tone – Dick Nelson Color

Color Relationships 1, Summer 2015 week 2

Wow, only our second session and we are fast covering ground! In this class, we moved right ahead, learning more about arrays; the importance of recognizing the difference between hue and value; how to look at your work objectively; and most importantly: HALATIONS! The following post summarizes our exciting class activities, the importance of critique, the new homework, and the fun videos we watched (no shortage of laughter!). Read on for more …

Wow, second session and we are fast covering ground! In this class, we moved right ahead, learning more about arrays; the importance of recognizing the difference between hue and value; how to look at your work objectively; and most importantly: HALATIONS! The following post summarizes our exciting class activities, the importance of critique, the new homework, and the fun videos we watched (no shortage of laughter!). Read on for more …

Class overview

Color Chip Game

The second class of the Color Relationships Summer 2015 met again at Dick’s house on Tuesday, August 4^th. After meeting one more student who was absent from the first class, we started right off with another game: Color Chip Array. Students paired off and had to sort through a pack of 4-5 colors to find the appropriate “relatives” and discard the hues that didn’t belong. The instructions then called for something interesting: “When the array is determined, create a format which produces a HALATION.” Well, what the heck is a halation? Before Dick would give the answer, he wanted the class to figure it out for themselves (no surprise there!). Teams worked on the arrays for around 10 minutes, then had to share their results with the rest of the class.

The game proved to be a bit more difficult than originally assumed, and many of the color chips had been chosen so that the colors were remarkably close in hue with subtle differences. Keeping with the metaphor of a “family”, Dick brought up a good technique to use when determining if colors are related: “When looking at color, ask, ‘What’s in this? Who’s the father? Who’s the mother? What are the values of the parents, and is one parent lighter than the other? Is the child progressing towards one or the other; that is, is it going lighter or darker?”

This is all about learning to identify what makes up a hue; that is, what ingredients does it have in it? Is there magenta? Is there yellow? Is there black, or white, or a complementary color? Dick stressed this point a few times throughout the class, that it is important to learn how to label colors so you can talk about them in a logical fashion. Don’t just come up with a clever name for a hue; learn to identify what primaries have gone into it, and in what proportion, and if they were modified in any way (with black, white, or if it’s been toned).

Halation

From this discussion, we narrowed down which hues belonged in which families, and which color chips could be discarded. Dick then introduced another technique for identifying color relationships: halation. Halation is a term that Dick was introduced to through Josef Albers, and although Dick remembers hearing Albers use it, there is no reference to the term in the entire Albers book. However, the term stuck, and it is a most appropriate word for the incredible, almost magical effect that occurs when colors are in true relationship to each other.

Dick demonstrated the effect by having the class gather around the table, and slowly pulling one color chip away from the rest of the array. If you watched closely, you could see the other color showing up along the edges of the chip, like a shadow moving across the paper, or as Dick described it, “like the wake of a ship.” Once you see it, you can’t believe that you have been ignoring this phenomenon your whole life! It appears to look like a trick of the light, or that some clever person has delicately airbrushed a light wash of color over another one, but when you see the demonstration, there is no faking it.

1 + 1 = 3

This is why halation can be such a powerful method of checking to see if the hues you are working with are truly in relation to each other: you will either see the halation between them, or not. This was also a powerful demonstration of one of Albers’ favorite quotes: ‘1+1=3’. Dick used the example of a hand: “A hand is not just four fingers, a thumb, and a palm – no, it’s so much more than that. It’s more than the sum of its parts. So one color plus another color is not just two, but has a sum, an effect, which is greater than its parts.”

Dick explained that this term would be an important part of today’s lesson, and was one of the key aspects of creating color harmony. Later in class during the critiques, the use and importance of halations became more apparent as it turned out to be an integral part of proper relationship, and is a phenomenon that is best understood through practice rather than simply discussing it.

Critique and objective analysis

We started with Chelsea’s homework, since she had chosen to go with the ColorAid paper, which meant she did not have the luxury of having Illustrator create an array for her, and had to make one herself from selecting color chips. Dick had cautioned how difficult this would be, since the colors are not organized, and as we have already seen, color perception can be easily thrown off by the other colors that surround it.

