The Munsell Color System for Artists
 

Alfred Munsell was a color theorist who published a book called "A Grammar of Color" back around 1924.

Munsell's system was based on "color as it relates to light" and not "color as it relates to selling paint". Many artists prefer Munsell's color wheel and color system to the systems offered by paint companies like Grumbacher who have an interest in selling you something - and their color wheel reflects it.

Munsell's system is based on color having three basic properties:

- Hue - The attribute by which we distinguish the color - blue, yellow, red, etc.
- Value - The lightness or darkness of the hue.
- Chroma - The intensity of the color or the amount of grayness the color exhibits.

HUE
Munsell's color wheel has the following "primary" hues:

Red
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple

It also has the following "tertiary" hues:

Yellow-Red
Green-Yellow
Blue-Green
Purple-Blue
Red-Purple

They come together like this:

Red
Yellow-Red
Yellow
Green-Yellow
Green
Blue-Green
Blue
Purple-Blue
Purple
Red-Purple

The Munsell color wheel reflects these hues. Here is a Munsell Color Wheel that I made for myself:

VALUE
Munsell expressed value as a measure of lightness. Munsell's scale of value ranges from Black at value 0 to White at value 10. It is important to distinguish that Munsell separated out Black and White from the hues listed above. When a color or hue has value, then it is expressed as a "Chromatic" value. Chroma is the next topic.

The black and white value scale has no hue. Here is a value scale:

CHROMA

Chroma can be confusing. The easiest expression of Chroma is that it is the amount of gray in a color. By adding gray, you gradually neutralize the hue. Chroma is often also referred to as "intensity".

The key to the Munsell system as it applies to artists is that you use the value scale of grays to neutralize your hues instead of using the color on the opposite end of the color wheel. It is important to realize thereby, that each hue will have a value/chroma scale of its own - Dark Blue at Value 1 to Light Blue at Value 9. To neutralize the chroma or intensity of a value 5 blue, you add to it a value 5 gray. If you added pure black or a lighter or darker gray, then you would contaminate the value and possibly the hue of that value 5 blue.

Munsell has a 14 step sequence of chroma, but I have found it easier to express chroma in three categories - High, Medium, and Low. In artistic terms, the high medium and low categories refer to the amount of (equal value) gray you add to a hue to neutralize it - High=25%, Medium=50%, and Low=75%. The more gray you add to the pure hue, the lower the intensity or chroma of the hue becomes.

You can actually build charts of each hue in values from 1 to 9 and then neutralize each value into high, medium, and low categories.

Here is a simple chroma example using Purple:

Color wheels on a gravel road
 

I started writing this before Michael posted his above explanation. Hopefully it doesn't seem too redundant.

The Munsell System is the scientifically accepted standard of color identification. It designates a numerical measurement to the three traits of any given color. Hue is classified according to it

Excellent additional information Marvin, thank you. :)

Another place to go to learn about the Munsell system is www.munsell.com.

Michael,

Sorry to be a pest, but could you show how you have adapted this information for practical use? Anything done with simple images? Say a vase,or other?


I have been interested in the value system for a while now, but have spent more time locking in the actual colours I use with the grey scale. Nothing
dramatic, just trying to develop a simple system.

Kim:

The Munsell system was adapted for painters by Frank Reilly - I learned it from Covino who learned it from Reilly.

If you want to see it in practical use, just look at any of my paintings where I use the verdaccio underpainting. They begin by expressing pure values over which I lay in color of a corresponding value - a value 7 gray in the undertone gets a value 7 color over the top. This is best shown in the flesh palette which I still use a modified version of - you mix nine values of flesh to correspond to your values of undertone. Chroma or intensity is expressed in many places, but can specifically be seen in passages where the form turns or as objects recede.

It is interesting that the system I learned from Bill Whitaker also depends on understanding the relationships between hue, value, and chroma, but you begin with color rather than monochrome. It would have been much harder for me to adapt to it if I did not have a good understanding of the Munsell system. Bill mixes on the fly and adjusts hue, value and chroma all on his palette as he paints - very difficult thing to do unless you understand it. He does and the results are amazing. :)

I always appreciate an opportunity to show my ignorance.

Is it possible that an artist can have an eye for color the way a musician can have an ear for music?

I understand when someone says they play music "by ear." I, not in an accomplished way, play the harmonica. I know nothing about written music but I can mimic what I hear pretty well. I have heard that there are very accomplished musicians who cannot do this at all. They must read music in order to play music.

Could it be that there is a similar dynamic with regard to an artist either "seeing, then painting color and value intuitively", the way a musician would "play by ear." OR, an artist having to "read and paint color" the way it is presented above in this thread?

