1. COLOUR LANGUAGE

JAKE SPICER begins a new four-part series on understanding colour by showing us how the use of more accurate descriptions can help us better identify and replicate hues

- JAKE SPICER

The language we use to describe colour affects our ability to represent it accurately. Take the robin redbreast [above] as an example. On many Christmas cards, the demonstrably orange-breasted bird is depicted with an eponymous red bib and most children would reach for a red felt-tip if they came across one in a colouring book.

This imaginative distortion of the robin’s colouring no doubt happened because the nickname “redbreast” was given to the bird prior to the word “orange” even entering the English language.

The word “orange” initially appeared in reference to the fruit, only later being used to describe a discreet hue from the 16th century onwards.

Lacking the linguistic category of orange, our predecessors were forced to use either red or yellow instead. In fact, when Geoffrey Chaucer tried to write about a fox in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale two centuries prior to that, he had to call it simply a colour “betwixe yellow and reed” [sic]. Such descriptions echo through our visual culture and lead to the miscolouring of small birds on seasonal greeting cards in the 21st century.

I give this example to show how we are prone to misrepresenting colours if we do not have the adequate vocabulary to describe them. It is only by first broadening and clarifying our written and spoken language that we can learn to visually represent the full spectrum more accurately. In this new four-part series, I’ll be looking at how we can use an understanding of the fundamental properties of colour to look at the world around us and create more compelling artwork.

LOOKING AT COLOUR