However, Chelsea had done a masterful job with her array, finding a closely related color family that truly reflected her parent hues. This led Dick to point out the practical use of the halation effect: “If your array is done properly, you should see halation between every color except which? The parents.” Why not the parents? “Halation can only occur if it is surrounded by other colors on both sides – you can’t have it isolated like the parent/anchor colors. It has to be inside two others.”

The class could clearly see the halation between Chelsea’s “children”, and the strong parent colors added to the effect. Dick also critiqued the formal qualities of the work: the design, the proportion of colors to each other, and how Chelsea was able to communicate her intentions through purely visual means. This is another one of Dick’s goals in this class, to educate his students on forming a coherent visual language. As he put it: “I’m playing the same role that Albers played with me: he questioned everything. Albers could be so objective. And I want you to think about that: what does placing this line here do? Does this help it? Does this hinder it?”

After our coffee break, we continued with the rest of the critiques, all done with Illustrator. Before starting the critiques, Dick made sure to reiterate what he was looking for in the assignments: “There are only two things I’m concerned with: HUE and VALUE. So when we look at the homework, continue to ask yourselves, ‘Is this a hue change or a value change?’”

After looking through several examples, students were getting faster at recognizing when the effect was one related to hue or one related to value. Some of the best examples made use of both attributes, which demonstrated the importance of knowing the difference between them, and how to use them effectively. The class could also clearly see when halation was occurring in an array, and when it was absent. Dick stressed again the importance of using that effect to gauge how well the relationship is working between the parents. If the array is in proper harmony, you will see halation appearing between the children.

And from there, the questions about hue and value become more specific to the assignment. “Continue to ask: is it a value change, or a hue change? See if changing one or the other strengthens or hinders the work.” Along with that, we saw examples of how the size, shape, and proportion of children colors to parent colors can dramatically affect the reading of the final piece. “How about the size of the area, the size of the child? Too much, too little? Why? Pay attention to that, because you want to influence as much as possible.”

Anomalies in Illustrator

We also got to see a few examples of how the Illustrator program doesn’t always produce predictable results. The computer program is not perfect, and does not always calculate a color array that would match real world results. Again, watching for hue and value consistency will go a long way in finding harmonious color relations. For example, if a child appears to get darker than both of its parents, then the array is wrong and needs adjustment. Use your discernment when looking at your arrays: if the colors do not follow a logical pattern, or you can’t see halation between the colors, change them. Dick cautioned, “Don’t be too dependent on this application to give you accurate results.”

Overall, Dick was very impressed with what the class turned in for homework assignments, and congratulated everyone on their understanding of hue and value effects. And because they did so well, he decided to combine the next two homework assignments and have the class complete them both for next session. This will allow us to have extra time to go over some advanced color concepts at the end of the course.

Videos

Before launching into our new homework assignments, we watched another one of Dick’s Vimeo presentations, “Red & Blue are not primary colors.” This involved demonstrating the luminous colors that are created when all three primaries are used in varying strengths, and the incredible variety of color that occurs when these hues are next to each other. As Dick said, “There’s no way to have dissonance when all colors are in harmony. You will see halations and luminosity by relating the three primaries to each other.”

Dick also demonstrated the Huedoku app on his iPad to show the incredible effect that halation can have: once again, it’s either there or it’s not. There is no way to deny the truth of that statement once you see the game in action; and a color palette that at first sings and glows, then becomes flat and boring once shuffled around randomly. Place the chips in their proper positions, and the whole thing comes alive again, with unbelievably radiant color squares.

Last, Dick shared a YouTube video about Albers’ paintings, narrated by a curator of a museum. It turned out to be an interesting example of an “expert” who was actually making stuff up! The video included commentary about “colors migrating across borders” and “uneven lines” allowing “colors to jump across [their] boundaries.” Dick pointed out how dangerous it is to blindly believe those who claim to be “experts”, without questioning and finding proof that what they say is truly correct. “Unbelievable, folks: now this is a curator at a museum talking about these paintings. We must be very careful about who is our authority, and if they can’t prove [their theory] other than ‘it migrates across the boundary by the unevenness of the edge’, I mean, come on … You experienced this morning the incredible sensation of a halation: that is interaction. That’s what Albers is all about.”

