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.

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