Leonardo da Vinci's copious notes on coloured illumination, specular reflection, shading and shadows, atmospheric perspective and visual phenomena remain foundation documents in the applied science of depicting visual appearance. To mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death this month, Dr David Briggs will give an illustrated account of the many phenomena sketched and described by Leonardo that must still be understood by those artists and illustrators whose efforts involve the evocation of visual appearance. 6.30 - 8.00 pm, Wednesday may 29, Albion Centre, Surry Hills. Bookings essential at https://www.trybooking.com/BCSBX

Please join us for our upcoming event to celebrate International Colour Day on March 23 from 12.30-4.30, hosted by Resene Paints in Artarmon. An afternoon of workshops on colour and paint. You'll never look at paint the same way again! Lunch and aprons provided. RSVP essential. Spots filling up fast, so don't delay. Hope to see you there!
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/colour-paint-workshops-to-celebrate-international-colour-day-tickets-56150550809

At our March 6 event as part of the Sydney Design Festival Dr David Briggs will survey the historical development of “colour theory” and show how notions like the traditional primary colours should not be merely dismissed as wrong but should be understood as important steps on the way to our current understanding of colour. Then in our second presentation Annamaria di Cara FDIA will take a close look at a very important conceptual framework of colour, the Scandinavian Natural Colour System (NCS), that that incorporates current thinking on the hues that we see as "primary". For more details and bookings go to https://www.trybooking.com/ZRWT

Paul Martin is both a top-ranking colour vision researcher and an excellent science communicator, and for our CSA event on February 12 at the Mosman Art Gallery he will be presenting a cleverly animated "unauthorized" history of his field, sharing his personal insights into such figures as Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hermann von Helmholtz and Ewald Hering. Don't miss this exceptionally interesting talk, and if you like sign up for dinner afterwards (RSVP Feb 10). Bookings essential at https://www.trybooking.com/BAINU

Portrait painter Thomas Bardwell’s highly influential treatise "The Practice of Painting and Perspective Made Easy" (1756) is a fascinating window on the 18th century approach to colour in painting. Michelle Hiscock is a well-known painter represented by Australian Galleries in Sydney and is an expert in the history of painting techniques, materials and methods. She is a painting lecturer at the National Art School and has given many talks and demonstrations at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Wednesday October 24, 6.30 pm, Albion Centre, 349 Crown Street, Surry Hills. https://www.trybooking.com/YTBA

Synaesthesia is often described as “mixing of the senses”. People with grapheme-colour synaesthesia report colour experiences from letters, numbers and words. In this talk, Lina Teichmann will present some of the newest findings relating synaesthetic experiences to colour processing of non-synaesthetes. Lina’s work gives insights into how the brain integrates previous knowledge of object-colour with incoming perceptual information and how this relates to the brain mechanisms underlying synaesthesia. Wed Sept 19, 6.30 pm, Albion Centre, Surry Hills. All welcome but book early at https://www.trybooking.com/XZTM

Our next event will be held on August 8 at the Optics & Radiometry Laboratory (ORLAB) at the University of New South Wales, Kensington. This will be a bigger than usual event lasting an hour and a half, involving a series of presentations by members of the ORLAB team and then a period in which attendees can participate in colour vision tests/demonstrations and ask questions of members of the team over refreshments. This event has been included in the Sydney Science Festival and National Science Week. Pre-booking essential at https://www.trybooking.com/VMQG

Associate Professor Wendy Davis (University of Sydney) will a presentation on “Rethinking White Light” on Wednesday July 18. This event will be of great interest to anyone interested in light, lighting and the untapped potential of modern lighting technology. Pre-booking essential at https://www.trybooking.com/WUPT

On May 22nd we will have a presentation by renowned interior designer and author Babette Hayes on Educating the Eye: Design and Style Magazines from 1968 to Today. Babette is a household name in the world of design and last year was inducted into the Design Institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame. Book at https://www.trybooking.com/VPCT

Botanical artist Angela Lober will guide us around Australia’s leading contemporary botanical art exhibition Botanica at the Royal Botanic Garden and then discuss aspects of her use of watercolours in a Q&A session with members of the Colour Society. After seeing Botanica we will visit two other fascinating free exhibitions in the gardens on the same weekend, the Margaret Flockton Award exhibition of botanical illustration and an exhibition of Sogetsu ikebana floral arrangements, Nature Intertwining. Limit 15 participants: book on  https://www.trybooking.com/VJIW. 