And although we did not watch this video in class, Dick requested to include on this page one of his own videos talking about Albers’ famous series of paintings and prints, “Homage to the Square”, which was Albers’ preferred method of exploring color relationships. He completed hundreds of these images throughout his life, and his impact on the visual arts was so influential that one painting was even commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp in 1980, with his famous maxim underneath: “Learning never ends.”

Homework assignment

→ REMEMBER: The halation effect tells you whether or not you’re on the right track. You should see halation in your color array if it is done correctly.

**Just a reminder, you do not need to do B&W value studies! ONLY COMPLETE AND SUBMIT COLOR STUDIES.**

This week, there are two homework assignments:

Making 3 colors appear as 2, or appearing as a reverse ground (see PDF below). Create several solutions to this assignment. If you have access to the Interaction of Color book or app, this exercise comes from chapter VI, “1 color appears as 2 – looking like the reversed grounds”.
Making 4 colors appear as 3. This exercise comes from Albers chapter VII, “2 different colors look alike – subtraction of color”.

[gview file=”https://dicknelsoncolor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Lesson2Combined.pdf”]

[gview file=”https://dicknelsoncolor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Lesson3Combined.pdf”]

Videos

Red & Blue are not primary colors from Richard (Dick) Nelson on Vimeo.

Proving that red and blue are not primary colors. while showing what colors can be produced with Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, the true primaries.

Albers Homage To The Square: An Explanation from Richard (Dick) Nelson on Vimeo.

A descriptive analysis of the work of Josef Albers by a former student Dick Nelson. This is followed with Dick’s animated collection of his own color studies which incorporate Albers format and his principles of color interaction.

Class materials

Slide presentation: Making 3 colors appear as 2, or appearing as a reverse ground

Slide presentation: Making 4 colors appear as 3

Color Relationships 1, Summer 2015 week 1

Welcome Summer 2015 color explorers, to our very first session and the start of a new understanding of color interaction! The following post provides a summary of what took place in the classroom (it all seems to go by so fast!), and reinforces the key ideas we discussed in class, along with images of the presentations, videos, and links to reference material. Enjoy!

Class overview

The first class of Color Relationships Summer 2015 met on a Tuesday morning at Dick’s house in Kula. After introductions and a quick overview of class protocol, Dick started off by discussing his background in color theory and his time spent as a student of Josef Albers. Dick has tremendous respect for his teacher and the incredible knowledge about color interaction that Albers discovered on his own, but Dick also knows how far we’ve come since that time. We are now able to go past what Albers discovered, and yet many teachers, institutions, universities, and even artists, don’t want to change their color logic.

Why not? The main reason is that it is hard for anyone to change a belief, since it both challenges what we know to be true, and can also be a profoundly uncomfortable experience. Dick refers to this as a behavioral change, which can often incur a strong sense of resistance, with feelings of frustration and confusion. If this happens to you, don’t be alarmed: it means you are on the right track, and on the cusp of a breakthrough. Sitting through a lecture or memorizing notes is not true learning, though we often mistake it as such. For something to truly affect the way you see the world, it must become a part of your being, and not just a set of facts that you can repeat back.

Dick is also interested in the heuristics of problem solving, which means he is interested in how true learning takes place. He wants his students to struggle a bit to find solutions to the questions he poses, since it often means more to them in the end, whereas things that come easily tend to be forgotten just as easily. Dick uses the term “delayed closure” to describe this process, and rather than giving away an immediate answer, he wants his students to find it for themselves through trial and error. That being said, this particular course will be challenging, and even counterintuitive; yet it will open doors to color understanding like you’ve never experienced before. Take the challenge, and you stand to be rewarded!

Color game

He then presented the first task: color game! Students formed into small groups and were given envelopes containing color chips and instructions. One student commented right away that she was struck by her color arrangement, and how she could see her preferences for color bias through the way she organized her chips. For the next 20 minutes, there was much discussion and lots of color arranging and re-arranging, until Dick announced, “Alright, turn the chips over and you can see the answers. Now organize the colors by their families.” It was fun for people to see which groups they had arranged correctly, and which groups gave them trouble.

