Квадрифолиум: Сводка о цвете в четырех листьях

Colour is not theory. Colour is lived.This book gathers the colour combinations that have stopped me in my tracks over the last few years. I found them walking through cities and standing in the rain, on long train journeys, and in films and series I lost myself in for whole evenings. I found them in walls and skies, in food and clothes, and in the way late light falls across almost anything. Each of them taught me something about what happens when certain colours sit side by side.It began in 2016, on a trip to Japan. There I saw colour treated with the care of a language or a craft, something you could study, practise and get better at. I have been paying attention ever since.Most of these combinations started as photographs, many taken with nothing more than a phone. Some came from places: the weathered limestone of an Egyptian temple in the last hour of sun. Others came from the things people make, from a glaze, a weave or a worn handle, and some from a single frame of a film that had me reaching for my phone before I knew why. The camera in your pocket can do the same. So here is my challenge to you: find these colours in your own surroundings, and in your own photographs.Along the way I noticed how much of what we see every day has never been given a name, and how hard it is to work without something to point to. I made this book to be my own companion in whatever creative work comes next. Keeping it to myself felt selfish, though, no? I hope it brings you as much joy as it brings me.Every combination in Quadrifolium is built from four CMYK values, with the RGB and HEX codes alongside for digital work. Not all of us can travel to see colour in person, and few days leave room for it. But you can open this book over your morning coffee, turn a page, and let a new combination walk with you through the day.Each palette is laid out as a quadrifolium, the four-leaved rose that gives this book its name. Its four swatches stand in for the four petals, one colour to each. And as in every leaf of light, each colour carries its own brightness and its own shadow. Dark and light hold each other in balance, and between them they make the world we see.Between the palettes you will find something more: short stories and poems that carry these colours into living scenes. Some take you into the worlds of Anna, the young mermaid of The Song of Anna The Mermaid, and of Emilie, The Ruins of Azoth, whose story reaches beyond our own world. Many of the palettes in this book were born in those places, in a glaze on a clay cup, a thread left showing, the light under the sea. Read them on their own, read them aloud, or let them introduce you to two worlds you may want to stay in a little longer.Use this book. Photograph a page and hand it to your printer. Tear one out and pin it to the studio wall. Bring it to a client meeting, or leave it open on the counter while you choose the tiles for your kitchen. The colours are yours to work with, commercially too.It is for designers, illustrators, typographers and architects, for jewellers, fashion makers and craftspeople, for game developers, filmmakers and interior stylists. It is for the new homeowner choosing a first wall colour, and the renter making a small space their own on a budget. Above all, it is for anyone who has wanted to make something beautiful and did not know where to begin with colour.First Edition. Proudly published by Le Royalties Sergio Melicio.