Naming color

In practice: Play with color name quizz advance!!!!

Introduction:

When we talk about light, color is of fundamental importance as it is one of the 3 characteristics to characterize it, since we can define light by these 3 components: Color, angle and intensity.

First of all, I’m going to explain the importance of being able to accurately name color and the sensations associated with color for Drama students:

To communicate with the artistic creative team: a set designer, a lighting designer, a costume designer, or with actors or dancers, by having a universal and common language in order to be able to characterize and convey your desires and sensations related to color during the creative process.

Color perception:

Color is perceived through the cone cells present at the back of the eye.

There are 3 types of cone, each with a different spectral sensitivity. Some perceive red, others green and others blue.

The information from these cone cells is transmitted by the optic nerve to the visual cortex of our brain, which converts these nerve impulses into a 3-dimensional image.

A small proportion of these nerve impulses also innervate the emotional system. (More on this later).

Light is composed of a beam of electromagnetic radiation characterized in nm.

Our eyes perceive this radiation in frequencies ranging from 400 to 800nm.

Bees, for example, perceive colors only from 300 to 500 nm, and do not perceive yellow or red.

As for the cat, we now know that it is dichromatic: histological study of its retina has shown that it contains two types of cones, some sensitive to indigo blue 450 nm, others to yellow-green 556 nm.

It’s important to understand that radiation is transmitted to our eyes by the reflection of light on a surface. This surface will absorb certain wavelengths and reflect others. A red object, for example, will absorb the blue and green wavelengths. The remaining wavelengths will be reflected by our cones, so that only the cones sensitive to red will read the information and transmit it to the brain, making the object appear red.

Possible exercise:

• 3 PC RGB, make an analogy with the cone cells of our RGB retina. Compare with LED

• Showing that if you want to reinforce the presence of an object, or costume of an actor on stage, you have to use the color of what you want to reinforce. If you use the complementary color, the actor or object will become dark.

It’s also essential to tell you about color temperature, scientifically characterized by the unit °K, named after the 19th-century scientist Lord Kelvin, who invented the unit of thermodynamic temperature in the international system.

It will certainly come in handy when communicating with photographers, video operators or lighting designers.

The higher the Kelvin value, the colder the light. The lower the number, the warmer the light.

Between 2000 and 3300K, we speak of “warm” white, like that emitted by a candle or at sunset. The light is subdued and warm.

Between 3300 and 5000K, we speak of neutral white light: it leans neither toward yellow nor toward blue.

Above 5000K, we speak of “daylight” white: the color temperature of daylight.

It should be noted that: This scientific categorization is logical, since the higher the temperature of a flame, the colder its hue, but it goes against the characterization of light by words and feeling, since we say that a light is cold if it tends towards blues and warm if it tends towards reds.

characterization of color:

Finally, as we defined the characterization of light by: Color, Angle and Intensity

we’ll see that color is also characterized by 3 names: Hue, Saturation and Value.

Color Hues and Intensity: Hue, Saturation and Value

1. Hue 🎨

Hue refers to pure color, without the addition of black, white or gray. It’s the characteristic that differentiates red, blue, green, etc.

In stage lighting:

Hue is defined by the wavelength of light.

It corresponds to the primary and secondary colors used in lighting (Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow).

Example: A royal blue light (Lee 079) and a lavender blue (Lee 200) have different hues.

2. Saturation (Chroma) 🌈

Saturation defines the intensity or purity of a color.

A highly saturated color is vivid and intense.

A color with low saturation tends towards gray or pastel.

In stage lighting :

Highly saturated light creates a strong, stylized atmosphere (e.g., red light for a dramatic scene).

Desaturated light is softer and more realistic (e.g. warm, slightly orangey light for a cozy interior).

Example: A deep red (Lee 106) is highly saturated, while a pale amber (Lee 152) is desaturated.

3. Value (Brightness) 💡

The value represents the brightness or darkness of a color.

A high value means a light color (pale pink, sky blue).

