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Choosing Colours - the book
Why I wrote this book - extracted from the introduction
to Choosing Colours
I wanted to do just one thing with this book: provide a well-researched
reference work, which would be a useful working tool for the
designer, decorator, homeowner, student, architect, craftsman,
artist and anybody who gets fired up by the emotional power
of colour.
Having compiled this collection of colour palettes, I'm now
aware how impossible it is to be universal. To include every
historical or regional palette or every colour model or every
example of a 'balanced' colour scheme, if such things even
exist, would demand an encyclopaedic set of books, which nobody
would then read. In fact those books that try to order colour
into harmonious symmetries of complementaries and split the
colour wheel into arrangements by fraction are very worthy,
but also very dull.
Instead I've tried to convey collections of colours that
best exemplify their time or place and which are powerful.
A powerful palette to my mind is a palette that's not just
a set of interesting or strong colours: it's something that
has its own identity above those colours and which can trigger
strong associations, sometimes in our subconscious, of a time
or place or emotion. A single colour can of course trigger
such associations by itself, like a Miles Davis solo can.
The palette, on the other hand, can work like a full orchestra.
There are colours and palettes in this book which may not
please some people. There are no doubt some colours which
are inaccurate and I'm always grateful for corrections and
additions. I have tried in every case to be as scholarly as
possible in matching, cross-matching and checking colours,
but I do not claim that this book is an art historical reference
work: the palettes and colours are, ultimately, my choices.
If anything, they are abstract representations, removed from
the objects or events from which they are taken. They are
distillations of time, of place and of the ideas behind things.
I hope you enjoy looking at them and using them.
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The Choosing Colours book is readily available at W H Smiths and other
leading booksellers and you can buy it on-line from us, click
here, or alternatively from Amazon.
To choose and buy paint - click buy
paint.
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How
this book works >>
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