How to Draw in the Style of Japanese Manga: A Series of Free & Wildly Popular Video Tutorials from Artist Mark Crilley

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, How to Learn for Free | December 19th, 2017

In Japan, the word man­ga refers broad­ly to the art form we know in Eng­lish as comics. But as used in the West, it refers to a com­ic art style with dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic and sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions of its own, orig­i­nat­ing from but now no longer lim­it­ed to Japan. Just as the past cen­tu­ry or so has seen the emer­gence of West­ern mas­ters of such things thor­ough­ly Japan­ese as sushi, judo, and even tea cer­e­mo­ny, the past few decades brought us the work of the West­ern man­ga­ka, or man­ga artist. Mark Cril­ley stands as one of the best-known prac­ti­tion­ers of that short tra­di­tion, thanks not only to his art but to his efforts to teach fans how to draw in the style of Japan­ese man­ga them­selves as well.

Apart from com­ic-book series like Akiko, Miki Falls, and Brody’s Ghost, the Detroit-born Cril­ley has also pub­lished a tril­o­gy of Mas­ter­ing Man­ga instruc­tion­al books. In an inter­view with Wired, he frames his own man­ga-mas­ter­ing process as a project sim­i­lar to lan­guage-learn­ing: “When I went to Tai­wan to teach Eng­lish after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, I threw myself into learn­ing Chi­nese with a real ‘tun­nel vision’ kind of ded­i­ca­tion. As a result I became con­ver­sa­tion­al in Man­darin with­in about a year. More recent­ly I decid­ed to teach myself how to draw in a man­ga-influ­enced style and thus focused exclu­sive­ly on that for many months.”

Cril­ley first took to Youtube to pro­mote his then-new man­ga series, but he “soon found that peo­ple were watch­ing my videos as draw­ing lessons. As more peo­ple watched I got hooked on pass­ing on draw­ing tips to the next gen­er­a­tion, and so I con­tin­ued pro­duc­ing more and more instruc­tion­al videos.”

More young­sters seem to have an inter­est in draw­ing in the style of Japan­ese comics and ani­ma­tion than ever (at least if my friends’ kids are gen­er­a­tional­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive), and Cril­ley finds that they “appre­ci­ate hav­ing an art teacher who takes man­ga seri­ous­ly, and doesn’t dis­miss it as an infe­ri­or art form. I’m sure plen­ty of art teach­ers are all, ‘Stop draw­ing those saucer-eyed char­ac­ters! Draw this still life instead!’ ”

Not to say that Cril­ley does­n’t appre­ci­ate real­ism: he’s put out a whole book on the sub­ject, and some of his instruc­tion­al videos cov­er how to draw life­like eyes (a tuto­r­i­al that has drawn 27 mil­lion views and count­ing), leop­ards, mush­rooms, and much else besides. But for the aspir­ing man­ga­ka of any nation­al­i­ty, his Youtube chan­nel offers a wealth of lessons on how to draw every­thing from faces to clothes to fig­ures in motion to big eyes in the man­ga aes­thet­ic. But as he sure­ly knows — hav­ing cit­ed in the Wired inter­view a wide range of influ­ences from Star Wars to Mad mag­a­zine to Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus — if you want to tru­ly find your own style, you can’t lim­it your­self to any one source of inspi­ra­tion. Acquire the skills, of course, but then take them to new places.

You can see a playlist of 256 how-to-draw videos by Cril­ley here. Or a series of small­er draw­ing playlists here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

W.B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapt­ed into a Japan­ese Man­ga Com­ic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Not Yorker: A Collection of Rejected & Late Cover Submissions to The New Yorker

in Art, Magazines | December 18th, 2017

What’s hap­pened to the thou­sands of cov­er designs that have been sub­mit­ted to The New York­er? And then been reject­ed, either sum­mar­i­ly or with much con­sid­er­a­tion? Prob­a­bly most have fad­ed into obliv­ion. But at least some are now see­ing the light of day over at The Not York­er, a web site that col­lects “declined or late cov­er sub­mis­sions” to the sto­ried mag­a­zine. See a gallery of declined illus­tra­tions here.

