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COLOR DEFINITIONS.


der it very convenient for Amateur Art Critics, together with such terms as breadth, atmosphere, quality, values, etc., but in the consideration of color it should have this one definite meaning.

Warm Colors.—Red, orange and yellow, and combinations in which they predominate.

Cool Colors.—Usually considered to be green, blue and violet, and the combinations in which they predominate. But it is, perhaps, questionable whether green and violet may properly be termed either warm or cool. The term cool as applied to colors is quite indefinite, except in a general way, but red, orange and yellow are universally considered as warm, and blue and green-blue as cool.

Neutral Gray.—White in shade or shadow. Pure black and white mixed by disk rotation. Black and white pigments mixed do not usually produce a neutral gray, but rather a blue gray.

Warm Gray.—A neutral gray with the admixture of a small quantity of red, orange or yellow.

Cool Gray.—A neutral gray with a small quantity of blue or green blue.

Green Gray.—A neutral gray having combined with it a small quantity of green. As this color could hardly be classed with either warm or cool grays this fourth class of grays is suggested as helpful in giving definiteness to the more general color expressions.

Broken Colors.—Gray colors, often improperly called broken tints. For simplicity, a tint of a color is described as the pure color mixed with white and a shade as the color mixed with .black, and the corresponding broken color is the same color mixed with both white and black or with neutral gray. A tint of a color thrown into a shadow or a shade of a color in bright sunlight gives a broken color. For various reasons a very large proportion of the colors in nature are broken. Broken colors are much easier to combine harmoniously than full colors, or even tints and shades.