal pigments.
Hering's color circle (Natural Color System) was formed with eight
principal colors composed of four primary
colors and their complementary colors.
Today's NCS is fully based on Hering's theory.
PCCS (Practicol Color Co-ordinate System ; hue-tone system) is also
based on Herings primary colors and composes complementary twenty four
colors circle.
c) YELLOW/VIOLET, RED/GREEN = Ostwald's theory is different from Hering's
opposing color theory. He determined four primary colors as complementary
two color-pairs by means of "mixing by revolution" and formed
the color circle with eight principal colors by deviding / complementing
the two color-pairs.
The
class of primary color
A primary color cannot be given by mixing
color essentially. While three primary colors in the light are
Violet, Green and Red, but in pigments they are Blue,Yellow and
Red.
(Once, PCCS's color circle was based on six primary colors of the combination
of three primary colors of each light and pigment.)
While Hering's opposing color theory had four primary colors, Ostwald
also claimed two pairs of complementary color (four colors).
There are four kinds of primary colors ; color light, pigments, retinal
visual pigments and color plane (solid color).
But in case of the pigments, the dye (ink) and the opaque pigments give
completely different effect in mixing.
So the color system in fine arts using the pigments adopts five primary
colors by adding the principal colors of Green (Blue and Yellow) and
Purple (Red and Blue) to the primary colors of Blue, Yellow and Red.
5. Five Primary
(Principal) Colors
a) BLUE, GREEN, YELLOW, RED, PURPLE = In Chinese astrology, the chromatic
colors are exactly in the order of wavelength (intensity of energy).
b) YELLOW, RED, PURPLE, GREEN, BLUE = The chromatic colors in Aristotle's
Theory of Sense are arranged from lightness Yellow to blue.
c) RED, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE = Munsell numbered primary colors
from Red (long wavelength) same as Newton, Goethe and Chevreul,and made
the color circle with five primary colors and their complementary colors.
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7.
Seven Primary (Principal) Colors
a) WHITE, YELLOW, RED, PURPLE,GREEN, BLUE, BLACK = In Aristotle's Theory
of Sense, the colors are generated in modification from white to black
as shown in the previously mentioned items of two basic colors and
three primary colors.
b) RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO, VIOLET = Newtonian spectrum
consists of seven colors of five principal colors and two complements
(semi-tone). It was based on the analogy from a musical scale that
he numbered these seven colors from Red.
Although the color system becomes more simple when it has smaller
number of primary and principal colors but it brings some difficulties
in practical coloring to impose to each principal colors the increasing
number of requirements and roles.
The most ideal color system is ; it is simple and still satisfies
all the requirements of various circumstances such as unity of the
whole (one basic color), the relativity of color (two basic colors),
the relative class and correlation of color (three primary colors),
the reciprocal compound and relation of power of color (four primary
colors) , the system of function and interaction fields of color (five
primary colors), the synthesizing and developing of color (six principal
colors) and the circulation of all of the color (seven principal colors).
Needless to say, such system must be valid for all the facts in physics,
physiology, psychology, engineering and practical composition.
In that sense,five primary(principal)colors system is considered having
an abundant possibility which covers from all the natural phenomena
to practical fields like coloring and activity of the art creation.
a)
Infinitude (Fusion) = In the Oriental philosophy, the phenomena
caused by individuality and relativity like black and white
or lightness and darkness are called "color" and
are regarded as vacancy. Namely," color (phenomenon)
is vacancy itself, vacancy is color(phenomenon) itself",
as Hannya Singyo（般若心経）says.
We
have opened below items in blue.