Vincent van Gogh · 1889
The Starry Night
Three blues, one chrome yellow, and a near-black — the tightest famous palette in Western painting.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
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
The scheme is a textbook complementary pair pushed to its limit: a deep blue field interrupted by yellow at maximum separation on the colour wheel. What the extraction shows that reproductions often flatten is how dark the darkest note really is, and how little yellow there actually is by area. The stars feel enormous; they occupy very little canvas.
This is the clearest case in the collection for weighting a palette by intensity rather than coverage. Sample this painting by area alone and the yellow disappears entirely, leaving six blues and a scheme that is accurate to the surface and wrong about the picture.
Accessibility
WCAG contrast ratios between every color pair. Use the strongest combinations for text; the weakest ones make good decorative backgrounds.
Strongest pair: #B19E2D on #151919 — 6.58:1 (AA)
- #B19E2D·#5272A1
- #B19E2D·#344B91
- #B19E2D·#28378D
- #B19E2D·#272822
- #B19E2D·#151919
- #5272A1·#344B91
- #5272A1·#28378D
- #5272A1·#272822
- #5272A1·#151919
- #344B91·#28378D
- #344B91·#272822
- #344B91·#151919
- #28378D·#272822
- #28378D·#151919
- #272822·#151919
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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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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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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Library
Further reading
Torn between the two Wada dictionaries? Vol 1 vs Vol 2, compared plate by plate →
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