Said thoughtful girlfriend got me this for Xmas:
Color Index: Over 1100 Color Combinations, CMYK and RGB Formulas, for Print and Web Media, by Jim Krause
Each page has a bunch of little patterns in different color combos. I will be stealing some for future El Rey pictures. Yes indeed.
I've had this similar book (
Designer's Guide to Colorby
James Stockton) for years (after swiping it from a design firm I worked for back when I younger and less thoughtful), but the color schemes are pretty dated. Unsurprising, I suppose, given that it was published in 1983.
Still, it's $1.17 used, so probably worth picking up. There's a whole series of 'em (
2,
3,
4,
5, $3-8 used) and the latest is from '91. I bet there's some useful combos in there. I should probably grab 'em all, come to think of it.
Here's a listmania list with a bunch more books on color.
I still haven't sat down and fully thought out my views on color, but I know I care about 'em maybe disporportionately. If a picture has the properties of, say, subject matter, line/draftsmanship, color, and manner of execution, I'd say color gets half of my attention and the rest is divided up, with subject matter ahead of the others.
It's kinda similar to when I was just starting out in music and I got my first distortion pedal and guitar amp; the different noises I could make interested me more, really, than what notes I played. I got a Nord Lead 2 Rack synthesizer in a gear trade and I haven't used it much to actually play notes. More often than not, I just set a little serviceable gibberish loop going and tweak the knobs, rolling around in the delicious sounds exuberantly like a dog in something stinky. Color can be like that for me.
Historical Color Combos Swiped from Printed Ephemera
Though you can't tell from the miserable scan, my Ask for Pughead
is a bluey purple and a bluish green, colors I got from an old ticket, I think it was, of some kind of World's Fair exhibit on space. A year or two ago, She Who is Excellent and I went to a printed ephemera show (which features books and magazines, sure, but also maps, brochures, little recipe books from food manufacturers, ink blotters from insurance companies, and the like). As a former graphic artist, the old type calls to me, sure (more on type later, I'm
sure) but the color combos do, too, especially the ones that aren't in common use anymore.
I swiped the colors for Hits, as well as the lines, blue side bar, and swooshy banner, from the cover of an Andrews Sisters record I found online.
Again with the lousy scan, but there's a pinkish thing to the red that may or may not be visible. There was a cream color on the original I made a half-assed attempt to swipe with colored paper, but I didn't use it in the one I scanned. In some of my pictures, I even use a transparent glaze I mixed up and called "dinge" to approximate the dulling effect of aged paper. (I tried to matchit to blank sheets pulled from an old book I found in the garbage walking home from my old doorman job at 3am.)
Also, from the same ephemera show came the smiling girl (no, it's not Shirley Temple) from Surprise Visit and the kids in Diced Cream:
These came from the back of a 1930s mfr.'s brochure for, yep, "diced cream," little foil wrapped cubes of ice cream sure to enliven any party.
Anyway, back to colors. I know that
Pantone comes out with seasonal colors ("apricot is the new black") and I've read articles where the new car colors of the year are reviewed, but that all seems to be more of a NEW and IMPROVED BUY kind of thing, a little manufactured.
The longterm view of commercial-art color combos by decade, though, is pretty interesting to me. Color trends even affect so-called "fine" art, thought maybe more on a longer term than decades the further you go back. I'm thinking of the brown, brown, and more brown and some yellow pictures of
Rembrandt and those guys, versus, say,
International Klein Blue. Probably my favorite art movement per se are the
Fauves, who just went bonkers with color for the first time.
Andre Derain, for instance. Now
those are some colors.
Though there's no Unified El Rey Color Theory, I think about color a fair bit. I'm sure I'll post more about it later.