A symposium of four presentations to celebrate AIC International Colour Day 2018:
Colour Exercises from the Shillito Design School (Eva Fay)
The New Anatomy of Colour (David Briggs)
Colour Education for Architecture and Interior Design in the 21st Century (Annamaria di Cara)
Travels through Colour Space - a Painter's View (Jean Pretorius)

Sunday March 25, 10.30 am to 2.30 pm including 30 minutes lunch break. International School of Colour and Design - iscd, 3/118 Walker St, North Sydney. Doors open 10.15 am. Tickets only $35 non-members/$25 members/$20 students; includes light lunch and use of materials. Booking essential by Thursday March 22nd at https://www.trybooking.com/UQNS.

Azulejo Tiles of Portugal: Reflections on Colour, Culture, Place with Annamaria di Cara FDIA, followed by dinner at the Palacio Portuguese restaurant, 49A Canterbury Road, Petersham. Wednesday February 28th, 6.30pm for 6.45pm.  Tickets $49 non-members/$39 members/$39 students, includes gourmet share style dinner and a glass of wine or soft drink. Book at https://www.trybooking.com/UGIU. 

Associate Professor Liz Williamson (UNSW Art & Design) will discuss the use of plant dyes in Australia in the context of a history including surveys by 19th century scientists including Baron Ferdinand von Mueller and the pioneering research by Jean Carman, whose book Dyemaking with Eucalypts (1978) became a reference for Williamson's own experimentation extracting dyes to colour hand spun wool yarn for her weavings. Her talk will be preceded by a viewing of an exhibition of her students' work and our 2017 AGM.

Our September event is a visit to an exhibition of the work of the influential interior designer Marion Hall Best at the Museum of Sydney guided by CSA NSW committee member and past President Glen Bowden. For details see http://eepurl.com/c25PXD

Dr Kate Umbers (UWS) and Dr James O’Hanlon (UNE) research questions about how animal colours are made, how they are seen, and what colours do for the animals that bear them. In their talk on August 23rd they will discuss how biologists work to understand the colouration of animals and how we might work together with artists in projects. Bookings essential at https://www.trybooking.com/RLLR

The CSA NSW Division will be hosting a world-wide webinar with paintings conservator Dr Kristin deGhetaldi (University of Delaware, USA), looking at paints and dyes from an analytical and historical perspective. The event has been scheduled for a Sunday at 12 noon AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time). This webinar is free of but registrants must book with their email address by Friday August 4 at https://www.trybooking.com/RFPT.  

Our July 2017 event will be an opportunity for us to celebrate the 4th of July down under with a presentation on "Colours of New England" by CSA NSW Secretary Virginia Handel. Our event is being generously hosted by Eliza Snowsill, Director, at Cromwell's showroom in Thurlow Street, Redfern. Bookings can be made at https://www.trybooking.com/QSJB

Our April 2017 event will be an afternoon tour of some Paddington art galleries on Saturday April 22, beginning with the Studio of Brian Dunlop exhibition at Australian Galleries. This exhibition features paintings and prints by major Australian painter Brian Dunlop (1938 – 2009) alongside outstanding works by Dunlop’s former students Jenny and Francis Giacco and his daughter Sophie Dunlop. Francis Giacco will talk for the Colour Society at 2.00 pm. This is a FREE event but pre-booking is essential at https://www.trybooking.com/PSGS

Our March event celebrating ICD 2017 is the opening of an exhibit of works by students in the Visual Dictionary of Colour workshop conducted by Dr David Briggs in Drawing Week 2017 at the National Art School. The student works will be supplemented by some recently published digital illustrations from Dr Briggs' website The Dimensions of Colour and some historical colour studies by former students at NAS. An introductory presentation, Talking about Colour, will be given at 6.30 pm. Bookings: http://eepurl.com/cE9rc9. 