The cre­ators of the new site encour­age illus­tra­tors to sub­mit their reject­ed cov­ers here. And lest there be any doubt, The Not York­er is not offi­cial­ly affil­i­at­ed with The New York­er.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Toky­oi­ter: Artists Pay Trib­ute to the Japan­ese Cap­i­tal with New York­er-Style Mag­a­zine Cov­ers

Down­load a Com­plete, Cov­er-to-Cov­er Par­o­dy of The New York­er: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

The New York­er’s “Com­ma Queen” Mer­ci­ful­ly Explains the Dif­fer­ence Between Who/Whom, Lay/Lie, Less/Fewer & Beyond

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

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Will You Really Achieve Happiness If You Finally Win the Rat Race? Don’t Answer the Question Until You’ve Watched Steve Cutts’ New Animation

in Animation, Art, Economics, Life, Media | December 15th, 2017

Illus­tra­tor Steve Cutts sets his lat­est ani­ma­tion, “Hap­pi­ness,” in a teem­ing urban envi­ron­ment, with hun­dreds of near iden­ti­cal car­toon rats stand­ing in for human drudges in an unful­fill­ing, and not unfa­mil­iar race.

Packed sub­way cars, a bom­bard­ment of adver­tis­ing, soul-dead­en­ing office jobs, and Black Fri­day sales are just a few of the indig­ni­ties Cutts’ rodents are sub­ject­ed to, to the tune of Bizet’s “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.”

Ram­pant over-consumption—a major pre­oc­cu­pa­tion for this artist—offers illu­so­ry relief, and a great deal of fun for view­ers with the time to hit pause, to bet­ter savor the grim details.

The max­i­mal­ist frames read like a grat­i­fy­ing per­ver­sion of Richard Scarry’s relent­less­ly sun­ny Busy­town. As with Cutts’ 80s-throw­back Simpson’s couch gag: pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences and visu­al input whip by at sub­lim­i­nal warp speed. 

They may also serve as an anti­dote to the sort of mes­sag­ing we’re con­stant­ly on the receiv­ing end of, whether we live in city, coun­try or some­where in-between. Check out the scene as Cutts pans up from the sub­way plat­form, 52 sec­onds in:

The panty-clad female mod­el for Blah cologne’s fash­ion­ably black and white ad is ema­ci­at­ed near­ly to the point of death.

“You’re bet­ter than laces” flat­ters the lat­est (lace­less) shoe from a swoosh-bedecked footwear man­u­fac­tur­er, while a radi­a­tor-col­ored bev­er­age floats above the mot­to “Just drink it, morons.”

Krispo Flakes fight depres­sion with “the bits oth­er cere­als don’t want.”

Heav­en help us all, there’s even a poster for TRUMP The Musi­cal.

This freeze-frame scruti­ny could make an excel­lent activ­i­ty for any class where mid­dle and high school­ers are encour­aged to think crit­i­cal­ly about their role as con­sumers.

As Cutts, a one-time employ­ee of the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency, Iso­bar, who con­tributed to cam­paigns for such glob­al giants as Coca-Cola, Google, Reebok, and Toy­ota, told Reverb Press in 2015:

These are things that affect us all on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el so nat­u­ral­ly they’re a main focus for a lot of my work. Human­i­ty has the pow­er to be great in so many ways and yet at the same time we are fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed. I think it’s the con­flict between these two that fas­ci­nates me the most. As a race of beings we’ve made incred­i­ble achieve­ments in such a short space, but at the same time we seem so over­whelm­ing­ly intent on destroy­ing our­selves and every­thing around us. It would be very inter­est­ing to see where we’ll be in a hun­dred years. The term insan­i­ty is intrigu­ing – it’s almost like we’re encour­aged to act in a way that seems gen­uine­ly insane when you look at it objec­tive­ly, but it’s often accept­ed as nor­mal right now. I think we will have to evolve beyond our cur­rent think­ing and way of doing things if we want to sur­vive.

