CH 8 Visual Perceptions
A world
without color. 1 in 10 men are
colorblind.
Rods-
distinguish between light and dark in our eyes
Cones- see color and tone
Colors help us experience
The “where” stream is the tonal pathway in the brain that
helps us see.
Moonlight: The light of the sun reflecting off the gray
moon.
In the
moonlight colors change, our eyes adapt, and our cones don’t register quite as
well. The Purkinje Shift is the
phenomenon that green and blues tend to get lighter in dim and night
conditions, while reds become almost black.
This is why we usually relate moonlight to blue. Moonlight is actually redder. What happens, is our rods make a small bridge
with inactive cones and we suddenly “see blue.” The key to painting a night scene is just
observation. Then get into a light
studio and paint what you can recall, because photos can’t preserve it and
neither can we paint in the dark without skewing colors.
Edges and Depth
Edges will
blur the farther they are from the focal plane.
Our eyes naturally adjust to what we are looking at so it is normal for
artists to assume they should use all crisp edges but using blurred edges
creates a sense of depth. Use big
brushes and wet on wet to create this feel for backgrounds in paintings.
I love the
small examples James Gurney gives using 4 black squares and 4 gray squares to
create different types of depth by shifting edges from sharp to blurry.
When out at
night or dusk the reason we can’t see detail very clearly is because our cones
in our eyes that fill the fovea, are the central point at which we see small
detail and since our cones identify color it thus becomes difficult to see
detail.
Color Oppositions:
The color
theorist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, believe that darkness was not the absence
of light, but rather black and white existed and all the colors in between, so
blue was a lightening of black and yellow are darkened white (light) and so
forth. Did you know it was Goethe who
discovered that when you look at a red square and then look at a white wall a
green afterimage appears? Goethe also
had theories of what the cool and warm colors meant/feelings they provoked,
like back in chapter 6 page 112.
Color Constancy:
Red is
always red right? Not in the cubes on
pages 144. The bottom right corner of
the first cube is the same color as the red in top right corner of the second
cube.
How do we switch off context cues so that you see colors as
they really are?
Answer:
Color Isolation
There are several ways to do that. Some artists use a special viewing
scope. Half of the scope is white and
half is black. Holes are punched on both
the white and black side and then you can hold up the scope to single out
colors and determine what they are. Another
nifty tip with these kinds of scopes is dabbing some paint next to the hole to
see if it matches. J
I thought that was clever.
Adaption and Contrast
This subject talks about successive
contrast, what happens when you look at an image, your eyes adjust to that
color and it then affects the next thing you look at. Also in a painting, a shadow affects the
light side of things by usually being its contrast. For example a shadow will be green making its
light side appear red.
5 factors
that influence the appearance of colors:
·
Simultaneous contrast: the hue or brightness of
background color induces the opposite qualities of what’s in front.
·
Successive Contrast: “Looking at one color
changes the next color we see.”
·
Chromatic Adaptation: When illumination changes
in color temperature the sensitivity of color receptors changes in relative
proportion.
·
Color Constancy: local colors appear the same
despite change in hue, value, or saturation.
·
Size of the object: the closer/larger an object
is, the stronger the Chroma it will have.
Appetizing and Healing Colors:
Healing
colors range from soft greens and blues to violets. Chromatherapy is the idea that colors have
therapeutic properties for the mind and body.
Colors like red, orange, and yellow are used to whet the appetite for
fast food. Those who don’t believe in
chromatherapy believe it’s just a placebo effect because it can’t be proven
helpful with test. Yet artists and
designers tend to believe in the fact that colors have an emotional affect on
us.
