Timbre (or ‘sound colour’) is a term usually used in music to describe the quality of a musical note. The Oxford Handbook of Timbre even uses emotional descriptors like melancholy, plaintive, and mourning moods to capture the feelings timbre can evoke. In other words, it’s what makes one musical note sound different from another. For example, a violin and a viola are both string instruments, but the violin emits a bright, high-pitched tone, while the viola offers a deeper, warmer resonance.

In this article, we’re shifting perspective. We’ll explore timbre not as sound, but as feeling in colour.

The term subjective timbre was introduced by the Swiss artist Johannes Itten. In The Art of Colour (1960), he describes subjective colours as crucial to recognising an individual’s emotional sense of colour, which represents a person’s internal environment. They are unique to each person and can’t be imposed externally. Unlike a palette that captures colours, timbre is how they sound together. The colour choices perceived as harmonious by each individual reflect a distinct, subjective judgement.

Itten divides artists into three groups:

● Epigoni – artists without individuality who compose like their professors or other models.

● Originals – those who paint according to their subjective timbre and maintain their chromatic expression regardless of theme.

● Universalists – artists who compose from inclusive, objective considerations. Each of their compositions, depending on the subject, has a different colour treatment. Few artists fall into this group, as their subjective timbre must encompass the entire colour circle. It’s a rare and intellectually demanding achievement.

Johannes Itten notes that if subjective timbre is a substantial part of a person’s nature, then their colour selections reveal a great deal about their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Our colours aren’t just aesthetic choices. They are reflections of who we are. Itten believed the hues we’re drawn to come from deep within, shaped by our physical make-up, our emotions, and our lived experience. He describes them as fragments of the white light of life, filtered through the unique lens of our psyche and body, like a prism turning light into personal vibration.

1 - Itten, Johannes. The Art of Color. John Wiley & Sons, 1973. p. 24.
2 - Itten, Johannes. The Art of Color. John Wiley & Sons, 1973. p. 26.

When life leaves the body, colour leaves too. The skin blanches. The glow disappears.

Without the soul, it is only the self that remains; it is still important, but it no longer radiates.

The colour dies with the person. And that’s why colour feels so alive while we’re here.

Harmony and Subjective Timbre

But colour in our body is not just a metaphor. We use our eyes every day to see the world around us. Through vision, the body is constantly looking for balance. And when we find it, the body feels pleasure. When it does not, visual tension arises. That’s why Itten believed that colour harmony is not just aesthetic, but a physiological desire. When we look at a colour, our eyes instinctively search for its complementary colour to restore equilibrium. This is why, if you gaze at a red fleck for long enough, you will see green when you close your eyes.

To understand if colours are complementary or harmonious, Itten looked at how they interact physically. Usually, two or more colours are considered harmonious if their mixture produces a neutral grey. Whereas complementary colours aren’t just opposites, they’re relational. They exist in tension and balance. When colour combinations settle into equilibrium, the eye feels at ease.

Textures and Hues

But subjective timbre is not only about harmony. It’s a colour scheme that a person develops—from choosing a shade to how they put it on the plane. Subjective colour combinations should not be interpreted solely by the various chromas and their expressive values. Timbre as a whole is of primary importance, then the arrangement of the colours relative to each other, their directions, brilliances, clarity or turbidity, proportions, textures, and rhythmic linkages.

To understand how subjective tone works, it is important to look not only at the colour itself, but also at how it manifests itself on the surface, in context, and in interaction.

● Texture affects how we perceive colour physically.

○ A glossy surface makes the colour sharper, louder, and more energetic.

Wayne Thiebaud - Cakes (1963)
Image Credit: The National Gallery of Art

○ Matte, on the contrary, softens the colour, giving the appearance of intimacy or subduedness.

Anton Henning - Ferien Vom Du!/Abstract Masterpaintings (2010)
Image Credit: Contemporary Art Library

● Saturation and dullness create an emotional effect.

Saturation contrast is the difference between a pure, bright colour and its muted, diluted version. Itten describes four ways a colour can become dull by mixing with white, black, grey, or a complementary colour.

○ White makes colours lighter, but also cooler. For example, a rich purple becomes soft, almost cheerful, when it turns into mauve.

○ Black dulls a colour, making it heavier. Yellow becomes “poisonous,” and purple becomes even more gloomy.

○ Grey (i.e., a mixture of black and white) neutralises any colour, making it less intense.

○ Complementary pairs (such as red and green) often create grey or brown tones when mixed.

Itten, Johannes. The Art of Color. John Wiley & Sons, 1973. p. 30.

Itten emphasised: “Dull tones, most especially greys, live by virtue of the vivid ones surrounding them.” Muted colours only come to life next to bright ones. It is because of this contrast that emotional tension arises—or vice versa, depending on the proportion.

Rachel Ruysch, Vase with Flowers (1700). Mauritshuis, The Hague
Image Credit: Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons

● The rhythm and placement of colours create emotional order or chaos.

Itten notes that timbre depends not only on colour, but also on its proportions, placement, texture, and rhythm. Even distribution of colour creates peace: “To bring about a balance of colour distribution is one of the most important aims of composition.”

Texture, saturation, opacity, and rhythm are no less important than the colour itself. They shape the subjective timbre and thereby make it unique to each artist.

Colour Resonates With Us

We feel and react to colour faster than we can analyse it. Faber Birren, in Colour Psychology and Colour Therapy, writes, “Colour conveys moods which attach themselves quite automatically to human feeling.” Therefore, colour not only influences people, but also resonates with us directly, almost physiologically.

Itten, Johannes. The Art of Color. John Wiley & Sons, 1973. p. 25.

This theory explains why the same colour might evoke completely different emotions in different people: for some, yellow is warm; for others, it is disturbing. According to Birren, people find emotional analogies to sounds, shapes and forms, smells, and tastes in the colours of the spectrum. That’s why colour seems like something familiar, even when we can’t describe it.

A Personal Frequency

Subjective timbre is an emotional coordinate system in which each colour has its own tone and level of resonance. It’s more than just a visual style or preference. It’s a way to understand yourself through colour. Our inner rhythm, experience, and sensitivity are all reflected in the way we select colours, arrange them, and feel about textures. The primary goal of finding subjective timbre was to help art students find their style and feel confident using it, but now everyone can learn something new about themselves by using art supplies of their choice and experimenting.

Itten, Johannes. The Art of Color. John Wiley & Sons, 1973. p. 28.

Sources

https://www.twinkl.com/teaching-wiki/timbre

The Oxford Handbook of Timbre (2018) Oxford University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190637224.001.0001. p. 70

Ballard, L. and Itten, J. (1961) The art of color. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23249254M/The_art_of_color. ( p. 20-150)

Birren, F. (1950) Color psychology and color therapy. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7941281M/Color_Psychology_and_Color_Therapy. p. 171-175

Images

Wayne Thiebaud - Cakes (1963) https://www.nga.gov/artworks/72040-cakes

Anton Henning - Ferien Vom Du!/Abstract Masterpaintings (2010) https://www.contemporaryartlibrary.org/artist/anton-henning-10857

Gertrud Metz - Bouquet of Flowers (18 century) https://www.mfab.hu/artworks/112951/

Rachel Ruysch, Vase with Flowers (1700). Mauritshuis, The Hague - Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rachel_Ruysch_-_Vase_with_Flowers_-_1700_-_Mauritshuis_151.jpg#filehistory

Itten, Johannes. The Art of Color. John Wiley & Sons, 1973. p. 24. - p. 26. - p. 30. - p. 25. - p. 28.

Can Subjective Timbre Help You Discover Something New About Yourself?