A low value means a dark color (burgundy, midnight blue).

For stage lighting:

A high light value can give an ethereal or dreamy effect.

A low light value is often used for mysterious or dramatic atmospheres.

Example: A pastel blue (Lee 202) has a higher value than a navy blue (Lee 181).

Possible exercise:With the 2 led Chauvet: Display a highly saturated light, then a less saturated version, and compare the perceived effect. Ditto with luminosity.Showing my light board command.

How can we find a relevant way of classifying and naming colors?

A brief history taken from Michel PASTOUREAU’s book: “Le petit livre des couleurs” (The Little Book of Colours).

Various color charts, references to the essay by academics Danièle DUBOIS and Caroline CANCE: “Vers une sémiologie du sensible: des couleurs en discours et en pratique”.

Let’s take the example of blue, which has been the preferred color of Westerners since 1890 (the date of the first opinion polls).

It was not present in Paleolithic caves, nor in the Neolithic period,

In ancient times, it was not really considered a color. Only white, red and black had this status, as it was difficult to manufacture.

In Rome, it was the color of the barbarians, and in classical Latin, the lexicon of blues was unstable and imprecise.

The Greeks confused the vocabulary of blue, gray and green.

In the Middle Ages, it was ousted from the liturgical colors of white, red, black and green.

It was not rehabilitated until the 12th and 13th centuries, when cobalt blue was used in the stained glass windows of St. Denis Cathedral, and finally became the color of kings’ cloaks by Philippe Auguste and St. Louis. It then made the fortune of guède growers.

In 1720, a German pharmacist invented Prussian blue. Indigo is imported from the West Indies.

In 1850, jeans were invented in San Francisco by Levi-Strauss.

We see that all these shades of blue have been created over centuries thanks to scientific, industrial and fashion developments. The finesse of the vocabulary for naming these different blues has followed this evolution: from Blau, which is Germanic in influence and gave rise to blue when the Roman languages forged their vocabulary, to the different shades linked to the rock, mineral or plant that gave rise to different hues: cobalt blue, Prussian blue, indigo, guède blue…

The search for universality in the way colors are classified and named:

The Munsell Color System, developed by Albert H. Munsell in the early 20th century, is a color space that specifies colors according to three properties:

Hue: corresponds to the color itself (red, blue, green, etc.).

Value: indicates the brightness or luminosity of the color, on a scale from 0 (black) to 10 (white).

Chroma (Chroma): represents color saturation or intensity, from neutral gray to the brightest color.

Atlas of the Munsell Color System: originally published in 1913, this atlas presents standardized plates illustrating Munsell’s color measurement system. A digitized version of this atlas is available.
Note that this classification is based on the same 3 names used in lighting to characterize color

Berlin & Kay (1969): The Universality of Color Names

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay are two researchers in linguistics and anthropology who published their book “Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution” in 1969. This study has had a profound influence on our understanding of how human beings perceive and name colors across different cultures and languages.

The researchers analyzed 98 languages from different linguistic families and found that not all had the same number of basic color terms.

They defined a basic term for a color as :

• A single word (e.g. “blue” vs. “light blue”, where the latter is a combination).

• Frequently used and understood by native speakers.

• Not limited to a specific domain (e.g. “blond” does not designate a universal color but rather a hair color).

Berlin and Kay have identified a universal pattern in the evolution of color names. They found that languages acquire terms for colors in a specific order:

                    **Nombre                         de couleurs**

                    **Couleurs                         présentes dans la langue**

                    2                         couleurs

                    **Noir                         et Blanc**                         (ou clair et foncé)

                    3                         couleurs

                    +                         **Rouge**

                    4-5                         couleurs

                    +                         **Vert                         et Jaune**

                    6                         couleurs

                    +                         **Bleu**

                    7                         couleurs

                    +                         **Marron**

                    8+                         couleurs

                    +                         **Violet,                         Orange, Rose, Gris…**

Some native languages have only two or three basic color terms (e.g. light/dark/red), while modern languages like English and French have many more.

color names used for different practices

I’ve collected a series of color charts, artifacts deliberately implicated in multiple practices, and designed to promote different types of coloring products: paints for artists (oil paints), web-related color charts, graphic design, Pantone color charts whose color naming is intended for industry: decorative paints for the home, colorants like nail polish, hair dyes, car bodies, wools, and so on. And of course, the color chart for light filters.

