Color

I love this book - Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay.  

"If you’ve ever wondered where the ultramarine in your watercolor set comes from or how your favorite pink sweater got its hue, then this is the book for you. Finlay takes us around the world as she chases down the sources of the world’s oldest, rarest, and most elusive pigments, from the ochres used by Australian Aboriginal peoples for 40,000 years to purest yellow sourced from the urine of cows in rural India, to the heated race to find the source of the Spanish government’s fiercely guarded secret red hue. (That last one is the cochineal beetle, still used to create the red pigment in lipstick even today!)." 

30 Great Children’s Books About Colors

12 Essential Books About Color Color In and Out of the Garden: Watercolor Practices for Painters, Gardeners, and Nature Lovers by Lorene Edwards Forkner. Want it!  

"If you love flowers and the rich colors of the garden, Color In and Out of the Garden is for you. Artist and garden expert Lorene Edwards Forkner shares her simple watercolor techniques for capturing every lovely hue in a miniature artwork. Along the way, she also offers practical advice on topics from painting (no matter your skill level) to gardening mindfully to celebrating life. This delightfully useful and addictively readable little book may just inspire you to begin keeping a garden journal of your own, so you can record favorite plants with just a few simple brushstrokes. Arranged by color, each chapter helps readers sharpen their powers of observation and capture nature’s lovely palette. Plant profiles and personal reflections mingle with creative prompts for making a simple watercolor that helps focus one's attention. Both a mindfulness exercise for seeing garden colors and an easy guide to reproducing them on the page, Forkner guides you through the spectrum with her own watercolors while offering inspiration and a delightful garden respite from everyday stress."

I want this book - The Secret Lives of Color  

"A dazzling gift, the unforgettable, unknown history of colors and the vivid stories behind them in a beautiful multi-colored volume. 

“Beautifully written . . . Full of anecdotes and fascinating research, this elegant compendium has all the answers.” —NPR, Best Books of 2017 

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 imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. 

In this book, Kassia St. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colors and where they come from (whether Van Gogh’s chrome yellow sunflowers or punk’s fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilization. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture."

Nature's Palette Book  (bought it)

"First published in 1814 and expanded in 1821 – long before the era of colour photography or print – Syme’s edition of Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours attempted to establish a universal colour reference system to help identify, classify and represent species from the natural world. Werner’s set of 54 colour standards was enhanced by Patrick Syme with the addition of colour swatches and further references from nature, taking the total number of hues classified to 110. The resulting resource proved invaluable not only to artists but also to zoologists, botanists, mineralogists and anatomists. 

In Nature’s Palette this technicolour trove has, for the first time, been enhanced with the addition of illustrations of the animals, vegetables and minerals Werner referenced alongside each colour swatch and accompanied by expert text explaining the uses and development of colour standards in relation to zoology, botany, minerology and anatomy. This fully realized colour catalogue includes elegant contemporary illustrations of every animal, plant or mineral that Syme cited. Readers can see for themselves Tile Red in the Cock Bullfinch’s breast, Shrubby Pimpernel and Porcelain Jasper; or admire the Berlin Blue that Syme identified on the wing feathers of a Jay, in the Hepatica flower and in Blue Sapphire. Displays of contemporary collector’s cabinets of birds, butterflies, eggs, flowers and minerals are interspersed at intervals throughout the compendium, with individual specimens colour matched to colour swatches. Still a much-loved reference among artists, naturalists and everyone fascinated by colour today, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours finds its fullest expression in this beautiful and comprehensive colour reference system."