Dick had a few comments about the game, the first being the observation that it is difficult to sort random colors en masse into proper groups. Why? Since color is so easily influenced by what surrounds it, it is tremendously difficult to be objective about what you are seeing and how it fits together. Dick brought up the brilliant game app Huedoku, developed by a former student of his (Gabe Mott), which illustrates this principle perfectly.

Trying to organize scrambled colors into harmonious arrays is difficult even when you are given the correct chips, and it becomes next to impossible when you have an endless variety of colors to choose from. Dick strongly recommends this game as a way to quickly learn how to recognize color harmony when it happens, and how to recognize when it’s missing: it’s either there or it’s not.

Arrays

Dick also used the color groups to talk about the use of the array format. By picking two “parent colors”, or anchors, you can create “children” that are the offspring of these two colors, and thus, will be related. When all colors in a group are related, a harmonious color combination is created which is pleasing to the eye. And Dick stressed this point: “This course is all about relationships. In life you don’t have anything that is not in relation to something else, and especially when it comes to color, it’s all about relationship.” We will be working with arrays and color families for the duration of the course, and learning about the characteristics and qualities that contribute to proper relationships.

He asked, “Which array was the most difficult to sort?” Most people picked one particular group: yellow and blue as the parent anchors, with neutral gray as the middle child. Even after they saw it as a family, the class unanimously agreed that they never would have put those colors together. Dick chose this particular group to draw attention to the unexpected mixtures that come from two parents who are complementary colors, and thus are harder for us to connect as being related. He again recommends Huedoku for being the perfect method for increasing recognition of these “improbable” mixtures.

“Are white & black considered colors?” Technically no. When talking about the primaries of pigment, white is the absence of all colors, and black is the sum of all colors. It is the opposite for the primaries of light, which we discussed a little later in class.

Color terminology and color primaries

Using the examples of the colors as they were now grouped, Dick went over some terms that we will be using for the rest of the course: full chroma, tones, tints, and shades (see definitions at the bottom of this post). To illustrate these terms, Dick had the class watch a DVD presentation about color relationships, and how they can be shown to relate to each other through a 3D color wheel, which looks like a ball, or globe, of color.

After the presentation, Dick discussed the differences between the primaries of light (Red, Green, Blue), which is called an additive process, and the primaries of pigment (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow), which is called a subtractive process. Dick also mentioned that we will be working with CMY (because those are the pigments we use to paint and print with), and yet to complete the computer assignments we have to work in RGB mode to get a correct match on our computer screens and the projected images we will view in class.

Another interesting aspect we discussed was that the primaries of light and pigment are each other’s secondary colors. In other words, the primary colors of pigment (CMY) have as their secondary colors RGB, which are the primaries of light. When you combine 100% Magenta with 100% Yellow, you will get Red. Combine 100% Cyan with 100% Yellow, you will get Green, and so on.

Which means that the primaries of light and pigment are opposite each other on the color wheel: cyan is opposite red, magenta is opposite green, and yellow is opposite blue. Dick then pointed out that mixing complementary colors together results in middle gray, where they each cancel each other out and arrive at the middle of the color wheel. He asked, “What’s in blue: 100% cyan and 100% magenta. And if I mix blue with yellow, what do I get? I have a primary color [yellow] and a secondary color [blue] – what is their offspring? Gray.”

When one participant questioned how this would work with her pigments, Dick answered, “Let’s find out.” He brought out his watercolor tray that held magenta, cyan and yellow pigments, and had her mix up “fire-engine red”, then “green”, and lastly “blue”, which most people want to believe should be purple, since it combines both magenta and cyan. Instead, we saw a deep, cobalt blue appear. The ultimate test was to mix blue (cyan+magenta) with yellow to try and get the hue of middle gray, which is, in fact, what happened!

Working in Illustrator

After our coffee break, Dick displayed a few Illustrator examples, showing how this program is invaluable for exploring color combinations and learning about how the eye perceives mixtures of hues. He cautioned that the program is not perfect, and there are anomalies that will allow color results that are not true to life. Don’t always rely on the computer to be “right”: if the colors look wrong to you, or the values don’t proceed in a logical fashion, make corrections to match what you know to be true.