See more of Cutts’ ani­mat­ed work here. And while he doesn’t go out of his way to hype his online store, a gallery qual­i­ty print of The Rat Trap would make a fan­tas­tic gift from your cubi­cle mate’s Secret San­ta. (HURRY! TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!!)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Tree of Modern Art: Elegant Drawing Visualizes the Development of Modern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

in Art, History, Magazines | December 14th, 2017

Select­ing cer­tain fea­tures, sim­pli­fy­ing them, exag­ger­at­ing them, and using them to pro­vide a deep insight, at a glance, into the sub­ject as a whole: such is the art of the car­i­ca­tur­ist, one that Miguel Covar­ru­bias ele­vat­ed to anoth­er lev­el in the ear­ly- to mid-20th cen­tu­ry. Those skills, com­bined with his knowl­edge as an art his­to­ri­an, also served him well when he drew “The Tree of Mod­ern Art.” This aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing dia­gram first appeared in Van­i­ty Fair in May of 1933, a time when many read­ers of such mag­a­zines would have felt a great curios­i­ty about how, exact­ly, all these new paint­ings and sculp­tures and such — many of which did­n’t seem to look much like the paint­ings and sculp­tures they knew at all — relat­ed to one anoth­er.

“Because it stops in 1940, the tree fails to account for abstract expres­sion­ism and oth­er post–World War II move­ments,” writes Vox’s Phil Edwards, in a piece that includes a ver­sion of the Covar­ru­bias’ 1940 “Tree of Mod­ern Art” revi­sion with click­able exam­ples of rel­e­vant art­work.

But “the orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture alone reveals a sur­pris­ing­ly large amount about the way art has evolved,” includ­ing how it “becomes broad­er and more inclu­sive over time,” even­tu­al­ly turn­ing into a “glob­al affair”; how “artis­tic schools have become more aes­thet­i­cal­ly diverse”; how “the canon evolved quick­ly”; and how “all art is inter­twined,” cre­at­ed as it has so long been by artists who “work togeth­er, bor­row from each oth­er, and grow in tan­dem.”

You can also find the “Tree of Mod­ern Art” at the David Rum­sey His­tor­i­cal Map Col­lec­tion, a hold­ing that illus­trates, as it were, just how wide a swath of infor­ma­tion design the term “map” can encom­pass. “The date is esti­mat­ed based on the ver­so of the paper being a blue lined base map of the Nation­al Park Ser­vice dat­ed 12/28/39,” says the col­lec­tion’s site. “This draw­ing was found in the papers of B. Ash­bur­ton Tripp” — also a map­mak­er in the col­lec­tion — “and we assume that Covar­ru­bias and Tripp were friends (ver­i­fied by Trip­p’s descen­dants) and that the blue line base map was some­thing Tripp was work­ing on in his land­scape archi­tec­ture busi­ness.”

The leg­end describes the tree as hav­ing been “plant­ed 60 years ago,” a num­ber that has now passed 130. Many more leaves have grown off those branch­es of impres­sion­ism, expres­sion­ism, post-impres­sion­ism, sur­re­al­ism, cubism, and futur­ism in the years since Covar­ru­bias drew the tree, but for some­one to go back and aug­ment such a ful­ly-real­ized cre­ation would­n’t do at all — as with any work of art, mod­ern or oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art Visu­al­ized in a Mas­sive 130-Foot Time­line

Take a Trip Through the His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art with the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Mona Lisa Descend­ing a Stair­case

Every Exhi­bi­tion Held at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Pre­sent­ed in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New Iranian Video Game, Engare, Explores the Elegant Geometry of Islamic Art

in Art, Video Games | December 13th, 2017

The inter­sec­tion of math­e­mat­ics and art holds out great poten­tial for not just end­less dis­cov­er­ies but deeply mem­o­rable cre­ations. The 20th-cen­tu­ry vision­ary M.C. Esch­er under­stood that, but so did the Islam­ic artists of cen­turies before that inspired him. They’ve also inspired the Iran­ian game devel­op­er Mah­di Bahra­mi, whose newest effort Engare stands at the cross of math­e­mat­ics, art, and tech­nol­o­gy, a puz­zle video game that chal­lenges its play­ers to com­plete the kind of bril­liant­ly col­or­ful, math­e­mat­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous, and at once both strik­ing­ly sim­ple and strik­ing­ly com­plex pat­terns seen in tra­di­tion­al Islam­ic art and design.