Mike:

I think your concept is completely believable. I have never met one, but I can believe that there have been, are, and will be artists who have a real natural affinity for color, value and hue and can "do" without someone training them. I believe them to be few and far between.

But that ain't me! For me, art is hard. I have to learn in order to do, and I have to do and do and do in order to do with any proficiency at all. :)

You got that right Michael.

It ain't me either, for some reason I continue to come up with these correlations between art and music. I wasn't meaning any disrespect for the learning and the knowing.

Thank you, gentlemen. That should be enough information to keep me busy and out of trouble for a couple of years. (Hope springs eternal.)

Thank you, Michael.

I am afraid I still have problems with all the terminology of describing colours. It is actually easier for me to just key from nature. Presently,
using a cartoon with correct tonal values and an
oil colour study with an accurate colour/tone is doing the job.

From the Munsell system,I have borrowed the idea
of a value system(1 to 10 black and white) with the pigments I use on either side of the tonal diagram. Having returned to the described painting system of Van Dyck,I am looking for any other bits to keep making the work more efficient.

Color geniuses
 

I do know one. He is a friend of mine.

We both studied under the same teacher in Providence RI, Eugene Tonoff. Bill does the most sensuous, unexpected color compostions. He does mostly non-traditional florals. I was totally desperate about a background color on a piece to be in Ladies Home Journal. He nonchalantly ripped off a piece of light green toilet paper and said "here, this should work"! It was perfect!

The only color theory he and I learned formally from Eugene, was complementary colors and to study the color relationships in Persian miniatures and Japanese and Chinese art.

I do not personally use the color wheel, but I use fabric, scraps of paper, anything to come up wth a color scheme. It has to vibrate. It is viceral and intuitive. You cannot reason your way through a color scheme. Color is beyond reasoning, it is emotion. This may sound silly to some, but you have to be completely there when you are working, you have to be the color. For some this may take years, others immediately, some never.

If you note the background on Persian miniatures, they are neutral, that is why they can combine so many colors sucessfully. I have bought some Chinese antique silk textiles, the colors are amazing and seem to defy all laws of color.

I don't mind, or advocate the Munsell or any other system, based on temperature or otherwise. I personally find them confusing. I don't think the artists of the Ming dynasty or Persian miniatures had color wheels or had a knowledge of color temperature. Those studies were done in the late 1900's. I don't think even the impressionists had them, maybe a color wheel.

I will take a day or more sometimes to just get a background color right. Sometimes minutes. A little pthalo, a little alizarin, perhaps some white, a touch of cadmium. It is like music.

Sincerely,

Sharon,

I tend to use living things, (leaves, trees, shrubs, flowers) or the inanimate (rocks, exposed hills and the sky) for colour schemes. Nature I find is always creative here.

The life of Reilly
 

Mike,

The ability to mix on the fly is an ability that is most often developed with experience. Categorizing color by hue, value and chroma allows for a more objective analysis than trying to remember formulas. Reilly developed a palette which offered the opportunity to be able to remix any color and have it match perfectly. I have adapted the Reilly palette for my own purposes (having substituted some of my own colors) but I still apply the same principles. The point of learning any discipline is to ultimately allow one the flexibility to experience total freedom.

Michael,

I studied the Reilly system for ten years (part time) with John Frederick Murray who studied with Reilly for 5 years (full time). The Reilly system is a very complex curriculum which covers not only painting but drawing and picture making in great depth. I don

Nature and color
 

Khaimraj,

Oh yes, nature! I get some of my color inspiration just observing nature and everyday things.

Color is visual, not intellectual!

Sincerely,

The color purple?
 

The beauty of the Munsell system of color notation is that it allows one to quickly identify a color. This greatly simplifies the task of mixing or matching what you see. This is true for any color observed, be it from nature, fabric samples or whatever. It is a roadmap, nothing more, nothing less.. Anyone who tries to conceptualize what any given color should be, based on theory or whatever, is sacrificing an opportunity to bring more life into their art.

Marvin,

thank you for the direction given. The way I was trained, mixing and matching colour/tone was not a problem. If I am looking at something directly from life, it is already there. I don't paint from photographs, so my research has only dealt with
direct observation.

What I have been researching, is how to effectively translate from a charcoal cartoon keyed to nature, to a canvas.After reading what has been written here, I think I have had the answer all along.It's the oil colour study.

Thanks to all for finally making crystal clear, an
idea that I have been chewing on for a long time.

