How do you know for sure if your carefully-recreated 18th-century paint would fool pass muster as art dealers a legitimate recreation long enough to get away with it? of the authentic originals? Tom Scott visits the Forbes Pigment Collection.

The Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums is a collection of pigments, binders, and other art materials for researchers to use as standards: so they can tell originals from restorations from forgeries. It's not open to the public, because it's a working research library -- and because some of the pigments in there are rare, historic, or really shouldn't be handled by anyone untrained.

French illustrator Linda Bouderbala did a fun exercise where she gathered some of her favorite characters from geek and pop culture and organized them by color. Read the rest

Artist and designer Rus Khasanov (previously) has created a bright and highly-detailed montage of colors colliding. What really sets this apart is the beautiful music by Dmitry Evgrafov. Read the rest

The fine folks who created the world's blackest black now have a sprayable version that adheres to most stable surfaces. To demonstrate, they sprayed two bronze masks, one on the inside and one on the outside, producing an interesting optical illusion. Read the rest

The striking enhanced color image of blue-hued sand dunes on Mars led some readers to ask what that means. Above is a side-by-side image in what scientists call "true color" on the left and enhanced on the right. The color humans would perceive is probably somewhere between the two, depending on conditions. Here's the difference: Read the rest

These Japanese single color jigsaw puzzles are appropriately named "Pure Hell." They're available with 1,000 or 2,000 tiny pieces, black or white.

Pure Hell jigsaw puzzles (Amazon via Laughing Squid)

Read the rest

Electronics manufacturer Xiaomi commissioned designer Rik Oostenbroek to create these cool abstract wallpapers. Read the rest

The hexidecimal color #C0FFEE (192 Red, 255 Green, 238 Blue, on a scale of 0-255) is a pleasing greenish color, while #BEADED is a kind of mauve. Read the rest

Graphic designer José Bernabé explores a lot of wonderful concepts as part of his work, including this standalone project titled Organic Geometry. Note: if you click this link to see more, there's a supremely annoying autoplaying song embedded. Read the rest

According to this infographic citing Axalta Coating Systems, Asians like white cars at about twice the numbers of North Americans and Europeans. North Americans are more fond of red cars than the rest of the world. Read the rest

The Pantone Color Institute announced its "color of the year" and it is Pantone 15-0343, aka "Greenery."

“We know what kind of world we are living in: one that is very stressful and very tense,“ Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, was quoted saying in the New York Times. “This is the color of hopefulness, and of our connection to nature. It speaks to what we call the ‘re’ words: regenerate, refresh, revitalize, renew. Every spring we enter a new cycle and new shoots come from the ground. It is something life affirming to look forward to.”

Read the rest

Anish Kapoor -- last seen in these parts when he apparently insisted that it was illegal for people in Chicago to take pictures in their public park if they captured a sculpture that had been donated to the city -- got a nanotech company called Nanosystems to promise him the exclusive right to paint with their Vantablack pigment, which uses carbon nanotubes to absorb 99.96% of visible light. Read the rest

Photochrome is a nifty algorithm that generates a color palette based on a keyword you enter. It compiles all images in their database tagged with your keyword and averages the results into RGB and hex values. Read the rest

I can't get enough of this gorgeous macro video of various blobs of glorious color. It's like a neverending lava lamp. Read the rest

"Color Psychology" by Lilly Mtz-Seara (Vimeo)

-MUSIC- Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons "Summer" III.Presto

-LIST OF FILMS- Maleficent (2014), Robert Stromberg My Girl (1991), Howard Zieff Boyhood (2014), Richard Linklater Marie Antoinette (2006), Sofia Coppola Grease (1978), Randal Kleiser The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Wes Anderson Chicago (2002), Rob Marshall Mean Girls (2004), Mark Waters Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015), Christopher Landon The Wolf of Wall Street (2011), Martin Scorsese Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), David Yates Jennifer’s body (2009), Karyn Kusama Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), David Yates Moulin Rouge! (2001), Baz Luhrmann Belly (1998), Hype Williams Spring breakers (2012), Harmony Korine Legally Blonde (2001), Robert Luketic Whiplash (2014), Damien Chazelle Big Eyes (2014), Tim Burton Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), George Miller Only God forgives (2013), Nicolas Winding Refn Hard Candy (2005), David Slade The shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick The Aviator (2004), Martin Scorsese 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Stanley Kubrick Alice in Wonderland (2010), Tim Burton Fifty shades of Grey (2014), Sam Taylor-Johnson Inglourious Basterds (2009), Quentin Tarantino/Eli Roth American Beauty (1999), Sam Mendes Upstream color (2013), Shane Carruth Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Matt Reeves The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Wes Anderson The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Wes Anderson Born to be wild (2011), David Lickley Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Wes Anderson Skyfall (2012), Sam Mendes Apocalypse Now (1979), Francis Ford Coppola The Martian (2015), Ridley Scott Pan (2015), Joe Wright The Virgin Suicides (1999), Sofia Coppola Ruby Sparks (2012), Jonathan Dayton/Valerie Faris Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), Alejandro G. Read the rest

Specific color palettes are used by filmmakers to manipulate our emotions, from warm red tones for romances to blue, cold tones for horror flicks. The Dust Bowl-toned "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2000) was the first film to be digitally color graded from beginning to end.

If you're curious about the psychology of color, check out classics like Johannes Itten's "The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color" and the books of Faber Birren.

Read the rest

Method of Action's game, Color, tests your ability to nail hue, saturation, complementaries, and so forth. Unlike similar online exams, it's well-designed and fun! [via Flowing Data] Read the rest