Grammar of Color by Miss Helen Dryden for Vogue from www.munsell.com


Interesting example of a reference to color harmony for Vogue in 1921: http://munsell.com/color-blog/grammar-of-color-helen-dryden-vogue-proofs/
Part 12 is given here, but at the bottom of this article there are links to previous parts of A Grammar of Color.
This example describes an interesting take on color harmony based on an assumption that all the colors in a plate should become a neutral gray when mixed (rather than a mud brown, for example). The use of a circle with the proportion of the colors used is also interesting.

Also copied here:

A Grammar of Color – Part 12: Two Proofs of a Design by Miss Helen Dryden for Vogue



A Grammar of Color - Two Proofs of a Design by Miss Helen Dryden for Vogue.

We have been posting excerpts from the 1921 book, “A Grammar of Color”, by T.M. Cleland with an introduction by Albert Munsell. The first half of the book focused on explaining how the Munsell Color System works, and suggested ways it can be used. We now start the second half of the book, which consists of some color illustration examples followed by a catalogue of color papers by the Strathmore Paper Company.
In the original book, there is an almost blank page with only a brief description of the two pages to come. The following two pages each consist of a plate with an illustration by Helen Dryden for Vogue; the first plate demonstrates unbalanced color, and the second plate is corrected with an example of balanced color.
Helen Dryden was an American artist who was a fashion illustrator for Vogue magazine for 13 years during the time A Grammar of Color was authored. Rudolph Ruzicka was a distinguished wood engraver, etcher, illustrator, typeface designer, and book designer.

TWO PROOFS OF A DESIGN BY MISS HELEN DRYDEN for VOGUE

showing unbalanced and balanced color
PLATES ENGRAVED BY RUDOLPH RUZICKA

UNBALANCED COLOR

From the 1921 book, "A Grammar of Color": A Design by Miss Helen Dryden for Vogue showing unbalanced color. Plate engraved by Rudolph Ruzicka.
Unbalanced Color
The colors in this proof are poorly related and do not balance in neutral gray. In the first circle these colors are shown in approximately the same proportions of area that they occupy in the picture. If this circle were rapidly revolved, the resulting mixture would be as shown in the solid circle.
From the 1921 book, "A Grammar of Color": Circles of color demonstrating unbalanced color in a fashion illustration by Helen Dryden.

BALANCED COLOR

From the 1921 book, "A Grammar of Color": A Design by Miss Helen Dryden for Vogue showing balanced color. Plate engraved by Rudolph Ruzicka.
Balanced Color
In this proof, made from the same plates as the one on the opposite page, the colors are correctly related. The approximate proportion of area of each color to the whole is shown in the first circle. The neutral gray, which would result from an admixture of these colors in these same proportions, is shown in the solid circle.
From the 1921 book, "A Grammar of Color": Circles of color demonstrating balanced color in a fashion illustration by Helen Dryden.
In coming blog posts, we will provide sections of the pages with the descriptions of the color sheets. Here’s where to look for previous sections of “A Grammar of Color”: (Click on the part to go to the link)
- See more at: http://munsell.com/color-blog/grammar-of-color-helen-dryden-vogue-proofs/#sthash.IGglmhei.dpuf

Popular posts from this blog

Color Wheel Revisited

Image
We will be using the triadic color wheel from the Color Wheel Company to illustrate color relationships. a good resource is the book, Color is Everything, by Dan Bartges, a book with thorough descriptions of this tool (I will have it in the workshop for you to peruse).  Triadic Color Wheel from the Color Wheel Company: Study of the Triadic Color Wheel. The color wheel provides 12 hues around the circle on each side  On the one side we can see the effects of mixing red, yellow and blue and white and black with each of the 12 hues by rotating the wheel. This side also has a value scale that can be matched up with each of the hues to identify the value of each hue. The second side shows the tint, tone and shade for each of the hues. Directions are provided for determining analogous colors, complementaries , split complements, triads and tetrads. We will be discussing these at length. For a preliminary website link with definitions see:  http://www.tige...
Read more

(extra) Color Mixing on the web with online Apps with RGB and CMYK

Image
May begin color mixing by studying color pickers provided by on-line tools. These are based on the RGB color wheel for web development, with its additive nature.   So first, an explanation of the RGB colors on the color wheel. We will see the representation of the R, G, B hues as 'hexadecimal'; e.g., red is #FF0000, where the FF masks the red perfectly and 00 masks the green and blue perfectly, but you will notice that the third hue in these tertiaries are masked with 7F. Binary numbers are 0's and 1's; 7 = 0111 in binary; F = 1111 in binary, so we see 0, 7 and F here. White would be FFFFF a perfect mix of R, G and B, while Black is 000000, a complete absence of an R, G or B. Yellow, magenta and cyan are complements of blue, green and red in this scheme.  In fact the hexadecimal notation for these complements has '1's in place of '0' and vice versa for the primaries and secondaries.  The tertiaries are aligned somewhat differently., with 7F m...
Read more

(extra) Color Palette Examples

Image
==================================== Limited palette of Don Finkeldei: www.finkeldeistudio.com. I have studied with Don and used his method extensively. He has many articles on the topic that are well worth reading and re-reading. His color charts, are quite useful and found in a new article on the website. His color palette consists of the Utrecht Artist Oils: cadmium yellow light, cadmium red light, ultramarine blue plus white, as well as alizarin crimson and viridian for transparent darks and sometimes the convenience color, cadmium orange.  He creates a few values of greys from a dark formed by the yellow, red and blue to be used in the mixing.  He also uses his AC/V transparent dark for accents. He pre-mixes his colors on the palette. ==================================== String Palette: I would like to include some material here on the palette of strings based on the Munsell theory, that formed my very first palette for oil painting. My instructor was the ar...
Read more