DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18972#0261
letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.
233
at last, you see the colour you are putting on, you
are putting on too much. You ought to feel a
change wrought in the general tone, by touches of
colour which individually are too pale to be seen;
and if there is one atom of any colour in the whole
picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom hurts it.
Notice also that nearly all good compound colours
are odd colours. You shall look at a hue in a good
■painter's work ten minutes before you know what
to call it. You thought it was brown, presently you
feel that it is red; next that there is, somehow,
yellow in it; presently afterwards that there is blue
in it. If you try to copy it you will always find
your colour too warm or too cold — no colour in the
box will seem to have any affinity with it; and yet
it will be as pure as if it were laid at a single touch
with a single colour.
As to the choice and harmony of colours in
general, if you cannot choose and harmonise them
by instinct, you will never do it at all. If you need
examples of utterly harsh and horrible colour, you
may find plenty given in treatises upon colouring, to
233
at last, you see the colour you are putting on, you
are putting on too much. You ought to feel a
change wrought in the general tone, by touches of
colour which individually are too pale to be seen;
and if there is one atom of any colour in the whole
picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom hurts it.
Notice also that nearly all good compound colours
are odd colours. You shall look at a hue in a good
■painter's work ten minutes before you know what
to call it. You thought it was brown, presently you
feel that it is red; next that there is, somehow,
yellow in it; presently afterwards that there is blue
in it. If you try to copy it you will always find
your colour too warm or too cold — no colour in the
box will seem to have any affinity with it; and yet
it will be as pure as if it were laid at a single touch
with a single colour.
As to the choice and harmony of colours in
general, if you cannot choose and harmonise them
by instinct, you will never do it at all. If you need
examples of utterly harsh and horrible colour, you
may find plenty given in treatises upon colouring, to