Page:Elementary Color (IA gri c00033125012656167).djvu/38

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COLOR DEFINITIONS.

spectrum with the addition of violet red at the red end and red violet at the violet end be made, and the two ends joined, we shall have a spectrum circuit. This may be in the form of a circle, an ellipse or an oval.

Primary Colors.—In the Brewster theory red, yellow and blue. In the Young-Hemholtz theory red, green and violet are termed primary colors because it is supposed that from these three sensations all color perceptions are experienced. In purely scientific investigations of color perceptions these last three or others which are supposed to serve the same purpose are also called fundamental colors. Practically every spectrum color is a primary, because each has its own wave length.

Secondary Colors.—In the Brewster theory orange, green and purple have been called secondary because it is claimed that they are produced by the combination of primary colors in pairs.

Tertiary Colors.—A term used in the Brewster theory to denote three classes of colors called russet, citrine and olive, made by mixing the secondaries in pairs. These are all broken spectrum colors. The orange and purple produce russet; the orange and green form citrine; the green and purple, olive. There seems to be no good reason for perpetuating the indefinite terms secondaries and tertiaries as applied to color. .

Values.—This word is very freely used in discussing effects in works of art, both in color and in black and white. At present it seems to be a very difficult term to define, and yet each artist is quite sure that he can "feel" it, although few will attempt to put into words a definition satisfactory even to themselves. When an engraver, who is also an artist, attempts to interpret nature in black and white on the metal plate or wooden block, he endeavors to reproduce the "values" of the various parts of the subject before him. In doing this he, for one thing, attempts to produce a variety of neutral grays which will express to the eye by means of black and white lines the same tones of color effect as are seen in the several parts of the subject under investigation. If this were the whole prob-