Marvin:

Covino has spoken of Reilly, but I am not sure if he was directly a student or a peer. Clearly the color and value system, and controlled palette are definate similarities, and clearly Covino has created his own path and taken strides down it. Right or wrong is not for me to decide.

So even while I have set aside some of what I learned from Covino in favor of my own path - I don't use his medium and I don't do many verdaccios anymore - the color and value system was so valuable to me that I will use it till the day I die! What I learned from Covino saved me 20 years of banging my head against a wall. :)

Hatfields and McCoys? Not!
 

Michael,

I just wanted to point out that Reilly and Covino, although some overlaps exist, were two different animals for those who weren't familiar with their names. I'm glad that Covino's teaching was a source of knowledge for you. I feel the same about my Reilly training. The most important aspect of choosing a teacher is that they know more than you about the direction you wish to pursue.

I'm with Khaimraj
 

I think there is a point early on in the learning stage of painting where this info may be useful..very early on. I find it very boring. Maybe it's my personality. It's the nuances in art - the capturing the delicate individual characteristics that are important. Charts are at best a point of departure.

One of my biggest advances in mixing color came when I finally, and reluctantly, sat down and did what I'd been resisting, but what so many masterful painters had been telling me to do, something very basic:

Take a hue from your palette. Tint it with white, again, again, again. Watch what happens. Do it with all the hues on your palette. It's astonishing how they behave, some changing quickly, some slowly. (Case in point: compare classic alizarin crimson with the

Steven:

Exactly my point! I have charts of each hue made into 27 different colors made from nine values of each hue and then neutralized with equal value grays to three intensities! It really helps to mix colors!

Steven, Michael, agreed.

For me it was the white out of all known Mars colours, a bright lemon yellow, a bright orange type red and a bright blue. Then turning all of these opaque pigments into transparent on canvas.

Essentially a modified six colour palette. I use more the philosophy of, harmony of the painting and memory colour/tone.

My simple method . . .
 

How interesting to read all these approaches to color. Color has, and continues to "bug" me. Like doing push-up, or sit-up, however, it gets a little easier the more you do it.

I learned what seem like a simple, but workeable solution in studying with Daniel Greene. His approach is this, whether painting portraits, still life, or whatever:

He looks at his subject to decide value, then whether it's warm or cool, and then whether it's on the yellow side or the blue side.

Painting and color are, to some degree, subjective, and my eye doesn't see color like your eye. So, it seems to me that if we were all standing side by side, painting a still life, we might not see the same identical color/value/degree of warmth, BUT, we would see a warm place as warm, and a cool place as cool, leaving us to then formulate/mix a color that would make that place in our painting correspond to that place on our model. In the end, if we kept our color/value/temp in the right areas, we should end up with a satisfying painting -- theoretically. :-)

I once had an instructor who had this large banner hanging in front of the room that read: DON'T THINK . . . PAINT!

An Eye for Color
 

Mike,

There are people who have an eye for color, like Mozart. My best friend Bill is an example. He works mainly with an understanding of complements and that is all. No pedestrian Munsell systems to clog the intuitive flow of color on his canvas. Early Asian art has the most sophisticated and subtle color, yet I can find no complicated Chinese color charts to explain it.

Working with a system like Munsell shortcircuits the unconcious part of the brain which probably is the artists' greatest painting tool. It is like translating a direct experience with color into a foreign langauge and retranslating it onto the canvas. In other words, the intellectual faculties get in the way and you lose your direct visceral feel for the color The results are usually rather ordinary and do not allow for the unexpected and delicious color harmonies that come from being totally one with color.

Sincerely,

A system of identification
 

The Munsell "system" is just a way to identify the three properties of color, value, hue and intensity. Some people may have incorporated this method of identification and derived intellectual color harmony theories from it. If they did, it had nothing at all to do with the Munsell system.

There is no difference between picking up a tube of paint and calling it "Ultramarine Blue" or "Purple Blue Value1 Chroma 8" What you call it has nothing to do with how you use it. In either case, you need to be aware of the fact it's a dark purplish blue of medium to strong intensity. I don't see how this shortcuts anything.

Marvin

If I may interject here; I agree with you. I was taught to see and to understand colour as a combination of its three components and doing so allows everyone to be speaking the same language ... so-to-speak.

Because not all paint brands necessarily yield the same colours for any given paint name, it is really helpful, as you say, to identify a colour by its generic descriptors. The natural earth tones are particularly prone to variations as are newly made recreations of historic colours such as "Indian Yellow". These can be all over the place, can't they, and require descriptive terminology. The manufacturers are emulating colours that no longer exist and sometimes I wish they'd pick different names.

