Fun Friday Resources
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This week we have some patterns to look at.
The first set is made up of diagrams from research on sound, done in the 1780s. The idea was pretty simple: put sand on a plate and draw a violin bow across it to create resonance. The sand, astoundingly, sorts itself into patterns.
These patterns are called Chladni Figures, from the German scientist Ernst Chladni, whose work these diagrams come from.
Here’s a video of Chladni Figures.
In the same vein, here’s a collection of Japanese wave & ripple patterns, published in 1903 as a guide for Japanese artists to copy. There are links to three volumes there: (volume one, volume two, volume three)
Once you’ve got all these lovely wave patterns from Germany and Japan, color them in using Werner’s Nomenclature of Colors: “In the late 18th century, German mineralogist Abraham Werner devised a standardized scheme for classifying colors which was later adapted and revised in the 19th century by Scottish painter Patrick Syme.”
“Syme enhanced Werner’s original guide by including painted swatches for each color based on Werner’s precise descriptions and examples of where to find the colors in the natural world.”
It’s pretty cool, and the key — for you as an artist — is the set of little dots in the far right column: those are the colors used to mix the named color.