“The leap from the bare bones pro­to­type to it becom­ing a game about cre­at­ing art was a small one, giv­en that Islam­ic art is steeped in math­e­mat­i­cal knowl­edge,” writes Kill Screen’s Chris Priest­man.

“The visu­al flair of Islam­ic art also helps to fur­ther ensure that Engare doesn’t ever feel ‘dry.’ Yes, it’s a game about math, but there are no dull equa­tions to solve. Yet, the same ideas that those equa­tions belong to are approached in Engare, just from a dif­fer­ent angle and one that Bahra­mi reck­ons can also evoke emo­tions. You can see this in mes­mer­iz­ing action in the game­play trail­er just above.

“There are geo­met­ri­cal shapes that make us feel hap­py, pat­terns that make some­one nervous/hypnotized, the tiling of a ceil­ing can make some­one feel lone­ly,” Priest­man quotes Bahra­mi as writ­ing. He’s done this sort of emo­tion­al think­ing about visu­al math­e­mat­ics before: his pre­vi­ous game Farsh “had you rolling out Per­sian car­pets in such a way as to cre­ate paths across the lev­els,” and his next one Tan­dis is “inspired by Celtic shapes, and is a wild and unpre­dictable exper­i­ment in topo­graph­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion.” If you’d like to give Engare a try, you can get it from its web­site or on Steam. When the 21st cen­tu­ry’s M.C. Esch­er dis­cov­ers Islam­ic art, will he do it through the medi­um of video games?

via Kill Screen

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Back to Bed: A New Video Game Inspired by the Sur­re­al Art­work of Esch­er, Dali & Magritte

Cal­i­forni­um: New Video Game Lets You Expe­ri­ence the Sur­re­al World of Philip K. Dick

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

Math­e­mat­ics Made Vis­i­ble: The Extra­or­di­nary Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Meet the Characters Immortalized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Factory Scene

in Art, Music | December 8th, 2017

Lou Reed weath­ered his share of bad press in the decades after leav­ing one of the most influ­en­tial bands in rock history—either for his famed iras­ci­bil­i­ty or his spells of lack­lus­ter song­writ­ing. Some­how, he always had a way of bounc­ing back, prov­ing again and again his cul­tur­al rel­e­vance. For exam­ple, when it seemed like he had cashed in all his cred­i­bil­i­ty with the godaw­ful “Orig­i­nal Rap­per” in the mid-eight­ies, he returned in 1989 with the grit­ty clas­sic rock and roll of New York (and played the White House at the request of his long­time fan and friend Vaclav Hav­el). Reed was a true sur­vivor of a down­town scene that claimed more casu­al­ties than it made stars, and he most­ly made sur­vival look pret­ty good.

When he released his first solo album after quit­ting the Vel­vet Under­ground in 1972, how­ev­er, it seemed like­ly Reed was head­ed for obscu­ri­ty. Lou Reed is most­ly a great col­lec­tion of (most­ly over­pro­duced) songs, “but it isn’t a ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing” record, writes Mark Dem­ing at All­mu­sic, “and it stands today more as a his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty than any­thing else” for its ear­ly ver­sions of songs like “Berlin.” Not so the fol­low-up, Trans­former, an album boast­ing what may well be some of the best record­ings Reed ever made, like “Per­fect Day” and “Satel­lite of Love.” What made the dif­fer­ence? The influ­ence of David Bowie, who pro­duced with Mick Ron­son, didn’t hurt one bit.

Trans­former also hap­pens to con­tain the only song that broke Reed “through to the main­stream,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above, the “rock clas­sic” hit, “Walk on the Wild Side.” The song draws its nar­ra­tive strength and its “incred­i­bly sub­ver­sive” nature from its sub­ject: the 60s Fac­to­ry scene sur­round­ing Andy Warhol, which, in effect, made Lou Reed, Lou Reed when Warhol took the Vel­vet Under­ground under his wing. The song reminds us that Reed was at his strongest when he told the tales of his milieu, whether that be the world of junkies, hus­tlers, and sex­u­al out­siders, or of fringe down­town artists unafraid to exper­i­ment with new iden­ti­ties and per­sonas.