I don't know whether the system I learned was ever based on Munsell's but there are similarities. In it, all colours can be described by a combination of their hue, value, and chroma. But there are a couple of differences from the Munsell system, too. I was taught the 9-point, European (so I'm told) value scale instead of a 10-point one. It is, however, the same as Denman Ross's value scale (Ross was an American. Are you familiar with his work? It's fascinating stuff. I think he was at least partly a contemporary of Munsell's.)

There is a further complication in the system I use because, in it, the values are numbered opposite to that of the Munsell scale. That is, the darker values are higher numbers and lighter values, lower, with black being a 9 and white being a 1. It gets very confusing when talking values with the many people familiar with the Munsell scale. This is doubly so because I would still say that a light colour is a "high value" tone even though the "number" I would use to identify its value would be a lower numeral. Sheesh; it gets complicated.

Denman Ross didn't use numbers in his 9 value system, preferring to use names, instead: White, High Light, Light, Low Light, Middle, High Dark, Dark, Low Dark, Black. (Wt, HLt, Lt, Llt, M, HD, D, LD, Blk.). The only advantage -- if that is the right word -- I can see in a nine-value system over others is that with an odd number you will always have an exact middle value. So, a #5 is the middle value, as are 3 and 7, and so on. A small thing, I know.

The other difference between what I learned and Munsell's system is that you CAN compare chroma of unlike hues. I understand that Munsell says chroma is only relevant within a given hue. That is, you cannot -- according to Munsell -- compare the chroma of a blue with that of a red. Is this correct? Was Reilly also taking that approach? I can understand why that is done, but for practical usage, it works just as well to consider chromas right across the hue spectrum in any given painting.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw all of that into the mix.

Best.

Juan

Did you see that purple blue, value one, chroma eight, evening sky?
 

Everybody's perception of color is different, no two people will ever experience a color in the same way.

The Munsell system is useful for industry when a manufacturer of wallpaper has to have some curtain fabric dyed to match.

Color is visceral, emotional, based on observations of nature and experiments. There are laws, like complementary colors to be sure, but extensive theoretical knowledge of color will never supplant the great intuitive artist.

Lights out
 

Juan,

I always appreciate your insights and your knowledgeable aplication of them in your work. I agree totally with your points regarding the confusion of pigment names.

Reilly used as his basis the basic Munsell terminology but adapted it solely for classifying pigments. Munsell used theoretical black and white values. In his system white paint was actually around value 9.5 while black was 1.5. The Munsell system had to encompass all color measurement (fur, metal, etc.). So that is the rationale for the wider range.

Reilly made white=10 and black=0 with 5 in the middle. So obviously you go up in value to get to the middle from black. The usage of black as the highest number notation comes from the printing industry where more black ink equates a darker tone. It does seem illogical when talking about light since a 100 watt bulb is brighter than a 50 watt bulb.

In both systems, black and white are separated by nine equal steps of value.

I think sometimes people change certain terminology so they won't be accused for copying others' works. Who knows who copied who, Ross or Munsell. Ross's name sounds familier. I'll have to check it out.

Chroma is the measurement of steps from neutral. Cad red light is chroma 14 while neutral gray is 0 chroma. This is in both Reilly and Munsell so I don't understand why they can't be compared. This is new to me.

Off topic but how did that varnish turn out?

Take care.

I agree totally Sharon. Intuition always prevails. The question is how to best discover your intuition.

In martial arts the theory is that only through discipline can you ever really know true freedom.

There are many paths to get in touch with intuition.

Intuitive
Function: adjective
Date: 1621
1 a : known or perceived by intuition: directly apprehended

That's an interesting phrase, "directly apprehended."

The following was taken from MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR

Marvin,

Thanks for your kind words. Don't bother looking back into the Munsell/Reilly systems, though (in case you were so motivated). I did some digging into Munsell's and didn't see anywhere that chromas from different hue families shouldn't be compared to one another. In fact, they specifically are compared directly. I think the person who told me that they couldn't be so compared, mis-wrote, or I mis-read.

FYI, Denman Waldo Ross wrote a book entitled "THE PAINTER'S PALETTE: A Theory of Tone Relations -- An Instrument of Expression" in 1919 (published by Houghton Mifflin Company). I have a photocopied version. (There's no colour in it anyway. Funny.) It's hard to describe his theories in just a few words as they are comprehensive and complicated (at least in writing, they are). Once you set up one of his dozens of palettes (all of which are based on the same basic principles) I'm sure it becomes clearer. I haven't yet sat down to experiment with them, but I know someone who has and he says that they work marvelously. One of these days ...

