Reflectance spectra of the gouache paints I use for the ARFD103 color chart. Each curve shows how much light the paint reflects at each wavelength, from violet at 400 nm to red at 700 nm. Click a swatch to show or hide its curve.
Primaries
Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache Primary Yellow, Primary Blue (PB15) and Primary Red (PR170). The gray is a mix of all three. Paper is the white the swatches are painted on.
Chart colors
The mixes on the chart so far. Every one is made from the three primaries.
Wet and dry
The same paint wet and after drying. Wet paint reflects less light, so it looks darker and duller until the water is gone.
Weighed mixes
Test mixes made by weight. The recipe is each primary's share of the mix by weight. Small amounts of blue and red go a long way.
All scans
Every swatch scanned so far, including the steps along the way while mixing and class swatches. Filter by type, color, class, paints or semester, or search.
Search words or tags, joined with AND, OR, NOT and parentheses. Tags: color:red color:muted class:s01 term:fall2026 type:chart state:wet paints:wn-designers-gouache. Example: (blue OR purple) AND NOT state:wet
Pigments
Every pigment in the paints we've used in ARFD103: this semester's class paints, earlier semesters' paints, and the inks used in printing. I'm working on finding and scanning each one on its own. Most paints are more than one pigment, so a pigment that has only been scanned inside a mixed paint isn't counted as scanned alone.
Paints are listed on each card. Measured bare and dry on a Variable Spectro 1 Pro, D65 light, 10° observer. Swatch colors on screen are approximate.