I lO 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Color in 



Landscape 



Composition 



tensity, — as a spot of intense red and a spot of much neutralized red on 

 a ground tone of red of a middle intensity. Differences of intensity are 

 so intimately connected with differences of hue and of value, however, 

 that it is seldom that objects are differentiated by differences of inten- 

 sity of color alone, unaffected by value and hue also. This relation of 

 two colored areas through the same amount of color difference from 

 the ground tone may be called, somewhat metaphorically, color balance. 

 The total balance of the composition can never be independent of the 

 size and shape of the areas, however, as we have seen. A composition 

 will have special balance due to color, for instance, when two objects 

 on opposite sides of the axis of balance attract the attention equally 

 through their contrast, in hue, value, or intensity, with their surround- 

 ings. In this way a balance might exist on a neutral background of 

 middle value between a small object of a high value and intense color 

 and a large object of a low value and less intense color. This balance 

 is plainly at bottom a balance of attention. 



Several colored areas in a sequence may be pleasantly related be- 

 cause there is a progressive and ordered difference from each to the 

 next, in value or hue or intensity, which leads the attention in a definite 

 direction. The direction of the attention will be towards the end of the 

 sequence which makes the greatest contrast with the background. A 

 neutral wash running from light to dark on a white surface, for in- 

 stance, is unified by its consistent change of value from end to end, 

 and the attention is drawn to the dark end, where the contrast with 

 the background is the greatest. Such relation of colored areas 

 may be called color rhythm. It is necessarily dependent on spacial 

 relation, however, and is practically an example of space rhythm in 

 which the attention is carried along from object to object not by 

 size, shape, attitude, and so on, but by change of color and increase 

 of color contrast. 



The landscape architect must always deal with the question of color 

 in his designs. He makes decorative arrangements of the brilliant 

 color masses of his ffowers with the different colors of his walks and 

 walls and structures of painted wood, and he uses both the orange and 

 crimson and purple of deciduous trees in the fall, and the subtler varia- 

 tions of color of summer foliage. Even in its summer guise the har- 