These color charts, unified in their resemblance to the Munsell color chart, nevertheless differ in the nature of the products to which they refer, and are therefore part of diversified practices that concern different people explicitly “targeted” by brands in their socio-cultural specificities.

NB: I’d like to draw your attention to the HEX code, which provides direct access to color when a line of computer code is entered. The Hexadecimal code is mainly composed of our RGB reference, which is also given to characterize pixel color, as we saw earlier for the light.

Possible exercise

Show the similarities and differences with the same RGB code between video web colors, LEDs and PC. Limits of this universality. Play and compare with RGB from colors.artyclick.com

Lexicon analysis and semantic categories

Artists’ paints (oil paints) use names such as: vermilion red, pink madder lacquer, or cadmium red, Venice red, carmine lacquer, sienna…These are old, technical names often linked to the content of the pigment that produced them.

This contrasts with the same paints used for decoration and the home, which are called by a pictorial lexicon that everyone can understand: brick red, grenadine, pottery, or paprika, peach, aqua blue…

Cosmetics, nail varnishes and lipsticks also use an ordinary lexicon, which differs according to the (images of) the brands: Yves Rocher: Velours, Orient, Grenade L’Oréal: ardent, incandescent, defended, j’adore, Venise, Amour, comète Agnès B.: **brugnon, ethnic, comète, cœur, tulipe, flirt, Marilyn **

For hair, there is a contrast in naming depending on whether the product is aimed at professionals or the general public: Professionnels (Schwarzkopf): blond foncé majou cuivré “Ciblé jeune” (L’Oréal): **copper fusion **

Words: nouns? terms?

**a diversity of lexical resources covering different traditional syntactic categories for light filters color. **

• adjectives can be found, not only adjectives considered as specific color adjectives, but also adjectives referring to objects or concepts whose properties may refer to a color (ardent, incandescent, ethnic) or a judgment (forbidden). For light: golden, bright, pale, dark, light, full, deep, soft, cold, (not warm?)…

• nouns: names of objects directly used as names of the typical color of a reference object: grenadine, pottery, heart, tulip (as is regularly observed for odors).
  For light: lavender, lilac, orange, apricot, jade, summer, ocean, peacock, forest, chocolate, mustard, flame, smokey, folies… Vanity fair???

also proper nouns: Alice, Marlene, Scarlet, lily…

• technical terms, specific to a field or community (raw cienna, cadmium red), referring in this specific case, to the materiality of color as a pigment.
  For light: CTO (Color Temperature Orange), CTB, Hi sodium, HMI to tungsten, fluorescent green, fluorescent 5700 K…

Conclusion

So how will you name the colors?

Will you use the official names? Which ones? Painting, art, decoration, lighting,…

Or will you find a personal language made up of relevant adjectives and nouns that you will refine over time and that will allow you to describe a color precisely so that you can communicate with your various creative partners.

Personnaly, I think that the more simple is often the best way to be understood:

Using the basic color names of the vocabulary as we have seen in the Berlin and Kay research: Black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, velvet, orange, pink, grey…

And I add the adjective I feel: light, medium, dark, bright, pale,full, deep, soft, cold, warm…

And sometimes, more poetic adjective like ardent or incandescent which gives the warm feeling we can have for some colors.

In Practice:

Practical work using 6 shades that you will name by writing on a piece of paper.

Great moment of discussion about what they wrote, comparaison with the names of those colors : Lee filters, web and design, paint for artist.

Play the rainbow. THE END