Tips For Recording the Color of Rock Art Motifs
June Ross's tips for recording the color of rock art motifs Recording the colour of art pigments is an important part of recording rock art.
When you draw a motif or a panel of motifs, make sure you note the range of ochre colors on the pencil drawing.
Analysing the color of motifs can help you identify whether the same pigment has been used throughout, suggesting that the art was produced in a single episode, and can also be used to check the spatial distribution of distinctive colors.
Remember that the consistency of pigment color is often uneven, so 'washy' sections will appear lighter than thicker sections.
Getting a repeatable reading is sometimes questionable because of this, but it may be necessary.
• Pigments are often poorly mixed, so each motif may need two or more color readings.
• Identifying colors is a difficult task and many people do not have an eye for it, so there can be many different readings for the same motif.
For this reason, try to limit the number of people recording colour so that you can maintain some control over the colour recognition process.
• Colours will look different in different lights, so readings may be different at different times of day.
For this reason, you should always note the time of day you made your reading and write this on the drawing.
• Recording the color of rock art motifs is usually done through the use of Munsell color charts, although some rock art researchers have used PANTONE® colour swatches.
The advantage of PANTONE® swatches is that the colour can be reproduced easily on your computer (although with scanning this has lost its value), and they are easy to use as you can hold the swatches right up to the pigment.
Unfortunately they are also expensive to buy and the colors are often too pure and do not really match the natural earthy tones of rock art pigments very well.
Munsell color charts, on the other hand, have a much better range and grading of colours, but their format makes them difficult to use because the swatches are small and always surrounded by a distracting white border.
On balance, though, unless Munsell bring out their charts in the same format as PANTONE® swatches, they are still the best way to document the colour of rock art motifs.
When you draw a motif or a panel of motifs, make sure you note the range of ochre colors on the pencil drawing.
Analysing the color of motifs can help you identify whether the same pigment has been used throughout, suggesting that the art was produced in a single episode, and can also be used to check the spatial distribution of distinctive colors.
Remember that the consistency of pigment color is often uneven, so 'washy' sections will appear lighter than thicker sections.
Getting a repeatable reading is sometimes questionable because of this, but it may be necessary.
• Pigments are often poorly mixed, so each motif may need two or more color readings.
• Identifying colors is a difficult task and many people do not have an eye for it, so there can be many different readings for the same motif.
For this reason, try to limit the number of people recording colour so that you can maintain some control over the colour recognition process.
• Colours will look different in different lights, so readings may be different at different times of day.
For this reason, you should always note the time of day you made your reading and write this on the drawing.
• Recording the color of rock art motifs is usually done through the use of Munsell color charts, although some rock art researchers have used PANTONE® colour swatches.
The advantage of PANTONE® swatches is that the colour can be reproduced easily on your computer (although with scanning this has lost its value), and they are easy to use as you can hold the swatches right up to the pigment.
Unfortunately they are also expensive to buy and the colors are often too pure and do not really match the natural earthy tones of rock art pigments very well.
Munsell color charts, on the other hand, have a much better range and grading of colours, but their format makes them difficult to use because the swatches are small and always surrounded by a distracting white border.
On balance, though, unless Munsell bring out their charts in the same format as PANTONE® swatches, they are still the best way to document the colour of rock art motifs.
Source...