Colours

Having spent some time hunting down the glorious colours of autumn with my camera, I think it is time to provide a more extensive*range of shorthand outlines for describing colours and appearances. Our handful of basic colour words can be greatly expanded* by adding extra adjectives and phrases, so that the description is more precise and appealing, and gets across what the writer intends, not just greater accuracy but also emotion and comparisons. The additional words used to achieve this are often objects that always remain a certain colour, and as long as the item is a well-known and familiar one, then the reader will have a clear picture in their mind of what is meant. Most often these are fruits, flowers, plants, rocks, minerals and gemstones.

*extensive/expansive & extended/expanded - for these, make the P stroke at a low angle so there is no chance of it looking like a T

Red comes in variations of burgundy, carmine, cherry, crimson, magenta, maroon and scarlet. Painters will be familiar with alizarin and cadmium red. Phrases sometimes drop the word red and so you can have a wine carpet, a plum coat or ruby lips.  A person with red or pinkish cheeks has a ruddy complexion. Blood-red injects a sense of urgency and darkness into a description. As red is such a strong colour with so many emotions and meanings attached to it, it seems to be a contradiction* to say pale red, so we have pink instead.


Pink comes from the name of the dianthus plant whose flowers have pinked, or pinched, edges to the petals, and “pink-coloured” eventually became just pink. Rose is a mid pink, and the paler versions are rosé, roseate, powder pink, blush and quartz. Rosy also refers to warmth and hopefulness as well as the colour. The opposites are cerise, fuchsia and shocking pink which are strong and intense.

*It is prudent to insert the last dot vowel, compare "contraction"

Adding some yellow to red produces all the kinds of orange and the origin of this word is clearly from the fruit. It is no surprise to learn that before the word orange came into use in the 1500’s, this colour was called “yellow-red”. A particularly bright orange is tangerine and darker versions are carrot orange and vermilion. Very pale versions are apricot, peach and salmon. It is somewhat ironic that the original vermilion paint made from the mineral cinnabar (the ore that contains mercury) was valued for its intensity but the impurities in it darkened it to black over time with exposure to the air, as well as being toxic because of the mercury. The modern substitutes* for this colour are cadmium red and cadmium orange.

*Omits the middle T = subs(t)itutes

Yellow is the brightest colour, so most variations on it become darker and duller as they depart from the clearest one, which is seen in the buttercup flower and slightly darker in the sunflower*. Similar is canary yellow and sulphur yellow. Gentler versions are primrose, lemon, citrine, sand and blond, and going darker we have amber, saffron, mustard, gamboge, gold and golden. Old gold is a darker duller version of gold. Tending towards brownish are ochre and buff. Brass contains many yellows and browns, brassy being a description of the reflective qualities of the gold-coloured item rather than just one colour.

* The FR stroke is reversed in order to join with the N stroke

Blue has been a rare and expensive pigment throughout history, obtained by grinding the stone lapis lazuli to a very fine powder. This blue was called ultramarine – “beyond the sea” as it was imported from Asia. Its great cost meant that it was reserved for the depiction of the robes of royalty and the Virgin Mary. A synthetic version was created in the nineteenth century, allowing greater use of the colour.

Top - utramarine, bottom - cerulean

Cerulean is a sky blue and comes from the Latin word for sky or heavens. Other blues are Royal blue, azure, sapphire, cyan, cobalt, electric blue, midnight blue, duck egg, powder blue, teal, navy and Prussian blue. Steel blue is dull with a greyish tinge like the metal. Aqua, aquamarine and turquoise* are greeny blues, or maybe bluey greens – on leaves they would seem like a type of green and in the sky they would naturally be thought of as a type of blue.

*This dictionary outline reflects the pronunciation "-koise". To indicate a KW sound, you would have to use the Kway stroke

The violet family is between blue and red, variants being mauve, magenta, amethyst and puce. Tyrian purple or Imperial purple was an expensive pigment in antiquity, being made from the secretions of the murex sea snail, from which the much darker indigo was also obtained. Violet is a true optical colour and is closer to blue, with purple being closer to red. Lavender and lilac are pale versions. Plums and certain grapes are dark red but the wax bloom on their skins gives a pale purplish or greyish mottling.

