Pointillists and divisionists separate colors into smaller dots and paints to blend in the viewer's eye at a distance. I wonder if it has already been formulated. I would very much like to know how pointillists choose the right hues to blend and produce the desired color.
Hi Karim,
As to your question as formulated in its headline, of course there is. Every practical technology of color image generation is based on placing colored dots of a very limited palette next to each other with or without overlapping. The simplest form is used in color tv and computer imagery, where only three colors (a red one, a green one and a blue one) are used and placed next to each other within a small square called a "pixel". In this system the red, green and blue colors can (or must) each be varied in intensity to produce other color mixtures than white, which may be conceived as adding black to them. So from a painter's point of view a four color palette is used here. The method used for printing color images is slightly more complex, because the colored dots are deliberately overlapped and also white space between them is used to form the perceived color. For a very short overview on the technologies in use see for instance here: http://www.optique-ingenieur.org/en/courses/OPI_ang_M07_C02/co/Contenu_05.html
All this is based on color theory, THE color theory i.e. There are not several theories as in the old days when the likes of Goethe generated sharp-whitted but utterly wrong alternatives to the scientific treatment of color. See for instance "Color Science" by Wyszecki & Stiles.
Unfortunately I have no background in painting or art history, but just by looking at the examples given on the Wikipedia page on pointillism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism) my guess is that each painter constructed his own palette, most likely by extensive experimentation. Such experimentation should be done under consideration of certain principles, though:
1) In order to be able to produce every hue, the palette must contain a reddish, a blueish and a greenish color. Yellow may then be produced by placing red and green next to each other. If one cannot or does not want to use green, it can be generated by overlaying blue and yellow, but then the latter color must be available in the palette instead of green.
2) The first three colors must be chosen in such a way that all hues cancel when they are overlapping. Otherwise, no neutral dark color, i.e. black, can be generated and that color will have to be added to the palette as a fourth color.
3) If a white background is used, this can be used to produce apparent tints by leaving space between the color dots. Otherwise, either white has to be added to the palette as well, or the basic palette may be composed of pastels so that the whole painting will look whitish, or the painting remains restricted to strong colors as in expressionist paintings.
These crude rules can be formulated more accurately with mathematics. Such mathematical formulations are used every day, for example when you print out a digital photograph or a drawing made on a computer. In that case image files, which initially are represented in the "RGB Color Model" are first converted to the "CMYK Color Model" to match the different ways in which the different color technologies are rendering the colors. A scientific treatment of most if not all of these matters can be found in R.G.W. Hunt's book "The Reproduction of Colour".
I hope this gives you some direction for your search.
Detlef
Hi Karim,
As to your question as formulated in its headline, of course there is. Every practical technology of color image generation is based on placing colored dots of a very limited palette next to each other with or without overlapping. The simplest form is used in color tv and computer imagery, where only three colors (a red one, a green one and a blue one) are used and placed next to each other within a small square called a "pixel". In this system the red, green and blue colors can (or must) each be varied in intensity to produce other color mixtures than white, which may be conceived as adding black to them. So from a painter's point of view a four color palette is used here. The method used for printing color images is slightly more complex, because the colored dots are deliberately overlapped and also white space between them is used to form the perceived color. For a very short overview on the technologies in use see for instance here: http://www.optique-ingenieur.org/en/courses/OPI_ang_M07_C02/co/Contenu_05.html
All this is based on color theory, THE color theory i.e. There are not several theories as in the old days when the likes of Goethe generated sharp-whitted but utterly wrong alternatives to the scientific treatment of color. See for instance "Color Science" by Wyszecki & Stiles.
Unfortunately I have no background in painting or art history, but just by looking at the examples given on the Wikipedia page on pointillism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism) my guess is that each painter constructed his own palette, most likely by extensive experimentation. Such experimentation should be done under consideration of certain principles, though:
1) In order to be able to produce every hue, the palette must contain a reddish, a blueish and a greenish color. Yellow may then be produced by placing red and green next to each other. If one cannot or does not want to use green, it can be generated by overlaying blue and yellow, but then the latter color must be available in the palette instead of green.
2) The first three colors must be chosen in such a way that all hues cancel when they are overlapping. Otherwise, no neutral dark color, i.e. black, can be generated and that color will have to be added to the palette as a fourth color.
3) If a white background is used, this can be used to produce apparent tints by leaving space between the color dots. Otherwise, either white has to be added to the palette as well, or the basic palette may be composed of pastels so that the whole painting will look whitish, or the painting remains restricted to strong colors as in expressionist paintings.
These crude rules can be formulated more accurately with mathematics. Such mathematical formulations are used every day, for example when you print out a digital photograph or a drawing made on a computer. In that case image files, which initially are represented in the "RGB Color Model" are first converted to the "CMYK Color Model" to match the different ways in which the different color technologies are rendering the colors. A scientific treatment of most if not all of these matters can be found in R.G.W. Hunt's book "The Reproduction of Colour".
I hope this gives you some direction for your search.
Detlef
Detlef provided some good sources above for your research, so will just add to it from a painter/artist perspective. A painters palette of primaries is usually red, blue, yellow, with the addition of white and black to create tints/shades. Artist colour palettes can contain either cool or warm variations of these primaries i.e. leaning towards orange, violet or green (secondary colours when primaries are mixed) e.g. cadmium red (leans toward orange), permanent magenta (violet), cerulean blue (green), ultramarine blue (violet) and so on. If you put a warm colour against a cool colour the cool colour will enhance or make the warmer colour more vibrant and vise versa i.e. the complementary colour will show through more significantly. For example if you mixed a grey using all three primaries and a small portion of white and place some of it on a blue and an orange background, the grey will appear more warmer or 'orange' on the blue background and 'bluer' on the orange background. Pointillists capitalised on this technique that really goes back to the impressionist (or thereabouts) with the only distinction being they were using pure colour optically mixed on the canvas as opposed to being mixed on the palette.
Another useful source to look into is how colour is perceived by the human eye i.e. CIE color space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space
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