HISTORY OF ART AND COLORS

 HISTORY  AND CULTURE OF ART AND COLORS 

HISTORY OF COLORS

Newton had split white light into a spectrum by means of a prism and then wrapped the resulting spectrum around on itself to create the color wheel. This led the way to the now common notion of red, yellow, and blue as primary colors. The ancient theory of color which carried through the Renaissance, was that all colors were mixtures of darkness and light—black and white. Aristotle, for instance, held that dark crimson comes from the mixture of black with sunlight or firelight. It was Isaac Newton who first fully developed a theory of color based on a color wheel .

The rainbow used to have just 5 colours – until 1704 when Sir Isaac Newton added orange and indigo to the list simply because he had a fondness for the supposedly mystical properties of the number 7.

In fact, there are no pure colours in a rainbow – they all blend into one continuous spectrum - but ever since Newton we’ve settled on 7 and used little rhymes to remember them. Americans favour ‘Roy G Biv’ while British children might learn ‘Richard York gave battle in vain’ – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

So it would seem that the colours of the rainbow can differ, and when we dip into the cultural histories of these colours, we see even wider differences. In short, how we interpret colours, even how we see them, is more a product of nurture than nature. A few colour-coded stories then:

RED

The first colour used in art was red - from ochre. And the first known example of cave art was a red ochre plaque, which contains symbolic engravings of triangles, diamond shapes and lines, dated to 75,000 years ago.

In the same cave – Blombos, in the Western Cape of South Africa – there are suggestions of even older art, including a workshop containing carefully blended paint made from red ochre and marrow fat, along with spatulas and shell mixing dishes.In almost every country red seems to have been the first colour (other than black and white) to be named with its symbolic appeal often drawn from blood, evoking strength, virility and fertility.

BLUE

The world’s favourite colour is blue even though it is relatively new to the party linguistically.

The ancient Greeks, Chinese, Japanese and Hebrews did not have a name for blue and thought of it as a version of green. Even today several languages have green-blue blurring, including Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Kurdish, Zulu and Himba.

Yet blue consistently comes first for both men and women in every country where colour preference has been surveyed.

In one international poll, covering ten countries from four continents, it came out well on top in all of them.

One reason is that it seems to have a calming effect. Students given IQ tests with blue covers had an edge of a few points over those given tests with red covers, perhaps because of the natural connotations of blue – seas, lakes, rivers, skies.

ORANGE

The only colour in the English language that takes its name from a fruit is orange. It all goes back to China around 4,500 years ago when oranges were first cultivated and travelled west down the Silk Road. They went to Northwest India where the Sanskrit word for an orange tree – narrangah – served as the root for many languages as oranges were planted and sold – Narang in Farsi, naranj in Arabic and naranja in Spanish.

The English word orange is a corruption of the Sanskrit. People mistook ‘a naranga’ for ‘an aranga’, and so it evolved into ‘an orange’.

Before the fruit arrived, the English word for the colour was geoluread (yellow-red) but in the 16th Century orange took over. In some languages, however, the two are separated.

In Afrikaans, for example, the colour is oranje but the fruit is lemoen and several languages, including Himba, Nafana and Piraha, have no word for the colour.

LIKE THESE, THEIR ARE VARIOUS  OTHER HISTORIC STORIES FOR THE VARIOUS OTHER DIFFERENT COLORS AS WELL........

NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT THE TYPES OF COLORS !!!!!!!!!!!!

TYPES OF COLORS 

PRIMARY COLORS

The three most basic shades -  Red, Yellow , Blue are the primary colors .By combining primary colors, you can theoretically create every other possible hue. Mixing two primary colors gives you a third, entirely new color. Combine blue and red and you get purple; mixing yellow and blue gives you green.

SECONDARY COLORS

These are those colors which are formed by combining only two of the three primary colors of light in equal parts which may includes colors like purple , orange, red, and cyan .

MY JOURNEY WITH COLORS

DUH !! If I would elaborate my relation with colors so that is associated from the past when I was in my 5th standard , isn't it weird ? 😅hell yeahh it is 😏,  their was a worksheet designing competition which our school conducted in a competition week which was specifically mentioned as CREATIVE WEEK from which the DAV students are too familiar with . This week used to be the best part of the year for those who were creative and want to win the prizes to get the limelight in the school , you know what I mean !!😉. This competition used to be  conducted  only till 5th standard , so practically it was the last year of this week that I was going to have , and to be honest I never had won a prize in this week before. But, in that year / session I realised that now this is my year and I have to won atleast a trophy for which I have desired from my childhood . So hell yeahh I did it I won 2nd prize in worksheet designing competition , now the question is worksheet designing ? really ? Am I a teacher or what ?

Nahh!! I was selected not for just a worksheet but for its philosophy which I used by using my creativity to design my worksheet on the subject which was none other than COLORS . Different !! yeah I know 😎 , so basically I designed a worksheet in which I presented by designing it in a manner which basically gives you the knowledge regarding the blending ,mixing of the colors and regenerating new colors from the existing ones. 

Like for eg : If you blend Pink and Blue together the we get the color of violet , similarly if we mix Yellow and red together then we get the color of Orange .

And this is it , this worksheet or this competition not only gave me a headstart towards art or painting but also made an unbreakable bond  with colors and art in my life💗.

WELL, WELL, WELL !! I HAVE DISCUSSED EVERY DETAIL AND KNOWLEDGE THAT I DO HAVE ABOUT THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF COLORS , EVEN THOUGH DISCUSSED MY OWN PAINTING JOURNEY WITH ALL OF YOU , HOPE YOU HAVE LIKED IT !!

STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER!!

TILL THEN

XOXO

CREATIVESOUL💗