Thursday, October 11, 2007

TT #33 - 13 Shades of Autumn


In keeping with tradition (see here and here), I give you, in no particular order, 13 shades of autumn (these are not colors of individual types of fall leaves, rather examples of the color palette that we tend to think of as autumnal). And yes, those of you who are regular readers of my blog will no doubt notice that I've been a wee bit obsessed with the subject of fall this week. We don't get fall colors here in Israel, but these are the types of things I'd enjoy seeing if I still lived in NY. As before, descriptions are taken from wikipedia:


1. Pumpkin - color that resembles pumpkins.

2. Vermillion - when found naturally-occurring vermillion is an opaque orangeish red pigment, used since antiquity, originally derived from the powdered mineral cinnabar. Chemically the pigment is mercuric sulfide, HgS. Like all mercury compounds it is toxic. Today, vermilion is most commonly artificially produced by reacting mercury with molten sulfur. Most naturally produced vermilion comes from cinnabar mined in China, giving rise to its alternative name of China red. As pure sources of cinnabar are rare, natural vermilion has always been extremely expensive. In the Middle Ages, vermilion was often as expensive as gilding. As of 2007 a 40 ml tube of genuine Chinese Vermilion oil paint can cost £51 (US ~$100).

There is evidence of the use of cinnabar pigment in India and China since prehistory; It was known to the Romans; Pliny the Elder records that it became so expensive that the price had to be fixed by the Roman government. The synthesis of vermilion from mercury and sulfur may have been invented by the Chinese; the earliest known description of the process dates from the 8th century. The synthetically-produced pigment was used throughout Europe from the 12th century, mostly for illuminated manuscripts, although it remained prohibitively expensive until the 14th century when the technique for synthesizing vermilion was widely known in Europe. Synthetic vermilion was regarded early on as superior to the pigment derived from natural cinnabar. Cennino Cennini mentions that vermilion is "made by alchemy, prepared in a retort. I am leaving out the system for this, because it would be too tedious to set forth in my discussion all the methods and receipts. Because, if you want to take the trouble, you will find plenty of receipts for it, and especially by asking of the friars. But I advise you rather to get some of that which you find at the druggists' for your money, so as not to lose time in the many variations of procedure. And I will teach you how to buy it, and to recognize the good vermilion. Always buy vermilion unbroken, and not pounded or ground. The reason? Because it is generally adulterated, either with red lead or with pounded brick." Vermilion was frequently adulterated due to its high price, usually with red lead, an inexpensive bright lead oxide pigment that was too reactive to be trustworthy enough for use in art.

3. Golden Yellow - Golden yellow is the color halfway between amber and yellow. It is a color that is 87.5% yellow and 12.5% red. The first recorded use of golden yellow as a color name in English was in the year 1597.

4. Burnt Sienna - an iron oxide pigment: a warm mid brown color. It is also a Crayola color.
Chemically, burnt sienna is formed by burning raw sienna (Terra di Sienna). One of the main characters of the comic strip PvP is named Brent Sienna, after the pigment and/or the color. Brent is the art director for the fictional magazine PvP. On the television show Family Guy, while trying to pick up girls in a bar, the African-American character Cleveland Brown asks "How would you like to go Black, then have to make a difficult decision regarding whether or not to go back?" To which the girl replies "I already went Burnt Sienna and never went back." She then leaves the bar with a giant talking crayon of said color. David Morrell has written a novel called Burnt Sienna. It involves a painter and retired secret agent working to rescue a beautiful woman from a madman who plans to kill her.


5. Auburn - a reddish brown color. It is similar to burgundy and maroon, although these two colors have a more reddish tint, while auburn has a slightly more brownish one. Historically, the word abram was used to mean auburn, for example in early (pre-1685) folios of Coriolanus, Thomas Kyd's Soliman and Perseda (1588) and Thomas Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable (1601). In his book 'Germania' Tacitus, the Romanised Gaulish historian, described the hair color of the Germanic peoples as being 'Rutilo' meaning Auburn in Latin.
The first recorded use of auburn as a color name in English was in 1430. Coincidentally also the color of my hair at the moment.


6. Goldenrod - a color that resembles the goldenrod plant. A crayon with this name and color, although a lighter version, was created in 1958.

