Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Munsell Color Charts

In my hour spent creatively I finally finished Exercise 1.4 in The New Munsell(R) Student Color Set. The exercise basically asks you to complete the book by filling in the blanks on the color charts with colored chips. I've blogged about Munsell's color theory before elsewhere. I've also blogged about my specific experience assembling the color charts, back when I'd finished only the first three out of ten. Here I thought I'd share my pictures of the completed charts with a few observations.

5R with 30 chips. The chip that matches the 5R chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5R 5/14. I started with the 5R chart because a previous chart illustrating the concepts of hue, value, and chroma used one row from the 5R chart to illustrate chroma. Also 5R contains the most chips, 30, so I could check all the rest of the charts against that chart if there wasn't the same value and chroma on the adjacent hue charts.

5YR with 24 chips. The chip that matches the 5YR chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5YR 7/12. Then by chance I worked clockwise around the hue circle. This turned out to be a good plan because in that order the charts with the most chips come at the end. Charts with fewer chips are easier to arrange.

5Y with 21 chips. The chip that matches the 5Y chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5Y 8/12. Do my charts look right to you? Any chips seem out of place? This is the moment when I wish I could work on this with a class so I could have a group of well-trained eyes to double check my charts.

5GY with 20 chips. The chip that matches the 5GY chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5GY 8/10.

5G with 22 chips. The chip that matches the 5G chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5G 6/10.

5BG with 20 chips. The chip that matches the 5BG chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5BG 5/8.

5B with 20 chips. The chip that matches the 5B chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5B 5/8. It certainly got easier the more charts I completed. By the last few I had no trouble pulling out that first column /2 with the lowest chroma.

5PB with 27 chips. The chip that matches the 5PB chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5PB 5/10. Once I figured out that if I set up the chart as I thought it should be on medium gray paper then switched the position of chips I wasn't sure about those switches really pointed out mistakes better than comparing to other charts.

5P with 26 chips. The chip that matches the 5P chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5P 5/10. The only bummer is I'm almost 100% sure I got two of the same chip for my 5P chart. So I have two 5P 8/4 chips and no 5P 7/4 chip. I'm going to write to the publisher, Fairchild Publications, and see if they'll send me a single 5P 7/4 chip.

Finally 5RP with 28 chips. The chip that matches the 5RP chip on the hue circle of the Hue Value/Chroma Chart is 5RP 5/12.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey, I was missing a chip as well, did they send you a replacement?

Sarah said...

Yes, I Googled Fairchild Publications Customer Service, emailed a customer service representative, and they sent a replacement immediately.

randi said...

I want to thank you for posting the Munsell Color Chart. I will be teaching a color theory course at a design school in New York City this coming semester. Interestingly, there are no instructor materials to check the work. I found your post extremely helpful in doing this exercise. I will have to double check my work against the professor who has been teaching this course since 1988 but I at least feel somewhat prepared for this lesson.

Anna said...

Thank you so much for posting this, my Fashion 101 class is doing this and we need this to get full credit in our class and the teacher isn't the nicest person to help us.

Thank you!

Inge said...

Hi, this post looks very interesting!

I am thinking of getting this set myself, and I was wondering what material the chips are made of (are they hard-wearing or paper-ish?).

And are they marked on the back as a quick guide? I would like to use them for research experiments in colour naming, rather than glueing them in.

Thanks a lot in advance, your answers would be extremely helpful to me!

Inge