Seven Things for December 23, 2022

Let’s focus on colors. We’re in, we’re out, it’s quick, unlike yesterday’s post:

  • Jos Stam told me about the color named Isabelline. The story’s probably apocryphal, but fun. This one’s now in my neurons along with chartreuse and puce. As well as the trademarked pink (I found the full rundown here).
  • Is it fuschia or fuchsia? I finally forced myself to learn the right one a few years back.
  • Car paint in real life: it’s complicated.
  • Harvard’s art museum has a collection of pigment for colors. It’s off limits to most people, in part because some contain dangerous chemicals. Someone just tipped me off that there are video tours, however. Here are three: short, medium, longer.
  • Wikipedia has a crazy long list of colors, divided into parts. Here’s G-M. I like the duh text there, “Colors are an important part of visual arts, fashion, interior design, and many other fields and disciplines.” Proof that Wikipedia is meant for aliens who have never visited Earth before.
  • If you just can’t get enough about colors, consider getting the book The Secret Lives of Color. Some you’ll know, some’s obscure knowledge (when did red, yellow, and blue become the primaries?), some’s more obscure knowledge (the long list of colors, each with a story, making up the bulk of the book). It’s relatively cheap and, well, colorful – nicely produced.
  • Need more colors? AI’s got your back. So so many great names here, I can’t even pick out just one. Just a few shown below.