Colour Lesson 1

Colour Is a Consequence

Color is not a thing. It is a result.

Colour is not inherent.
It is not a pigment, not a label, not even a surface.
Colour is a consequence, a fleeting collaboration between light, matter, and perception. What we see as blue or crimson is simply light scattered and absorbed in a specific way, arriving at the eye with just enough of itself intact to be named.

This is where our journey begins: not in pigment, but in physics.

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I. Colour Begins in Light

Colour originates in visible light , the slim band of electromagnetic radiation between approximately 380–750 nanometers. Each wavelength corresponds to a perceptual hue:

• Short wavelengths: violet , blue (~450 nm)
• Medium wavelengths: green (~500–570 nm)
• Long wavelengths: red (~620–750+ nm)

When light strikes an object, some wavelengths are absorbed, others are reflected.
The reflected wavelengths are what reach the eye. And those are what we perceive as colour.

Colour is not in the object. Colour is the light it rejects.

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II. Reflection and Absorption

A tomato is not red in itself. It absorbs green and blue wavelengths, and reflects those in the red range.
A black shirt absorbs nearly all light. A white page reflects nearly everything.

In this sense, colour is subtractive. It is what remains after the light is filtered through matter.

To observe colour is to witness absence.

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III. The Human Eye: Where Colour Is Formed

Your retina contains cone cells, each tuned to different segments of the spectrum:

• S-cones (short): blue
• M-cones (medium): green
• L-cones (long): red

The brain reads the ratios of stimulation across these cones and reconstructs a hue. Some colours, like purple , don’t exist on the visible spectrum — they are illusions of blended cone input.

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IV. So What Is Colour, Really?

It’s not “in” the object.
It’s not even “in” the light.
Colour is constructed in the eye, by the brain, under specific conditions.

This means:

• Colour is situational
  • dependent on lighting
• Colour is relational
  • changed by context
• Colour is subjective
  • shaped by language, memory, culture

Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.

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Thoughts Moving On

Looking around in everyday life, wondering:

• What light is falling on it right now?
• What part of the spectrum is being reflected?
• What is being absorbed?
• How might it appear at another time of day?

Write it as a line:

This page is white, but only because it’s spared the sky.

The brown of this chair is nothing but uninvited blue.

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Summary

• Colour is the result of light interacting with surfaces
• You see what light is reflected, not what is absorbed
• You never see the colour of the object, you see its light fingerprint
• Colour is relational, contextual, and constructed

The beginning has started with process rather than pigment.

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References and Further Reading

• Roy S. Berns, Principles of Colour Technology
• CIE (International Commission on Illumination)
• The Physics Classroom — “Light Waves and Colour”
• Martin J. Tovée, An Introduction to the Visual System
• Semir Zeki, Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain