Sepia (color)
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Sepia is a reddish-brown
color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...
, named after the rich
brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors Orange (colour), orange and black. In the ...
pigment A pigment is a powder used to add or alter color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly solubility, insoluble and reactivity (chemistry), chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored sub ...
derived from the ink sac of the common
cuttlefish Cuttlefish, or cuttles, are Marine (ocean), marine Mollusca, molluscs of the order (biology), suborder Sepiina. They belong to the class (biology), class Cephalopoda which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses. Cuttlefish have a unique ...
'' Sepia''. The word ''sepia'' is the
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
ized form of the
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
words , ,
cuttlefish Cuttlefish, or cuttles, are Marine (ocean), marine Mollusca, molluscs of the order (biology), suborder Sepiina. They belong to the class (biology), class Cephalopoda which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses. Cuttlefish have a unique ...
.


In the visual arts

Sepia ink was commonly used for writing in Greco-Roman civilization. It remained in common use as an artist's drawing material until the 19th century. In the last quarter of the 18th century, Professor Jakob Seydelmann of
Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...
developed a process to extract and produce a concentrated form of sepia for use in watercolors and oil paints. Sepia toning is a
chemical process In a scientific sense, a chemical process is a method or means of somehow changing one or more chemicals or chemical compounds. Such a chemical process can occur by itself or be caused by an outside force, and involves a chemical reaction of som ...
used in
photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...
which changes the appearance of black-and-white prints to brown. The color is now often associated with antique photographs. Most photo graphics software programs and many
digital camera A digital camera, also called a digicam, is a camera that captures photographs in Digital data storage, digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film or film stock. Dig ...
s include a sepia tone filter to mimic the appearance of sepia-toned prints.


Other uses

In the 1940s in the United States, music intended for
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
audiences was generally called race music or sepia music until the development of the expression
rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated within African American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predomina ...
(R&B). There was a
magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...
for African-Americans called '' Sepia'', which existed from 1947 to 1983 (although the name ''Sepia'' was only applied after a change of ownership in 1953). Acclaimed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky used a sepia tone in his 1979
science-fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, sp ...
film '' Stalker'' to visually distinguish scenes set in the ordinary world from the world of the forbidden Zone, which is portrayed in color.


See also

* Cephalopod ink


References

{{Shades of brown Shades of brown Pigments Organic pigments Animal dyes