These were shared worlds, and Reed knew them well enough to cap­ture them in a lit­er­ary frame pro­vid­ed by Nel­son Algren’s nov­el A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). Rather than cre­ate an adap­ta­tion of the book as he first intend­ed, Reed wrote about six com­pelling Fac­to­ry char­ac­ters, “Super­stars” in Warhol’s coterie, who embod­ied the edgy, coura­geous cool Reed made his theme. First up is Hol­ly Wood­lawn, a trans­gen­der woman who moved to New York from Mia­mi to escape dis­crim­i­na­tion. Warhol dis­cov­ered Wood­lawn work­ing the streets, and put her in films, “where she thrived,” the video notes, becom­ing “an impor­tant fig­ure in LGBTQ his­to­ry and, thanks to Lou Reed, in music his­to­ry, too.”

The next verse intro­duces us to anoth­er impor­tant mem­ber of Warhol’s inner cir­cle, Can­dy Dar­ling, who was also trans­gen­der and a star of Warhol’s films, and who inspired not only “Walk on the Wild Side” but “Can­dy Says” and, quite pos­si­bly, the Kinks’ “Lola.” Dar­ling is already famil­iar to those who know the Fac­to­ry scene, as is the sub­ject of the third vignette, Joe Dalle­san­dro, whom Warhol turned into a cult star in films like Flesh, and who—unlike most of the Fac­to­ry artists—actually achieved main­stream suc­cess, with roles in The Cot­ton Club and The Limey. (He also served as the crotch mod­el on the cov­er of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fin­gers and the “top­less tor­so” on the cov­er of The Smiths’ debut album.)

As the video out­lines brief biogra­phies of each “Walk on the Wild Side” muse, we see that Reed wasn’t only pay­ing homage to his artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty of ori­gin, he also was also pre­serv­ing a pan­theon of cul­tur­al fig­ures who were impor­tant to the gay rights move­ment in one way or anoth­er, as well as to the 60s Warhol aes­thet­ic and the birth of glam rock in the 70s. “Walk on the Wild Side,” notes Poly­phon­ic, “gives us a great lit­tle glimpse into a his­tor­i­cal scene, and it helps us under­stand the peo­ple around Lou Reed that influ­enced the great artist he was.” With­out a doubt, Reed’s most endur­ing work comes from his sym­pa­thet­ic por­traits of the artists and hang­ers-on who made the world he wrote of so sexy, dan­ger­ous, com­plex, and intrigu­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

Lou Reed Sings “Sweet Jane” Live, Julian Schn­abel Films It (2006)

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Van Gogh of Microsoft Excel: How a Japanese Retiree Makes Intricate Landscape Paintings with Spreadsheet Software

in Art, Software, Technology | December 6th, 2017

Just when you thought you’ve mas­tered Microsoft Excel–creating piv­ot tables, VLOOKUPs and the rest–you dis­cov­er the fea­ture you nev­er knew was there. The one that lets you cre­ate Japan­ese land­scape paint­ings. When Tat­suo Hori­uchi retired, he found that fea­ture and leaned on it, hard. Now 77 years old, he has enough land­scape paint­ings to stage an exhibition–all made with the point and click of a mouse.

So what’s the moral of this sto­ry? Maybe it’s you’re nev­er too old to make art. Or maybe it’s nev­er too late to mas­ter those hid­den fea­tures and push tech­nol­o­gy to the bleed­ing edge. In Tat­suo’s case, he’s doing both.

via Swiss Miss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Hand-Drawn Japan­ese Ani­me: A Deep Study of How Kat­suhi­ro Otomo’s Aki­ra Uses Light

A Hyp­not­ic Look at How Japan­ese Samu­rai Swords Are Made

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

The Art of the Japan­ese Teapot: Watch a Mas­ter Crafts­man at Work, from the Begin­ning Until the Star­tling End

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

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The Vibrant Color Wheels Designed by Goethe, Newton & Other Theorists of Color (1665–1810)

in Art, Science | December 6th, 2017

Maybe it’s the clois­tered headi­ness of Rene Descartes, or the rig­or­ous aus­ter­i­ty of Isaac New­ton; maybe it’s all the leath­ern breach­es, gray waist­coats, sal­low faces, and pow­dered wigs… but we tend not to asso­ciate Enlight­en­ment Europe with an explo­sion of col­or the­o­ry. Yet, philoso­phers of the late 17th and 18th cen­turies were obsessed with light and sight. Descartes wrote a trea­tise on optics, as did New­ton.

