Colour “The Paintbox”
I am reading a wonderful book at the moment by Victoria Finlay “Colour, Travels through the Paintbox”.
This book was given to my by a friend last christmas with the inscription ” this book was written for you” – how true and thank you for knowing me so well, I love colour in all forms from clothes to web and graphic design to interior design.
This book has given me a wonderful insight into colour and where it has come from. Victoria’s quest is to uncover the secrets of colour which she does through the history of pigments and dyes. Starting with the ochres in Australia to the history of white as a lead. It gives me so much more respect for colour and how we came by it.
The book starts with giving us the basic understanding of how colour is formed. There are several “physical” causes of colour and the most familiar to me is the rainbow which forms in the sky when light bounces around raindrops and is refracted into separate wavelengths – this explanation was discoverd by Isaac Newton in 1666 with the use of prisms.