We talked briefly about eye fatigue, and what happens to your perception of color as you stare at it for too long. Your eyes can only look at colors for so long before they become fatigued, which causes the effect of an after image, and this shows up as the opposing color to one you have been looking at. “If you get too tired, or you look at a color for very long, you will find this is going to happen to you, and distort the color reading.”

Introduction to homework and sample critiques

We finished up by talking about the homework, and showing examples of previous students’ work and how they were critiqued. He said that there are only two characteristics we are going to address in this course: value and hue. He offered up a few hints:

Remember, contrast is key.
Notice how you use strong, dominant colors versus weak, wimpy colors.
Pay attention to composition, as you will be critiqued on how well your design illustrates the assignment.

Terms to know

Full Chroma = the most intense hues found on the outer rim of the color wheel. Ask yourself: Does it have white in it? Does it have black in it? Is it toned? If the answer is no to all of these, then the color is at full chroma.

Chroma = the degree of color intensity. Another term for this is saturation.

Tint = a hue that has white added.

Shade = a hue that has black added.

Tone = any hue that has been grayed, by adding the complementary color, or gray itself.

Value = the lightness or darkness of a color.

Hue = a synonym for color. We speak of a color’s yellowness, its orangeness, its blueness, etc.

What is a “weak” color? A color that has been modified becomes easily influenced by its surroundings. It does not take a stand, it does not dominate, and therefore it is weak.

What is a “strong” color? A color that is less diluted and closer to being a true primary. It dominates the colors near it, is less likely to be influenced by its surroundings, and therefore it is strong.

Here’s a reference sheet of color terms, definitions, and examples:

[gview file=”https://dicknelsoncolor.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ColorTerms.pdf”]

Homework

[gview file=”https://dicknelsoncolor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Lesson1Combined.pdf”]

Things to keep in mind:

Watch for eye fatigue, and take breaks while doing your homework to reduce the chance of color distortion.
Know that your computer is not perfect: there are anomalies in the program that do not match real life results. Remember that there are limitations in the Illustrator program, so use your judgment to decide if the colors look correct to you. If not, try to fix them.
Remember to refer back to the homework criteria, and to objectively assess the assignment. You should pick only one example per color array to submit as your homework; you may have multiple arrays, but only one final image per array. You will be critiqued not only on how well you fulfilled the assignment, but also on design, layout, and color choices. This is a chance to see if you are really finding the limits of what color can do. As Dick likes to say, “Why push when you can shove? Why whisper when you can shout?” Use the homework as a chance to explore and discover how color behaves under various circumstances.
It’s all about RELATIONSHIPS!!

Color mode for homework

Even though we will be exploring Cyan-Magenta-Yellow, we will be working on the computer, which uses the primaries of light to illuminate our screens. So when we look at our computers, television monitors, etc., we are seeing colors in RGB. To maintain proper color integrity, please set the mode of your assignments to RGB mode, which you can choose when you open a new document in Illustrator. Your palette for working on the assignments themselves should be set to CMYK, so that you are still learning the principles of color mixing in pigments.

File size for homework

The homework will be best viewed if you set the document to between 1000-1200 pixels per side. Anything less than 800px doesn’t show well, and anything larger than 1400px becomes larger than the screen. Also check resolution: 72ppi (pixels/inch) is standard for website viewing, and anything larger than 150 can make the file larger in data than is necessary. You can choose what looks best to you.

Class materials

Huedoku

Huedoku Website
Learn about Huedoku and why it is such a great way to practice color recognition and increase your understanding.

Huedoku App
Download Huedoku for playing on your iPad or iPhone. The game itself is free and you can purchase individual color packs to add to your collection of puzzles. Dick strongly recommends Huedoku as an aid to developing an eye for color, its interaction and RELATIONSHIP! RELATIONSHIP! RELATIONSHIP!

Videos

The three videos below, “Mix any color”, “3D color wheel”, and “Color arrays” introduce fundamental concepts of colors in pigment and light, and terminology to describe color – primary, secondary, complement, hue, saturation, value, tint, shade, and tone. Repeated viewing can strengthen and reinforce your understanding of the concepts and terminology.

Mix Any Color from Richard (Dick) Nelson on Vimeo.

