After many years of painting, Betty Edwards's book on color has finally made me a lot more confident in knowing what I'm doing when I use color. She has broken a complex subject into great little lessons that are challenging but attainable. I think she is a great author.

despite many great reviews, i found this book to be mostly useless. there's very little practical information, and the exercises are more "arts and crafts" than art. the section on copying your wallpaper samples are a good example of this. what's most telling about how unhelpful this book is is that edwards herself doesn't show us any of her own art in which she uses the ideas she's writing about. in fact, if you go to what comes closest to being her website, you don't find ANYTHING that she's done herself. isn't this a little strange?

there are much better books on color available. steven quiller's "color choices" provides excellent, clear, and practical information on color theory and types of color schemes--monochromatic, analogous, complementary, etc and extremely useful info on paints for acrylic, oil, and watercolor painters. if you buy it used, make sure the color wheel/paint chart is included; mine wasn't so i had to return it. he has updated the color wheel since this book was written. i found the new one online and i believe it's in his newest book "Watermedia Painting". my only criticism of "color choices" is that some of his paintings are somewhat garish.

You already have a large library about color. We're painters and quite frankly, we're interested in our tools. Color is only one of our many tools we use to construct a painting. I've already recommended in an earlier ArtsyFartsy Newsletter "Powercolor" by Caroline Jasper - get this book. And now... add these three. I've read them thoroughly and hope you enjoy them as much.

"Color" by Betty Edwards. Of course you know of her and her information-packed books. "Color" includes very meaningful and tons of info: How light affects color; how colors affect one another; psychological meaning of color and so much more. It will be a big help in color mixing.

And speaking about psychological... the second book is kind of a hoot! "A Book of Colors" by Shigenobu Kobayashi. It's a tiny book featuring an endless offering of certain colors combined with other specific colors to evoke an emotional response. The author has conveniently arranged color combinations into "mood categories" such as Dynamic * Tender * Cool * Mature, etc. Originally I felt it was more for designers and the psychology of colorful products and interiors. I wanted to try out these colors to the text in a painting. Could I combine certain colors to get a specific reaction from the viewer? If I follow all the color combinations from this book, I'll be painting forever! This book is more of a novelty and a fun one to have around for ideas.

The third book is about one of my enjoyable pastimes - the origin of words, phrases, colors and clichés. Why do we say things like Willy-Nilly, Pig in a Poke, or Lickety-split? And where do colors like Royal Blue, Carmine Red and Ultramarine Blue come from?

Victoria Finlay's book "Color - A Natural History of the Palette" is an adventurous travelogue by this author as she searches and finds the origin of color and history as far as Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, India and other ancient cultures. I hated history class in parochial school. I always suspected the info was a bit slanted! Now with no Friday test in sight, I love reading books on real fact-finding historical subjects. This book is long and complete. Each chapter is devoted to a different color. You'll never read it cover to cover - instead, spend a week just reading the history of each color. It's a great research book too.

Did you know that Cleopatra used the color Saffron for seduction? Since ancient times Carmine Red (still found in lipstick and Cherry Coke today) has come from insect blood? And Ultramarine Blue, extracted from an Afghan mine was too expensive for Michelangelo to buy for himself... and don't get me started on the color Mauve! That, in fact is actually a totally different book that I'll write about later. Hey, it's all fun, light and enlightening! So curl up far away from interruption and entertain yourself with these three books.

I found Betty Edwards book on colors helpful and useful.
For me it it unraveled the essential codes of finding/establishing colors harmony in a painting. It represented a the next step after Johannes Ittens 'The elements of color'. I use Bettys methodology to teach color to children/teenagers and amateur students in painting. The exercizes are a good way to explore how colors change when mixing with each other.
The chapter on color symbols was too brief for me.
The 3 to 4 steps in a painting from painting local color to harmonzing colors in a composition was easy to understand and represents important basic knowledge in painting process.
when doing the exercizes it is not essential to have the exact colors that she recommends. it still works.
Recommended, beginners level.

I used some of the exercises for my students and had great results, learning the language of paint and getting to the results we wanted quicker.