New­ton first described in his 1672 Opticks the “rev­o­lu­tion­ary new the­o­ry of light and colour,” the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Whip­ple Library writes, “in which he claimed that exper­i­ments with prisms proved that white light was com­prised of light of sev­en dis­tinct colours.” Sci­en­tists debat­ed Newton’s the­o­ry “well into the 19th cen­tu­ry.”

One ear­ly oppo­nent famous­ly illus­trat­ed his rebut­tal. Poet, writer, and sci­en­tist Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe pub­lished The­o­ry of Col­ors (see here), with its care­ful­ly hand-drawn and col­ored dia­grams and wheels, in 1809. From New­ton’s time onward, col­or the­o­rists elab­o­rat­ed pre­vail­ing con­cepts with col­or wheels, the first attrib­uted to New­ton in 1704 (and drawn in black and white, above).

Newton’s wheel “arranged red, orange, yel­low, green, blue, indi­go, and vio­let into a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion on a rotat­ing disk.” Four years lat­er, painter Claude Boutet made his 7‑color and 12-col­or cir­cles (top), based on Newton’s the­o­ries. Artists, chemists, map­mak­ers, poets, even ento­mol­o­gists… every­one seemed to have a pet the­o­ry of col­or, gen­er­al­ly accom­pa­nied by elab­o­rate col­ored charts and dia­grams.

The col­or wheel was one among many forms—which often pre­sent­ed con­trast­ing the­o­ries, like that of Jacques-Fabi­en Gau­ti­er, who argued that black and white were pri­ma­ry col­ors. But the wheel, and Newton’s basic ideas about it, have endured almost unchanged. The wheel fur­ther up (third one from top) by British ento­mol­o­gist Moses Har­ris from 1776 shows Newton’s 7‑color scheme sim­pli­fied to the 6 pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary col­ors we usu­al­ly see, arranged in the com­ple­men­tary and anal­o­gous scheme, with ter­tiary gra­da­tions between them. Anoth­er ento­mol­o­gist, Ignaz Schif­fer­müller, drew the 12-col­or wheel right above.

Col­or is always rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Newton’s orig­i­nal wheel includ­ed “musi­cal notes cor­re­lat­ed with col­or.” By the end of the 18th cen­tu­ry, col­or the­o­ry had become increas­ing­ly tied to psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries and typolo­gies, as in the wheel above, the “rose of tem­pera­ments,” made by Goethe and Friedrich Schiller in 1789 to illus­trate “human occu­pa­tions and char­ac­ter traits,” the Pub­lic Domain Review notes, includ­ing “tyrants, heroes, adven­tur­ers, hedo­nists, lovers, poets, pub­lic speak­ers, his­to­ri­ans, teach­ers, philoso­phers, pedants, rulers,” grouped into the four tem­pera­ments of humoral the­o­ry.

It’s a fair­ly short leap from these psy­cholo­gies of col­or to those used by adver­tis­ers and com­mer­cial design­ers in the 20th century—or from the artists and sci­en­tists’ col­or the­o­ries to abstract expres­sion­ism, the Bauhaus school, and the chemists and pho­tog­ra­phers who recre­at­ed the col­ors of the world on film. (Goethe’s col­or wheel, below, from The­o­ry of Col­or, illus­trates his chap­ter on “Alle­gor­i­cal, sym­bol­ic, and mys­ti­cal use of colour.”) See more ear­ly col­or wheels, like Philipp Otto Runge’s 1810 Far­benkugel, as well as oth­er con­cep­tu­al col­or schemes, at the Pub­lic Domain Review.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

How Tech­ni­col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma with Sur­re­al, Elec­tric Col­ors & Changed How We See Our World

A Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­ors: Dutch Book From 1692 Doc­u­ments Every Col­or Under the Sun

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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