We do not have to wait for the flowering or fruiting season for our greens, and unless you live in the desert, the arctic, or in the “concrete jungle” of the city, you are probably surrounded by this colour more than any other. The most intense is grass green, with the brighter apple green close behind. More subdued are pea and moss green, and eau-de-nil (“water of the Nile”), and darker are leaf green and verdigris, the colour and name of the green patina on copper. Lime green is yellowy and more strident. Viridian, emerald, mint and sea green are more bluish. Phthalo green (and phthalo blue) are intense and dark, and the first two letters of the spelling are silent. Olive and khaki are quite dull, tending towards brown. Verdant means “green with grass and leaves” and is more a description of the abundance of plant life than an actual colour. Verdure means greenery and plant life in the landscape in general.

Medieval brick wall with modern repairs

Brown is a mixture of all three primary colours and so its variations are many. Terracotta is a rich reddish brown, the colour of clay flowerpots and bricks. Vandyke brown is the colour of chocolate, and nut brown and chestnut are lighter versions. Rust and russet are reddish and copper and tan tend towards orange. Bronze is also a reddish version and bronzed describes suntanned skin. Taupe is a dark dull brown, being French for “mole”. Beige is light and dull, and fawn a much lighter and warmer brown. Drab as an adjective describes a lack of any bright colour but it is also the name of a dull greyish brown, although this word is not often used nowadays to specify that particular colour. It also means undyed cloth and is related to the more common word drape. Artists colours are raw umber, which is a muddy slightly greenish brown and burnt umber which has a reddish tinge. Sepia is a pale yellowish brown, originally obtained from the ink sac of the sepia cuttlefish*. Sienna and burnt sienna are iron oxide earth pigments in warm browns, named from the Italian town of Siena. They are also known as red earth and red ochre.

*Uses halving to obtain a join with the F, compare the outline for "cattle" which is Kay and Tee with L Hook.

It's never black and white - sometimes
it's worms, sometimes it's duck bread

Black comes from a word meaning bright or burnt and is related to the Latin flagrare, to burn, as in our word conflagration. The old word also meant ink and we still talk of inky black. The best black handwriting ink was made from soot, also called lamp black, which was obtained by holding a dish over a lamp, and collecting and processing the resultant carbon powder. Bone black was made by burning bones and blacks have been made throughout history from the charred remains of a wide variety of substances, such as wood, bark, roots, fruit stones, and even coconuts. Ivory black is now produced from burning animal bones rather than real ivory. Jet black is an intense black, named from the coal-like  mineral derived from wood, also called lignite. The shorthand phrase “black and white” omits the middle word, and describes having something written on paper, as opposed to just verbally, and also a situation that is clearly defined.

You can ask for a pot of white paint or say that the colour of milk is white, but some might argue that it is not really a colour at all. In terms of pigment it is the absence of colour but in terms of light it is all the colours combined. A brilliant white might be called snow white. Off-white used to be popular for paintwork in the house, being duller and easier on the eyes than pure white. A substance or liquid streaked with white or anything very pale is milky and a touch of yellow or brown will produce cream, bisque, biscuit, almond, champagne, vanilla and ecru. A glistening cream is described as pearl, pearly or pearlescent*. Artists use zinc white, titanium white and Chinese white. Lead white and flake white are no longer used due to their toxicity.

*Not in dictionary, outline based on "coalescent"

Grey brings up images of leaden, dull and uninteresting colours, but in recent years it has become a more fashionable colour, both for clothes and home decoration. It provides a range of neutral backgrounds against which to contrast other colours, both lighter and darker, as well as lighting effects or jewellery and accessories. Variations are ash, ashen, ebony, slate, charcoal, gunmetal and pewter. Battleship grey sounds rather miserable, as it brings to mind not only a large forbidding warship but also the freezing sea, mist, fog and rain clouds, all suggesting a wide assortment of uncomfortable cold greys. Silver is only a grey when it is tarnished and is otherwise a description of a collection of reflections rather than a colour in its own right.

