Best Color Theory Books

Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color is a masterwork in twentieth-century art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’s unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience.Originally published by Yale Univ...

Millions of people have learned to draw using the methods of Dr. Betty Edwards's bestseller The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Now, much as artists progress from drawing to painting, Edwards moves from black-and-white into color. This much-awaited new guide distills the enormous existing knowledge about color theory into a practical me...

From New York Times best-selling author of the Dinotopia series, James Gurney, comes a carefully crafted and researched study on color and light in paintings. This art instruction book will accompany the acclaimed Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist.James Gurney, New York Times best-selling author and artist of the Dinotopia series...

In this essential guide, accomplished artist Patti Mollica walks you through the most important aspects of color theory as they relate to oil and acrylic painting. From pigment characteristics and color mixing to color psychology, you'll find all the information you need to make dynamic, harmonious, and meaningful color choices in your own works of...

Internationally renowned artist and best selling author Stephen Quiller shows readers how to discover their own personal "color sense" in Color Choices, a book that offers readers a fresh perspective on perfecting their own color styles.With the help of his own "Quiller Wheel," a special foldout wheel featuring 68 precisely placed colors, the autho...

Taking a practical approach to color, Color: A workshop for artists and designers is an invaluable resource for art students and professionals alike. With its sequence of specially designed assignments and in-depth discussions, it effectively bridges the gap between color theory and practice to inspire confidence and understanding in anyone who wor...

In this beautiful and thorough investigation, The Secret Language of Color celebrates and illuminates the countless ways in which color colors our world.Why is the sky blue, the grass green, a rose red? Most of us have no idea how to answer these questions, nor are we aware that color pervades nearly all aspects of life, from the subatomic realm an...

The Secret Lives of Color tells the unusual stories of seventy-five fascinating shades, dyes, and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to im...

Through clear, illuminating excercises, this best-selling book stimulates new ways to think about color, generating responses that unlock personal creativity and allow artists to express themselves with paint as never before. Readers are shown how the interplay of complementary hues can trigger vibrations; how the push and pull of warm and cool col...

Chroma: A Book of Color is a meditation on the color spectrum by Britain’s most controversial filmmaker. From the explosions of image and color in Edward II, The Last of England, The Garden, and Wittgenstein, to the somber blacks of his collages and tar paintings, Derek Jarman has consistently used color in unprecedented ways. In his signature styl...

Mixing colors accurately may be an art unto itself. In fact, many artists are discouraged by the time and expense it takes to mix and match colors, and achieve the right results. Even more frustrating is the vast range of colors available. Now there’s a ready-to-use visual directory that takes all the guesswork out of mixing and matching colors . ....