Gustave Caillebotte · 1877
Paris Street; Rainy Day
A 6-colour reading of Paris Street; Rainy Day, sampled from the canvas itself.
Art Institute of Chicago
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
This palette runs from #E6DDC1 at its lightest to #38342A at its darkest, with 3 accent notes carrying most of the chromatic interest. The three largest areas of the painting set the base; the accents are the colours that give the work its character without necessarily covering much of it.
Every swatch is a colour that genuinely occurs on the surface — each one is snapped to the nearest real pixel rather than averaged, so nothing here is a colour the painter never actually put down.
Accessibility
WCAG contrast ratios between every color pair. Use the strongest combinations for text; the weakest ones make good decorative backgrounds.
Strongest pair: #E6DDC1 on #38342A — 9.14:1 (AAA)
- #E6DDC1·#CACABC
- #E6DDC1·#B2AFA4
- #E6DDC1·#A4796D
- #E6DDC1·#385B51
- #E6DDC1·#38342A
- #CACABC·#B2AFA4
- #CACABC·#A4796D
- #CACABC·#385B51
- #CACABC·#38342A
- #B2AFA4·#A4796D
- #B2AFA4·#385B51
- #B2AFA4·#38342A
- #A4796D·#385B51
- #A4796D·#38342A
- #385B51·#38342A
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.
Export
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Studio
Paint this palette
These are the materials a colour study actually gets made with.
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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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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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Library
Further reading
Torn between the two Wada dictionaries? Vol 1 vs Vol 2, compared plate by plate →
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