MIXTURE & BALANCE
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and C change their relations to it. If H is raised vertically, both V and C dip outward. If H is rotated, both V and C rotate, but in opposite directions. Indeed, any disturbance of V affects H and C, while H and V respond to any movement of C. So we must be prepared to realize that any change of one color quality involves readjustment of the other two.
(83) Color balance soon leads to a study of optics in one direction, to esthetics in another, and to mathematical proportions in a third, and any attempt at an easy solution of its problems is not likely to succeed. It is a very complicated question, whose closest counterpart is to be sought in musical rhythms. The fall of musical impulses upon the ear can make us gay or sad, and there are color groups which, acting through the eye, can convey pleasure or pain to the mind.
(84) A colorist is keenly alive to these feelings of satisfaction or annoyance, and consciously or unconsciously he rejects certain combinations of color and accepts others. Successful pictures and decorative schemes are due to some sort of balance uniting “light and shade” (value), “warmth and coolness” (hue), with “brilliancy and grayness”’ (chroma); for, when they fail to please, the mind at once begins to search for the unbalanced quality, and complains that the color is “too hot,” “too dark,”’ or “too crude.” This effort to establish pleasing proportions may be unconscious in one temperament, while it becomes a matter of definite analysis in another. Emerson claimed that the unconscious only is complete. We gladly permit those whose color instinct is unerring— (and how few they are!)—to neglect all rules and set formulas. But education is concerned with the many who have not this gift.
(85) Any real progress in color education must come not from a blind imitation of past successes, but by a study into the laws
