Studio Brief 1 - Study Task 4

Today in Amber's workshop session we worked on colour theory. We was told last week that our group had to bring in 5 red objects. So altogether our group has quite a variety of different objects and materials to work with. We was then told by Amber to make a line out of all the objects we had and to arrange them from light to dark. 

All the different red objects we had arranged in a line from light to dark

The idea seemed easy enough....however it soon became clear to us that it wasn't going to be so straight forward as we first thought. As we had loads of different objects this meant that we also had all different shades of red. This started to become extremely confusing as to whether one red was darker or lighter then the next because of the tone and not necessarily the shade of red.

For example this book at first glance looks red but as soon as you place it next to the other shades of red then it begins to change colour. If you placed the book next to a dark red then the book will look like a true shade of red but as soon as you place it next to a lighter shade of red then the book starts to become orange and you question whether it was red at all. With all these confusing aspects in mind it became more challenging.

Another example of the line

After we had sorted our line out and was happy with it, we went to another groups table and looked at their colour line and to see if we could make any changes.

This group had the colour blue.

Once we got a closer look it became clear they had also the same problems as we did. The nail varnish blue was near enough at the very back on the light side but looking at it, it doesn't appear to be light at all or even blue for that matter. Personally to me it looks purple and doesn't match any of the blue they had in their whole line up.

All the red objects now in a circle from light to dark.

After we ordered our objects in light to dark we were then told to arrange the objects from warm to cold. In most objects you can tell whether its cold or warm because of the shades of colour. If the object looked a shade of blue then it would be considered cold and if it had a shade of yellow then it will be warm tone, but there were a few exceptions where we couldn't tell whether the red was cold or warm so what we had to do was to place the object on a yellow and blue piece of paper. If the red was warm then the red should blend in with the yellow and stand out from the blue and vise versa if the red was colder.

How we compared whether the colour was cold or warm.

The warm colours

After this was completed we put every ones object from every group and made one big circle so going from red to yellow to blue, making a colour wheel.

Overall i learnt more then i was expected and it took me by surprised at how colour can instantly throw us off depending what it is next too. That red painting you have one your wall may not even be red at all!.... spooky.

Some colour illusions below that link in with what i was saying earlier about the orange book.

Gradient illusion - The block in the middle of the gradient is actually just a solid colour of Gray.

The two orange dots on the picture, are placed on identical shades of Gray (as verified in any image editor). The combination of alternating squares and the shadow casting, interferes with our ability to see the correct colour or shade.