Juan

Color to my ears
 

Marvin,

I agree completely with you on mastering discplines. I see such poor craftsmanship and total ignorance of the basics of what we call "Fine Art", I do not want to denigrate one method of knowledge.

However I can not see how such a complicated system as the "Munsell" can not but short-circuit the intuitive process.

I have studied color in Asian art as well as queried, its practicioners. They do believe in discipline and have established formats, but as I have said before the have no color theory per se.

Investigating further, they seem to have derived their color harmonies from nature.

Personally, I find the simple formulae of analagous and complementary colors useful, the rest rather cumbersome.

As I now work mainly in pastel, there is no hope of using color mixing recipies of any kind, just a rather constant search for that elusive right stick!

Color, at least to me, works best when one is not thinking. It becomes a little song, a little blue, a hair of red, a dollop of white, and hmmm, just a smidge of burnt sienna.

Sharon,

I think you have a misconception regarding what the Munsell system is about. It is just a way of classifying color. It's a color notation system that classifies color by three factors, hue, value and chroma (intensity).

I never use color formulas. When I hear that someone uses a particular color for a highlight or combines such and such for shadows I shake my head. I think an approach like that is too predetermined for my taste.

I try to arrange the most beautiful colors in the set-up that lies before me. I just put together colors that appeal to my inner sense of beauty and harmony. This is the inspiration for the color I use in the painting I'm working on. No formulas just inner appeal. Before I paint each color, I identify its hue, value and chroma and mix it on my palette.

This sounds just what you're doing to me.

Marvin,

How do you "identify" these characteristics? Are you doing it mentally as you consult your reference?

I remember reading:

First we observe, then we mix, then we test, and then we adjust. We then stay in this tight loop until we reach our goal.

Is this what you do? Is this done mentally in the blink of an eye or do you refer to a Munsell chart?

Another way of saying it, maybe . . .
 

One of the first guys I studied with was Dan Greene, who took this approach:

First, he says he asks himself the value of that particular spot on the model.

Second, is it warm or cool?

Third, is it more blue or more yellow (as in aliz or cad red light)

These seem like a more general approach than does this classification system, but it's not a bad way to look at it. Three simple questions that lead, at least to the place you stand when you're at bat -- so to speak. For some reason, it works for me, too. I'm not "selling" Mr. Greene. As I said, he's one of the first with whom I studied, so some of his ideas stuck.

Mike,

When I look at a color, the first assessment I make is how light or dark is it; that is, where would I place it in relationship to white or black paint. By practicing with this system I can come pretty close to judging which of the nine intermediate steps it falls on.

Next I assess the hue. Is it either a red, blue, purple, green or yellow? Or does it fall between two hues? If it falls between two hues which is it closer to?

Then I mix those two hues to the correct value shifting one way or the other until I have the correct hue and value.

Lastly, I determine if the color I mixed is too intense and if so I add a neutral gray of the same value to lower the chroma.

When I place it in the context of my painting only there and then do I know if it is correct. If not I correct it accordingly.

Richard,

Now I know I'm going to get into trouble here but I completely disregard the concept of warm and cool as being too ambiguious for mixing colors. Since warm and cool are relative terms they are useless to me in determining a specific hue. For example a cadmium red is cool, compared to a cad orange but it is warm, compared to magenta. I find that if I want to mix up a red I have to determine if my mixture is either correct, too purple or too yellow.

Assessing a light or a shadow in terms of warm and cool is not precise enough. A warm light can be either yellow, orange or red. I'm much better served by knowing exactly which, if I want to mix my colors accordingly.

This doesn't mean I don't like the work of people who use this terminology. Nor does it mean they're bad people, do bad paintings, or that I go around and say bad things about their Mamas. It just means I don't feel this type of thinking has validity for me, myself and I or my students.

Cool and warm, as well as yin and yang, are very helpful concepts in assessing the general relationships between different elements. Their ambiguous nature makes them very useful in the right context. For accurate color mixing, I think not.

Hamony
 

Marvin,

Ok, I think I understand.

At any rate, as I once read, your sense of color becomes more sensitive and attuned to the red spectrum as you age.

My own experience is that your grasp of color improves with personal and artistic experience. I find I am taking more chances with color now than ever before. A sort of "what the ****" attitude. If you paint long enough, I think you will want to try riskier color combinations, having run through all the expected ones. There are some benefits to getting older.

Interestingly enough, I find that is just what Degas did, especially in the latter part of his career. He was not, though classicly trained, interested in academic realism, but in saturated and unexpected color combinations.

He was a superb draughtsman, but his later stuff could be said to be quite careless, if we care to nitpick, but, oh, the color!

Sincerely,