Claude Monet · 1872
Impression, Sunrise
A grey-green harbour, and a sun that occupies almost none of the canvas while defining all of it.
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Tap any swatch to copy. Ground colours are the three largest areas of the canvas; accent colours are chosen for intensity and may cover very little — which is exactly why they carry the painting. Percentages are each colour's share of the whole canvas, so these six will not add up to 100%: they are six of the 26 distinct colour regions measured, not a division of the surface. How these were sampled
Monet's sun is small, and the rest of the painting is a muted field of blue-greys and sage. The orange is nonetheless the reason anyone remembers the picture. Measured strictly by surface area it barely registers; measured by attention it is the entire composition.
For designers this is the most directly transferable lesson in the collection: a single saturated accent, used at perhaps two percent of the surface, against a large desaturated field, will carry a layout. Most palettes fail by making the accent too big.
Accessibility
WCAG contrast ratios between every color pair. Use the strongest combinations for text; the weakest ones make good decorative backgrounds.
Strongest pair: #7E7D6A on #5E665D — 1.42:1 (Fail)
- #7E7D6A·#6C7A65
- #7E7D6A·#6E7168
- #7E7D6A·#B64E39
- #7E7D6A·#5E7167
- #7E7D6A·#5E665D
- #6C7A65·#6E7168
- #6C7A65·#B64E39
- #6C7A65·#5E7167
- #6C7A65·#5E665D
- #6E7168·#B64E39
- #6E7168·#5E7167
- #6E7168·#5E665D
- #B64E39·#5E7167
- #B64E39·#5E665D
- #5E7167·#5E665D
How to read this
- AAA
- Passes WCAG 2.1 AAA for normal text — the highest accessibility bar.
- AA
- Passes WCAG 2.1 AA for normal text. Standard production requirement.
- AA Large
- Passes WCAG 2.1 AA for large text only (18pt+ or 14pt+ bold). Avoid for body copy.
- Fail
- Below WCAG 2.1 AA. Fine for decorative use — not for text.
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Studio
Paint this palette
These are the materials a colour study actually gets made with.
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Strathmore
300 Series watercolour pad, 140 lb cold press
140 lb cold press is the weight that takes a wet wash without buckling — the paper most colour studies end up on.
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Pentel
Fude Touch brush sign pen
A felt brush tip for the labelling and linework around a swatch study — the annotation half of a colour notebook.
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Pantone
Formula Guide — coated & uncoated
When a palette leaves the screen, this is the shared vocabulary between you and the press. Coated and uncoated because the same ink is not the same colour on both.
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Kuretake
Gansai Tambi 24 — Art Nouveau
Gansai are traditional Japanese watercolour pans — dense, matte and easy to mix, the closest everyday medium to the flat printed colour Wada's plates were made in. This is the Art Nouveau-themed 'II' edition, a different 24 to the standard set.
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Kuretake
Gansai Tambi 36
The larger pan set. More range means mixing toward a specific plate rather than approximating it from six colours.
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Library
Further reading
Torn between the two Wada dictionaries? Vol 1 vs Vol 2, compared plate by plate →
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