Let us leave these musical analogies, retaining only the clue that a measured and orderly relation underlies the idea of harmony. The color solid which has been the subject of these pages is built upon measured color relations. It unites measured scales of hue, value, and chroma, and gives a definite color name to every sensation from the maxima of color-light and color-strength to their disappearance in darkness.
[(154)] Must not this theoretical color solid, therefore, locate all the elements which combine to produce color harmony or color discord?[32]
[(155)] Instead of theorizing, let us experiment. As a child at the piano, who first strikes random and widely separated notes, but soon seeks for the intervals of a familiar air, so let us, after roaming over the color globe and its charts, select one familiar color, and study what others will combine with it to please the eye.
[(156)] Here is a grayish green stuff for a dress, and the little girl who is to wear it asks what other colors she may use with it. First let us find it on our instrument, so as to realize its relation to other degrees of color. Its value is 6,—one step above the equator of middle value. Its hue is green, G, and its chroma 5. It is written G6/5.
[(157)] Color paths lead out from this point in every direction. Where shall we find harmonious colors, where discordant, where those paths most frequently travelled? Are there new ones still to be explored?
[(158)] There are three typical paths: one vertical, with rapid change of value; another lateral, with rapid change of hue; and a third inward, through the neutral centre to seek the opposite color field. All other paths are combinations of two or three of these typical directions in the color solid.
Three typical color paths.
[(160)] 2. The lateral path passes through neighboring hues on either side. In this case it is a sequence from blue, through green into yellow. This is simply change of hue, without change of value or chroma if the path be level, but, by inclining it, one end of the sequence becomes lighter, while the other end darkens. It thus becomes an intermediate between the first and second typical paths, combining, at each step, a change of hue with a change of value. This is more complicated, but also more interesting, showing how the character of the gray-green dress will be set off by a lighter hat of Leghorn straw, and further improved by a trimming of darker blue-green. The sequence can be made still more subtle and attractive by choosing a straw whose yellow is stronger than the green of the dress, while a weaker chroma of blue-green is used in the trimming. This is clearly expressed by the notation thus: Y8/7, G6/5, BG4/3, and written on the score by three dots and their chromas,—7, 5, and 3 (see [Fig. 23]).