Mix any color in pigment or light by first recognizing that all colors originate from three primaries plus black or white. The true primaries, understood and used in the printing industry for decades, were unknown to most artists and art schools. This brief video hopes to dispel the misconceptions of mixing color in both pigments and light. Additional proof can be found by examining the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks of every computer printer. These are pigment primaries. Light primaries, Red, Green and Blue-Violet are the secondary colors of pigments. Every TV or computer monitor depends on RGB color to generate an entire spectrum.

3D Colorwheel from Richard (Dick) Nelson on Vimeo.

An animated building of a 3D color wheel with identifying text. The full dimension of color relationships can be viewed in this animated movie. This is part of Dick Nelson’s DVD “Dimensions of Color”. used as his teaching device for the serious student of color. Having studied with the 20th Century master of color Josef Albers at Yale, Dick has incorporated many lessons from his mentor and added some of his own color revelations.

Color Arrays from Richard (Dick) Nelson on Vimeo.

Color relationships are seen here as ARRAYS of related hues and values. The visual phenomenon of HALATION is ever present in each and every array. This illusion of color and value gradation, explained in my earlier videos, served as a basis for much of Josef Albers work with the INTERACTION OF COLOR.

Tutorial

Create An Array Tutorial from Richard (Dick) Nelson on Vimeo.

A step-by-step tutorial on how to create a VALUE array in Adobe Illustrator.

Slides – Value deception assignment and sample critique

References

The book Interaction of Color by Josef Albers was originally published in 1963 in a small print run with silk-screened plates of student and faculty solutions to each exercise. Original editions are in the holdings of libraries and collectors. In 2009, it was reprinted in a large 2-volume boxed set, which is available on Amazon for $157. Dick frequently brings his copy out to show and critique solutions to the Albers exercises.

Several paperback editions have been published with the full text, each with more color plates than the previous. The most recent was published in 2013 for the 50th anniversary of the original publication and is available on Amazon for $12.

The Interaction of Color iPad app ($14) contains all the text, reproductions of all the color plates, the ability to create one’s own versions of each exercise, and brief video clip commentaries.

Color Relationships 1, 2014 week 1

The first session of the Color Relationships class for Fall 2014 was held on Friday, October 10. Through hands-on exercises, discussion, video, presentation, and worksheets, eleven students experienced the relativity of color and received their first assignment: make one color appear as two. Read the full post for details and class materials.

Homework assignment

[gview file=”https://dicknelsoncolor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Lesson1Combined.pdf” height=”590″]
The assignment for next week, making one color appear as two, is on the bottom half of the sheet above. (The top half is the value deception assignment we covered in class, provided for reference.) Using Adobe Illustrator or the application of your choice, create several solutions to this assignment. (You might want to explore primaries, secondaries, tints, shades, complements…) Export them in PNG format (at least 900x1200px; at most 1200x1600px, 72 ppi resolution) and email them to Karen by 2 pm Thursday. Review the tutorial on creating arrays if needed. If you have access to the Interaction of Color book or app, this exercise comes from chapter IV, “A color has many faces – the relativity of color”.

Midweek update #1

Dick has some hints for you as you tackle the homework assignment for Friday.

He says, “After viewing a few color assignments submitted, it appears that I was not successful in making the following point: Change value by strong VALUE influences. Change HUE with strong color influences. In other words, if the background has little or no strength of VALUE OR HUE, your color change will be limited.”

This web page contains sample solutions to the assignment, and their critique. Would your solutions be the teacher’s choice, or lose points on some criteria?

Midweek update #2

An urgent message from Dick about homework assignments:

To those who may have missed some critical points about this first assignment and the course, I submit, in the wake of some completed works submitted by some members of the class, the following: PLEASE READ WITH CARE!!!

POINT 1: ALL COLORS USED IN CREATING THESE COLOR DECEPTIONS MUST BE CHOSEN FROM A SELF-MADE ARRAY. Review the sample array and subsequent deceptions provided earlier.
POINT 2: ALL INFLUENCING COLORS OR BACKGROUNDS SHOULD BE DOMINANT IN BOTH VALUE AND HUE, WITH AN EMPHASIS ON THE LATTER.
POINT 3: THIS COURSE IS ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS. THIS IS WHY THE RELATED COLORS IN YOUR ARRAY PROVIDE THE ONLY COLORS TO BE USED.
POINT 4: CREATE AS MANY SOLUTIONS YOU WISH, BUT SHOW THE ARRAYS FROM WHICH YOUR COLORS WERE CHOSEN.

