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COLOR HARMONY

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are on record. When a child shows deficient color perception,[1] a little care may save him much discomfort, and patient training may correct it. If he mismatches some hues, confuses their names, seems incapable of the finer distinctions of color, study to find the hues which he estimates well, and then help him to venture a little into that field where his perception is at fault. Improvement is pretty sure to follow when this is sympathetically done. One student, who never outgrew the habit of giving a purplish hue to all his work, despite many expedients and the use of various lights and colored objects to correct it, is the single exception among hundreds whom it has been my privilege to watch as they improved their first crude estimates, and gained skill in expressing their sense of Nature’s subtle color.

(184) To sum up, the first chapter suggests a measured color system in place of guess-work. The next describes the three color qualities, and sketches a child’s growth in color perception. The third tells how colors may be mingled in such proportions as to balance. After the impracticability of using spectral color has been shown in the fourth chapter, the fifth proceeds to build a practical color solid. The sixth provides for a written record of color, and the last applies all that has preceded to suggestions for the study of color harmony.

(185) Wide gaps appear in this outline. There is much that deserves fuller treatment. But, if the search for refined color and a clearer outlook upon its relations are stimulated by this fragmentary sketch, some of its faults may be overlooked.

  1. See Color Blindness in Glossary.