Our first event for 2017 will be a walking tour of Barangaroo South organised by our past President, Glen Bowden. Following completion of the walk in the Barangaroo South Precinct at 5.00pm there will be the opportunity to partake of refreshments and then walk to Barangaroo Reserve towards Walsh Bay.

Resident Artist for Winsor & Newton, Natalie O’Connor will take us on a journey from historical artists’ colours through to the latest innovations of colourmakers today while we enjoy a delicious feast of finger food. This is a rare opportunity to visit the Alladin’s caves that are the showrooms of Jasco Pty Ltd, the Australian distributor of Winsor & Newton, Liquitex, Conté à Paris and many other major brands of artist’s materials. http://eepurl.com/cozh4b

Since 2003 Freya Blackwood has illustrated more than 25 children’s books ranging from the whimsical to the deeply moving, each with a distinctive colour palette and visual style. In 2010 she became one of the very few Australians to be awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal for best-illustrated children's book published in the U.K, for her part in the sublime Harry & Hopper. This rare opportunity to see Freya showing and discussing her work in Sydney will be preceded by our NSW state AGM. http://eepurl.com/cfjsDz

Jocelyn Maughan is a prolific and multidisciplinary artist whose portraits, watercolours, prints and drawings have been the subject of numerous exhibitions, the latest being her retrospective An Artist Survey at the Gosford Regional Gallery. During our visit Jocelyn will be on hand to talk about her thoughts on colour and composition and her early training in colour as a Diploma student at the National Art School in the 1950's. 

For our July 2016 event painting conservator Simon Ives will look at the historical development of the pigments and mediums used in painting and some of the analytical techniques used by conservators to investigate those materials. Using a ground-breaking research project carried out on a poorly documented and somewhat mysterious 16th-century portrait of Henry VIII as a starting point, his talk will outline what the research reveals about the changing way in which colour has been used in painting since the Renaissance.

Our June 2016 event will be a presentation at the Resene showroom in Artarmon by Sonia van de Haar, creative director and founder of the design practice Lymesmith, and Rachael Devine, Project Services and Trade Manager for NSW of Resene. Sonia will discuss the work of Lymesmith in a talk entitled Chromophobia: Why Architects are Afraid of Colour, after which Rachael will bring us up to date on the newest Resene Paints colour collection. 

Our May 2016 event will be a presentation by freelance film and television colourist Angela Cerasi on May 18. Angela will discuss the role of the film and television colourist with examples from her work, and will include an explanation of colour grading and the capabilities of colour grading software. Examples of Angela's work can be seen on her website (http://angelacerasi.com.au/tagged/portfolio) and on her entry on Imdb.

To (almost) coincide with International Colour Day, the NSW Division will be hosting Classics and Curiosities of Colour, an exhibit of important and unusual works marking the history of our understanding and use of colour, on March 22 at the National Art School, Sydney. There will be two sessions from 6.30 to 7.30 pm and 7.30 to 8.30 pm. Tickets for either session are $30 non-members/$20 members/$15 students, including light refreshments. 

The end of year CSA celebration at the Georges Heights studio of the Julian Ashton Art School, in the spectacular coastal setting of Middle Head Park near Mosman, with presentations by outstanding painters and teachers Jo Lemon and Jessica Ashton. 

Our October 2015 event will be a tour of the HASSELL office at Walsh Bay, followed by a presentation by HASSELL Senior Associate Carol-Ann Pickvance.

Wednesday 21st October, 6.30pm for light refreshments followed by tour and presentation 7.00 pm - 8.00 pm. HASSELL office, Level 2, Pier 8/9, 23 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, Sydney.