Class recap – some key ideas

The purpose of this course is to train you to recognize and create works with colors in relationship. Nature follows rules of relationship. If your work does also, you won’t be creating “freaks”. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people with deformities or unusual conditions – “freaks of nature” – were exhibited in freak shows. Dick sees color freaks in artwork everywhere, especially in landscapes, where elements are included that do not follow nature’s laws of relationship. Dick’s classes with Josef Albers at Yale opened his eyes to relationship and forever changed his art and his teaching. Elements in relationship to each other are functional, as a hand functions only because of the relationship of the fingers, thumb, and palm. In art, 1 + 1 equals 3, not 2, because the elements are in relationship to each other.

Learning objective critique in Albers’ classes at Yale was also a revelation for Dick. “I like it” or “it works” or “it’s interesting” are opinions, not critique, and do not help the artist evaluate whether they’ve met the assignment criteria. The assignments in this course have objective criteria that will allow each student to self-critique – to evaluate for themselves how well they’ve completed the assignment.

Dick recreated an experience from his color class at Yale, giving the group (working individually or in pairs) 15 minutes to select three colors from a pack of Color-Aid paper which could be arranged so that one color is made to appear, by contrast with the other colors, as two different colors. Discussing approaches and strategies led to discovering some principles by which colors influence or are influenced.

Strong colors are more influential. The primary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) and black and white are the strongest, and thus the most influential. Identify the hue and value components of a color to determine if it is strong or weak, dominant or wimpy – if it will influence, or be influenced. Colors on the outer rim of the color wheel are “full chroma” – the strongest and most saturated – and are made from only one or two primary colors. Colors in the interior of the color wheel are weaker – more easily influenced – because they’re made from all three primaries. The dominance of each primary is diminished by the presence of the others. Grays and tones can be easily influenced – they give up their identity in the context of their backgrounds.

To create an effective color deception, make sure there’s a relationship among all the colors in both hue and value. Colors from an array will always be in relationship.
Hue = color, such as redness or greenness
Value = lightness or darkness

Dick showed two videos he made, “Mix any color” and “3D color wheel” (see Class Materials section below), to introduce fundamental concepts of colors in pigment and light, and terminology used to describe color. He also showed two video commentaries from the Albers Interaction of Color iPad app. One spoke credibly about color interaction; the second, well, brought to mind some of Dick’s favorite sayings. A video about Albers’ Homage to the Square: Aurora was narrated by an art museum curator. Though painted by Albers, the painting lacks luminosity, and the explanation about colors “migrating across boundaries” has nothing to do with creating luminosity.

We worked through a value change deception assignment and critique of sample solutions (see slides below). Discussing questions posed in two worksheets solidified concepts of relatedness in arrays, and recognizing factors in color dominance.

Dick showed Josef Albers’ own solution, from Interaction of Color, to the problem assigned as homework this week: make one color appear as two. Albers’ solution, using small gray rectangles on large grounds of dark blue and light yellow-green, demonstrates more of a value change than a hue change. Understanding what makes one color more dominant than another, combined with the use of an array, provides a reliable method for choosing colors for this assignment.

References

The Interaction of Color iPad app ($14) contains all the text, reproductions of all the color plates, the ability to create one’s own versions of each exercise, and brief video clip commentaries.

Class materials

Videos

The two videos below, “Mix any color” and “3D color wheel”, introduce fundamental concepts of colors in pigment and light, and terminology to describe color – primary, secondary, complement, hue, saturation, value, tint, shade, and tone. Repeated viewing can strengthen and reinforce your understanding of the concepts and terminology.

It’s possible to mix any color in pigment or light by first recognizing that all colors originate from three primaries plus black or white. The pigment primaries, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, understood and used in the printing industry for decades, were unknown to most artists and art schools, but are now found in every color printer. Light primaries, Red, Green and Blue-Violet, are the secondary colors of pigments. Every TV or computer monitor depends on RGB color to generate an entire spectrum.