Embroidery thread - too many to have names, all sold by number

Hue refers to the actual colour, be it red, yellow, blue or others. Chroma and saturation are the perceived intensity, although there are slight differences in the meanings of these terms. Colourfulness refers to the presence of bright colours, the opposite of dullness. When a colour has black mixed with it, this produces a shade of that colour. Mixing with grey produces a tone of that colour. Mixing with white or diluting with water produces a tint of the colour. In other words, shade is a darkening (as in shadow), tone is dulling, and tint is lightening, fading or making paler. These are the artist’s terms, but in normal speech the words shade, tone and tint are often used interchangeably and also to just replace the word “colour”. The verb lighten means to make paler or brighter and also describes the activity in a thunderstorm, although this use of the word is not common. The noun for the bolt of light from the cloud is lightning, without the letter E. “It thundered and lightened all night, and everyone heard the thunder and saw the lightning." The plural of hue is hues, using the upward stroke.*

*www.long-live-pitmans-shorthand.org.uk/theory-12-hay-aspirate.htm

The primary colours in pigments are red yellow and blue as they cannot be obtained by mixing. The secondary colours are green, orange and violet, being equal mixtures of pairs of primary colours. If these six colours are placed in order in a circle (a colour wheel), then the six spaces between them are occupied by the tertiary colours, again being equal mixtures of the colour on each side. Complementary colours are those that are opposite each other on the colour wheel and produce brown when mixed together as pigments. To complement means to complete. Note the different spelling of “compliment” which means to express praise or admiration and “complimentary” which also means given as a courtesy or free gift. They are both derived from the same Latin word and the spelling difference is merely historical.

Iridescent starlings

Behaviour and surface appearance under different conditions are also signified by the words fluorescent, phosphorescent, dayglo, infra-red, ultra-violet, neon, metallic, pastel, satin, sheen, shiny, silky, gloss, glossy and matte. The surface may be plain, patterned, striated (which means stripy or striped), dotted or dotty, spotted or spotty, stippled, speckled, dappled, flecked, grained, marbled, variegated (mostly used in relation to* plants), chequered, monochrome, swirly, sparkly, floral or flowery. Geometric patterns are quite bold and can also be made to become optical illusions that appear to bend their straight lines or even move or shimmer as one walks past or moves the item. Objects can be transparent like clear glass or water, translucent like misted glass, or opaque. Iridescent is a shimmering rainbow effect, like a peacock feather, and is related to the word iris, which helps you to remember not to repeat the R in the spelling.

This article has thrown up a lot of outlines that could clash, and with colours context might not be sufficient to help with any doubtful words. I repeat them here for ease of practising. The following are similar and inserting a vowel is helpful – blush bluish, bronze browns, metallic milky, frozen freezing, bisque biscuit, maroon marine modern, silver sulphur, russet rusty. The following must have a vowel as it is the only difference – rosy rosé, glossy glassy, ochre ecru and the similar grey, red reddy ruddy, also earthy which might look similar when written hastily.

I hope this rainbow journey through the spectrum has brightened your day despite the necessity to learn some new outlines – better to meet them here than in a fast dictation. When one cannot find the right term to describe a colour correctly, it is always in order to add in a qualifier, using a common object that illustrates the colour or effect. Having all these words in one’s vocabulary does seem to intensify the experience of colour, as it makes you look more closely and divide up the colours into more categories. In fact, the colour of any object can change dramatically according to the other colours that surround it as well as the lighting conditions. Walking under a sodium yellow lamp-post* at night turns one’s bright red coat into a sickly greenish brown and one’s skin into greyish orange. Seeing and reproducing the colours with their exact subtle differences according to the light and shadows is the secret of realistic paintings. However, for us shorthanders*, knowing what to write when someone else leaps into their florid and elaborate description is quite enough for our purposes. (2314 words)

* Lamp-(p)ost omits one of the P's, but you could write as two outlines

* The D sound is included in the doubling, so do not thicken. A thickened N would signify a doubled Ing = -ang-ger or anker



sulphur/sulfur, ochre/ocher, grey/gray, jewellery/jewelry