7. Cerise - a deep to vivid purplish red. There are various shades of cerise. The cerise name comes from the French word meaning cherry. The word "cherry" itself comes from the Norman cherise. According to Maerz and Paul in their Dictionary of Color, the first recorded use of cerise as a color name in English was in 1858. However, it was used at least as early as 1846 in a book of crochet patterns.[

8. Orange - The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585 – 620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. The complementary colour of orange is azure, a slightly greenish blue. With pigments such as paints or inks, a mixture of the subtractive primary colours in the proportion of 75% yellow and 25% magenta produce the secondary colour orange. Orange pigments are largely in the ochre or cadmium families, and absorb mostly blue light.

9. Mahagony - a brownish color. It is approximately the color of the wood, mahogany. However, the wood itself is not uniformly the same color, and "mahogany" is not a standard HTML color with a standardized RGB value. Mahogany is an official Crayola crayon color.

10. Chestnut - Indian red also known as chestnut, is a brownish shade of rose. It is named after a special soil found in India. It is thus an earth tone as well as a red. It is composed of naturally occurring iron oxides. Indian red is not named after Native Americans. However, because of the possible confusion, Crayola changed their crayon color Indian Red to Chestnut.
11. Red - any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 625–750 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared, or below red and cannot be seen by human eyes. In human color psychology, red is associated with energy and blood, and emotions that stir the blood, including anger, passion, and love.
Red is used as one of the additive primary colors of light, complementary to cyan, in RGB color systems. Red is also one of the subtractive primary colors of RYB color space but not CMYK color space. One common use of red as an additive primary color is in the RGB color model. Because "red" is not by itself standardized, color mixtures based on red are not exact specifications of color either. In order to produce exact colors the color red needs to be defined in terms of an absolute color space such as sRGB. As used in computer monitors and television screens, red is very variable, but some systems may apply color correction (so that a standardized "red" is produced that is not in fact full intensity of only the red colorant).

12. Rust - a red-orange color resembling iron oxide. It is a commonly used color in stage lighting, and appears roughly the same color as photographic safelights when used over a standard tungsten light source. The color is number 777 in Lee Filters swatch book.

13. Brown - a color which is a dark yellow, orange, or red, of low luminance relative to lighter or white colored objects. Some pale orange and yellow colors of lower saturation are called light browns.










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47 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is very interesting research. I love looking into the hidden meaning of things.

I made a mistake on the link -- I posted the wrong site. I'll try to do it again.

Anonymous said...

I'm getting overloaded with interesting facts reading all these tt's Enjoy...

Yuriko said...

So many colors.. so little time to enjoy them...

Tink said...

I love the shades of autumn, they're beautiful!
My TT shares 13 quotes by W.B. Yeats.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this list, and for taking so much trouble over it. We don't get fall colours here in Florida, but I remember the years I saw autumn in southern Ontario, and how beautiful it was.

Pen said...

That was educational as well as enjoyable! I guess I should count my lucky stars that I live in Minnesota... trees and trees galore here! I would have to day I am akin to burnt sienna and auburn. Burnt sienna was my favorite crayon as a kid only I used to call it 'burt sunna' LOL and auburn is the color of my hair which I inherited from my grandmother. Thanks for making me think of my favorite autumn colors ;o)

Anonymous said...

This was one of my favorite T13's ever...I am fascinated by color but it never occurred to me to look into its history. I didn't realize the connection between vermilion and cinnabar or...well, any of it, really (even though I had the 64 box of crayolas).

Lori said...

Fall is my favorite season...great list:) Happy TT.

Anonymous said...

What a great lists and very interesting indeed! I love Autumn!

Mines up here;
Thursday Thirteen

Happy TT!

Janet said...

Great idea for a T13! As I was reading, I could see the colors you talked about!

Addicted to crafting said...

Wow, what an amazing thing to research. We do get all of these colors in my part of canada!

Happy TT! Mine's up!

Eimi said...

Very creative TT! =)

Jackie said...

I love fall and all the beautiful colors it brings.

Happy TT :)

Anonymous said...

I wish the desert sand turns into something colorful on autumn too! :-)
Superb research!

Anonymous said...

What a fascinating post! I love the names of all the different colours. I used to sit for ages reading all the names off my crayola crayons, and even now I'm in heaven when reading a paint shade card!
My TT post is up here if you want to check it out.
Happy TT!

♥.Trish.♥ Drumboys said...

very interesting facts ... yes a palette of beautiful autumn colours -we don't get as much here ! It is spring here in Australia now.

Anonymous said...

Talk about informative. Color is one of my many pleasures and it's always great to see someone else so taken with color, especially fall colors.

