HUES first appeal to the child, VALUES next, and CHROMAS last.
[(26)] Color education begins with ability to recognize and name certain hues, such as red, yellow, green, blue, and purple (see paragraphs [182 and 183]). Nature presents these hues in union with such varieties of value and chroma that, unless there be some standard of comparison, it is impossible for one person to describe them intelligently to another.
[(27)] The solar spectrum forms a basis for scientific color analysis, taught in technical schools; but it is quite beyond the comprehension of a child. He needs something more tangible and constantly in view to train his color notions. He needs to handle colors, place them side by side for comparison, imitate them with crayons, paints, and colored stuffs, so as to test the growth of perception, and learn by simple yet accurate terms to describe each by its hue, its value, and its chroma.
[(28)] Pigments, rather than the solar spectrum, are the practical agents of color work. Certain of them, selected and measured by this system (see [Chapter V.]), will be known as MIDDLE COLORS, because they stand midway in the scales of value and chroma. These middle colors are preserved in imperishable enamels,[9] so that the child may handle and fix them in his memory, and thus gain a permanent basis for comparing all degrees of color. He learns to grade each middle color to its extremes of value and chroma.
[(29)] Experiments with crayons and paints, and efforts to match middle colors, train his color sense to finer perceptions. Having learned to name colors, he compares them with the enamels of middle value, and can describe how light or dark they are. Later he perceives their differences of strength, and, comparing them with the enamels of middle chroma, can describe how weak or strong they are. Thus the full significance of these middle colors as a practical basis for all color estimates becomes apparent; and, when at a more advanced stage he studies the best examples of decorative color, he will again encounter them in the most beautiful products of Oriental art.
Is it possible to define the endless varieties of color?
[(30)] At first glance it would seem almost hopeless to attempt the naming of every kind and degree of color. But, if all these varieties possess the same three qualities, only in different degrees, and if each quality can be measured by a scale, then there is a clue to this labyrinth.
A COLOR SPHERE and COLOR TREE to unite hue, value, and chroma.
