Pierre-Auguste Renoir · 1881
Two Sisters (On the Terrace)
A 6-colour reading of Two Sisters (On the Terrace), 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 #798483 at its lightest to #08467E 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: #798483 on #08467E — 2.49:1 (Fail)
- #798483·#77786A
- #798483·#5C6261
- #798483·#A03E23
- #798483·#305651
- #798483·#08467E
- #77786A·#5C6261
- #77786A·#A03E23
- #77786A·#305651
- #77786A·#08467E
- #5C6261·#A03E23
- #5C6261·#305651
- #5C6261·#08467E
- #A03E23·#305651
- #A03E23·#08467E
- #305651·#08467E
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 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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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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Library
Further reading
Torn between the two Wada dictionaries? Vol 1 vs Vol 2, compared plate by plate →
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