Assignment 3

The Illusion of Color  As with the Piranaesi project, color theory was directly applied to our third assignment: creating a diptych. This diptych aimed to touch on the constancy effect and showcase how color can push towards another color due to its surrounding color. During the in class studio practice, we worked with color aid, pairing colors up to see if we could get two different colors to look similar. Optical mixtures were used to match the colors, and then we rendered an asymmetric, nonobjective design that would push two colors to look like the same color.  Finishing touches included scoring the illustration board in order to create the two-dimensional effect.
   The original challenge was to make two colors look the same and then vise vera, but I found it quite enjoyable to see what colors worked well and which ones didn't. The next challenge was to mix paints to match the color aid swatches. (For me personally, the key was to go slow when mixing colors. Only mix a small amount of paint to see what works first, and then go back to make a larger batch that will have enough to cover the surface of the project.)
    As seen above, I worked to push a blue-violet and red-violet to a more violet state in order to make them appear as the same color to the eye. By placing an intense dark blue with the blue-violet, I was able to cancel out the blues of the original color, which in turn pushed the blue-violet to appear lighter and more violet. On the other hand, I surrounded the red-violet with an equally intense red-pink to cancel out the red of the original color to again, push the color to appear darker and more violet. The aim of the project was to make two colors appear the same in the diptych so in order to insure that the two colors would come out similar, I made sure to isolate the blue-violet and red-violet with the dominating background color. This was one of the less time consuming projects, but still creatively demanding. With no art background, my eye was definitely opened to the ability of pushing a color towards another state. I found this intriguing and ending the project with a photoshoot using various color lights helped to emphasize and illuminate that color is not always what you think it is. It can be manipulated to appear in a way that I think will be a highly effective tool in my future career as a design and merchandising major.

Pink Light

Yellow Light

Green Light

Assignment 2

Creating Space  This second assignment challenged students to rework the color formulas used from the first assignment to match their given color scenarios for this project. This complex assignment consists of three different parts.

   To begin with, students were asked to create four panels with four diverse color worlds using a color scenario that was given. (My project involved a secondary color scenario.) After amassing four different color worlds with twenty-three different colors, those colors were the only colors that could be applied to the final part of the project, the main landscape (as seen the bottom picture.)

Cropped Piranesi Design

   The second stage involved creating a rendering from an original sketch of Giovanni Battista Piranaesi's work. Taking and cropping a section of one of his architectural designs, students were then asked to abstract Piranesi's original into shapes and lines that would create deep space in the final piece (that would use the same hues from the first four panels.)

Original Rendering

    Lastly, students were told to create deep space on the atmospherical side of the final piece and shallow space on the abstract side all while maintaining a sense of symmetry between both sides of the work. We were allowed to tint or shade hues in order to create space. 
   In my personal project, I worked to create deep space on the left side of my board using hues that were dull with a lower intensity in the "building" towards the top left corner of the page. In what would be the middle ground,I kept the colors more dull, but played up the intensity in the greens and violets. Finally, in the foreground I used leading lines to aid in pushing the more intense colors forward on the page. Moving onto the abstract side, I made small changes in the rendering, but mainly focused on changing the color hues to flatten the space. As shown on the abstract side, most of the colors are saturated. There is not a large range from dull to intense color because I wanted to eliminate the deep space that was created on the opposite side. In order to maintain a sense of symmetry, I maintained similar color worlds in each section of the piece, background, middle ground, and foreground, but as mentioned before, switched up the hues to abstract the space. 
   Overall this project was extremely challenging due to the great amount of colors used and rendering the design. I learned how to create deep space using cool hues that are dull to pull back, or recede in space, while warm, high intensity colors push forward in space.

Assignment 1

A World in Color  In this first assignment, students were asked to create a color wheel featuring the twelve primary, secondary and tertiary colors. This wheel was rendered on illustration board using a protractor and compass. For this project I worked with specific color formulas to make the best pure hue. Moving inward in the figure, the hues were tinted adding white. While in most cases the color grew duller, yellow specifically became brighter with the addition of white. Looking toward the outer layers of the figure, the colors were darkened by adding black. The goal was to have equal gradation moving from the inner most ring to the outer most ring. Similarly, each ring moving around the circle (traveling across hues) should have its own unique look. To illustrate, the inner loop consisted of the least intense color while the final ring on the outside was the darkest, most saturated. Final touches included painting the inner circle white and adding a middle grey tone to the background. 
    The most challenging aspect of this project was finding the right formula between the different pigments for gradating the cool hues. Because they are so dark to begin with, there is not a wide range from dark to light so making seven distinct rings proved difficult.  As shown in my wheel, the gradation for yellow has more distinctly different colors than that of violet. All in all, this was a good starting project that introduced me to the world of color. I found it very intriguing to learn how different colors consisted of diverse pigments that mix differently than they would according to color theory.