Colour

Other people		Painters
cyan		blue cool blue light blue blue-green cobalt teal cobalt teal blue cobalt turquoise turquoise turquoise blue process cyan PG.50
magenta		crimson red crimson violet red violet red cool red mid red process red process magenta cobalt violet deep pink pink red rose PV.49
yellow		primary yellow process yellow cool yellow mid yellow cadmium lemon cadmium yellow PY.37

Other people		Painters
red		orange red orange warm red cadmium red scarlet red scarlet vermilion
green		bright green brilliant green emerald green light green
blue		violet blue-violet basic blue warm blue navy blue ultramarine

These notes		Painters
green-blue		blue-violet blue azure blue bright blue sky blue turquoise blue ultramarine
yellow-green		lime green
orange		yellow orange
purple-red		scarlet
violet		purple

Explanation

The language of painting has a very long and complicated history, and this history is reflected in the variety and fluidity of the words used to describe colours. The variety also provides an aura of mystery, poetry and romanticism for those who deal with paint. Like any other jargon, it can be used by practitioners to exclude outsiders with specious complications.

The colour wheel in the illustration is typical of those published during much of the twentieth century. It was published in black and white, as shown here, with its implied scientific precision. The precision was, of course, illusory. By the time it was published, the everyday English meaning of the colour names were already different from the meanings used by Newton or Munsell or the translators of Goethe and Itten or any of those who named the colours on the colour wheel. And each manufacturer of paint had settled into using their own idiosyncratic colour names.

The tables lists a few of the names used by painters and paint manufacturers. Most of them have been taken from current catalogues and colour charts. Many are mutually contradictory. Those in italics are claimed to be the closest watercolour approximations to the subtractive primaries.

Observations

• Manufacturers of artists’ supplies are slowly coming to label their products with the colour names used in these notes, although some still retain the names they have used for hundreds of years. Winsor and Newton, for example, label their magenta ink as crimson, which the dictionary¹ defines as deep purplish red, a hue that I would place closer to red on the colour circle.
• As I type this note I can see the cyan stain in my hand from a tube of gouache. I had to open it. The tube was clearly labelled process cyan but the colour swatch on the tube was just as clearly blue, not cyan! The stain on my hand confirms that the paint is indeed cyan. I am fascinated by the contortions that people go through to maintain the myth that red, blue and yellow are the subtractive primaries.
• Slow changes in the meanings of colour names during the past century have lead to frequent misuse of colour concepts in art criticism. Complementary colours, for example, are commonly misidentified.
• The colour illustrations in these notes cannot be accurate because they depend on the calibration of this display device. They are rough guides. Even with the vagaries of uncalibrated computer monitors, they are probably more consistent than the paints and dyes of past centuries.