Josef Albers Quotes

In teaching color, you teach people how to look something and see the tone in it and break it down to be able to paint it and reproduce that color. But then, I'm psychedelic, so I look at color differently. I like colors that are in contrast with one another, so that they flicker back and forth.

Color is a big part of what I do. It's like music. There are only so many notes in the scale, but there are endless permutations; there's no limit to the number. Color on the walls or furniture can reflect back and distort the reality of the true colors of lipsticks and eye shadow.

Gray goes with gold. Gray goes with all colors. I've done gray-and-red paintings, and gray and orange go so well together. It takes a long time to make gray because gray has a little bit of color in it.

You can't get along without a knowledge of the principles and rules governing the influence of one color upon another. A mechanic might as well try to get along without tools.

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.

You buy any book on color theory today, and it's just complete poppycock. Everybody comes out of school painting pink, purple and green. The whole damn cartoon industry has pink purple and green on their mind.

Don't put needless expense into painting a head! Don't try to match tints! Rose and pearly colours blend into each other so that no one can unite them if painted separately. Keep the impression of your subject as one thing!

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

But what is of great importance to me is observation of the movement of colors.

It's a dirty little secret that I'm pretty self-conscious about coloring my own work. I just see so many people who love color more than me that I get freaked out every time I hit Photoshop. Black and white? I know exactly what to do, but color offers a million solutions to problems I don't even know exist.

Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony.

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.

Stick to primary colors.

I've never been one for color theory or color wheels or undertone rules or anything like that. I don't know if my red lipstick 'should' be more blue or more orange.

Color cannot stand alone.

You reason color more than you reason drawing... Color has a logic as severe as form.

There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job.

I'm passionate about color. My best friend and I sit and look at Pantone books for fun.

Sixteen million colors in your palette are hard for any artist, especially a beginner, to turn down.

Sunset is still my favorite color, and rainbow is second.

I don't like mixed colors that much, like plum color or deep, deep colors that are hard to define.

You must try to match your colors as nearly as you can to those you see before you, and you must study the effects of light and shade on nature's own hues and tints.

I use dull colors in my drawings because I started out using a root beer base, because it seemed like an interesting idea, and when it turned out that it worked quite well as an ink, I started using other colors that would complement it, like grays from Higgins black writing ink and, more recently, Dr. P.H. Martin's olive green and vermilion.

I'm thinking about color all the time. Sometimes even as far back as the plotting sequence.

I love seeing colours of various hues; they simply fascinate me.