Exploring the Emergence of Organized Colouration in Paintings Through Cultural Transmission

Painting and drawing are symbolic representations that visually transform natural scenes into line and colour. These visual expressions change through cultural transmission—the process by which artworks are reproduced and modified across individuals or communities. While structured patterns have been observed in transmitted language and music, it remains unclear whether similar structuring occurs in colour use for visual representations. This study investigates the emergence of structured colour expression in painting through cultural transmission. We conducted a transmission chain experiment using colouring books. Participants viewed and memorised a coloured page, then reproduced the colour patterns from memory. Their reproduction was used as the stimulus for the next participant. Two colouring books were used, each with five initial colourings. Each transmission chain involved ten iterations, with 100 participants total (five chains per book). In the final generation, participants used fewer and more consistent colours for recognizable objects compared to the initial random-like patterns. This indicates a structuring of colour use over time. However, familiar colour choices (e.g. green for leaves) emerged in only some chains, showing partial influence of prior object-colour knowledge. Our findings suggest that, like language and music, colour use in visual art becomes structured through cultural transmission. While not all chains developed familiar colouring, the overall simplification and regularity of colour patterns highlight the role of shared knowledge and perceptual expectations in shaping visual cultural evolution.