These are some swirls of color inspired by Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l'eau. It is a book ... written is not the write word ... painstakingly compiled by a Dutch artist in approximately 1692.
Unfortunately, I cannot discover a way to pull the image in for you. go take a look:
The Title Page
A Page of Purple Swatches
The amount of dedication to this treatise, this carful and systematic delivery of color theories for painting with water based pigments, just makes my brain start to panic. It's saying, "Nope! Nope. You don't need to create a hand written anything that is that thick and that detailed. NO!"
Sigh but old paper and water colors .... must be lovely to touch.
The other thing that just makes me stop and stare is how many of the colors are so brilliant and vibrant even today.
You will have to go look for yourself.
Oh Look ! I found Erik Kwakkel's Blog (where he first wrote about this book. There's some pretty pictures there) and Twitter where he's continuing to post eye-candy from the medieval time period.
