Colour

Colour is used at every available opportunity by human beings when costs are not prohibitive, in dress, in home decoration, in objects of manufacture and in environmental structures. The experience of colour fills literature, and the fine art of painting, depends on it. For man the entire natural world is coloured, from the sky and the clouds, to the seas forests, grasslands and flowered meadows. All life is coloçured as insects, birds, fish, animals and even the pigmented skin of man attest to. Colours have associations in human experience and numerous symbolic languages of colour have been attempted, either using the coloured natural objects of feathers, gems, flowers and other things found in the environment, or through the use of pigments and other colouring agents in dyes, paints, inks, and cosmetics, for example. Blue eye-shadow-and red lipsticle, tatoos and war-paint are notable examples of body colouring. Artificial hair colours in Western cultures now include the metallic hues as well as every unnatural tint conceivable. Colour films and colour television have continually improved their technologies, and newspapers are now printing in colour. This, apparently, is an era of colour; the rainbow age which itself may be a symbol.