Despite the unseasonable temperatures in the Midwest, I've been enjoying the fall colors and now the fall weather is knocking on the door. I'll snuggle up with some cider and watch the trees move in the breeze on your behalf.:)

Happy TT

~X

Mom not Mum (Sandy) said...

Wow! I love fall.

Jo said...

A neat list. Personally I'm a major fan of the plums. Today Michael picked up a leaf that was turning darkest green (almost black) to yellow from the outside in and said it looked like a bumble bee. So much to see now.

Anonymous said...

You write such good posts about color! I'm not playing TT today, but I wanted to drop in, because I knew you would have something interesting. I was right.

Unknown said...

Beautiful. I enjoyed all of your descriptions. I've always been a fan of vermillion.

Darla said...

What a clever way of looking at fall colors! And I learned something today--thanks. :)

Nancy said...

This is such an awesome post. (So much linky work) ... I love the info/facts ... but I am bookmarking it for some painting/decorating ideas!

Tempest Knight said...

This is a great TT! Since I live in a tropical island, we don't get many of those colors in the intensity you do during Fall. :)

Head Gaggler said...

That's a great compilation of the colors. My fav is the auburn one.

Believer in Balance said...

What a color palette! I live in NY and can vouch for it's beautiful fall colors! I'm sorry you're missing them.

Sparky Duck said...

Great list, I wish the colors would start popping here, though I don't because it means its getting cold

Lucy R. E. said...

oooh---fall colors make me want to go shopping. hehe.

MsSnarkyPants said...

I just adore autumn! We get some fabulous colors here in NW Arkansas. The mountains look like they're painted! It's amazing!

Ann Aguirre said...

I bet all those colors would make a fantastic painting.

Joyismygoal said...

I thimk Autumn colors are peaceful

Susan Helene Gottfried said...

Yeah, I'd miss fall colors if I wasn't here to watch them every year. I really dig them. And I think all that green (or brown if you're in the desert) would get to me after awhile -- I need the change!!

Happy TT, my friend. Yep, Kerri's got spunk. I love her; maybe we need more of her around the blog. (btw, as an artist, she particularly appreciates these color TTs you do)

Michelle said...

I love autumn colors, I use them in my work very often. I also enjoy the "stories" behind colors and how they were used in times long past.

Excellent TT!

Denise Patrick said...

I love the colors of Autumn. They are warm and homey. Thanks for the list.

Happy TT!

Anonymous said...

What a lovely post. I can see the colors simply by your descriptions.

Karen said...

Living in Chicago, we have the joy of seeing the seasons change. It seems tho that this year, we went from 90 degrees Monday, to 48 degrees today and the trees don't know what color to be! Your list made me want to go out and rake what leaves there are and enjoy the cool day!
Happy TT

samulli said...

I love autumn colors as well. It's strange that we associate a season that can be cold and grey and depressing with such warm and wonderful color, though.

Julia Phillips Smith said...

'Pliny the Elder records that cinnabar became so expensive that the price had to be fixed by the Roman government.'

LOL!! Nothing our politicians can come up with was not already done thousands of years ago!

Fascinating. I LOVE fall, my favorite, favorite season. All the colors of fall sing in my heart at this time of year. Thanks for all the links so I could look at them as I went along.

pussreboots said...

All beautiful colors. Right now we still have a lot of green. We probably won't see fall color for another month or so.

Happy TT.

J. Lynne said...

"Pumpkin - color that resembles pumpkins. "

This cracks me up. Kind of like asking what the definition of "is" is.

Mitchypoo said...

My goodness, this must have taken you forever to put together. Really cool though. Happy TT!

Robin said...

I can't take credit for all this research, just for picking and choosing which colors and items to include. The research comes straight from wikipedia, complete with links. I love TT, but there are limits to how much time I've got to spend on it LOL.

Anonymous said...

Wow! tons of info here! Have a great TT!

Anonymous said...

I love those colors, but I think my favorite would be pumpkin. I hear, see and taste a color all at once!!

Vixen of Vixensden.com said...

Handing out a little Halloween treat early, for you:
http://vixensden.wordpress.com/2007/10/11/random-kindness-the-best-kind/

Cecily R said...

I LOVE fall colors! Is that a totally immature comment, given all your research and information?

Anonymous said...

Beautiful colors! I much prefer fall colors to spring colors.

Your header made me smile - I was thinking an actual island until I linked through. :)