Whats the Point? Back to the Basics

For all of you saying "What's the Point?" this release is dedicated to you. The point is, you are not seeing what you think you are seeing. Your eyes are constantly adjusting to the context around them.

In the image at left, the two swatches are the exact same color. Now that I have told you that, you can see that. You probably even predicted there was some trick to this and guessed that the two swatches were the same shade of gray.

Let go of your pretense. When you let your eyes see on their own, the two swatches look different even though they are the exact same shade of gray.

They look different because of the background color around them. We accommodate with our eyes. If we see a dark background, we make the lighter spot brighter, appearing lighter than it actually is. And just the same, on a light backround, the same gray appears darker than it actually is.

These excercises are not answers, these are tools to help you train your eyes. As you move your mouse along the array on the left of ten shades of gray, the background matches the swatch you choose. As well, the whole in the middle of the upright rectangles also matches the swatch you chose and thus the background.

Our perception of color is adjusting constantly.

Color is relative, "(Yellow to) Blue Poles" pre-release

When you click on a bar from the color array, the background of the webpage will match the color of the bar you chose.

There are sixteen steps of poles. The background of the page entirely affects our perception of the color of each pole. Sometimes, a yellow pole looks as if it is glowing in blue.

I originally created ten poles with yellow on the left and blue on the right. The blue is a combination of Cyan and Magenta. The Blue and Yellow that I chose are actually complements.

My roommate Tessa asked me tonight, "Where is the green if it's mixing blue and yellow?"

If we had been mixing Cyan and Yellow, we would have gotten Green. As it is, we are toning. As we move from parents who are complements, the children gray.

When I made the ten poles and checked to see how the colors would appear on the web (primed for 256 colors) , the hexadecimal code was all mumbo jumbo.

I wanted clean language. I wanted a progression of color steps that matched on the web as I was seeing in Adobe Illustrator.

I made 16 poles, so that it matched the number of poles within the scheme of the binary color scheme. The progression is hexadecimal codes.

It's beautiful how it counts down on the left four digits and counts up on the right two digits: #FFFF00, #EEEE11, #DDDD22, #CCCC33, #BBBB44, #AAAA55, #999966, #888877, #777788, #666699, #5555AA, #4444BB, #3333CC, #2222DD, #1111EE, #0000FF

If you click on one of the blue poles on the far right-- say the third from the right, yellow suddenly seems to extend all the way across. And the same is true on the opposite side. If you choose the bar just two or three steps in from the left, from true blue, all of the bars to the left will appear yellow. And those to the right will appear blue.

Halation Horizons in the NY Times for Obama

In this article, the writer is juxtaposing Obama's journey to the classic American outsider icon. I was amazed to see the background of the image contain the straight horizontal lines I've been obsessed with from Dick's homework assignment.

In the class, we took the colors from a matrix (groups of families of color based on four chosen outside corners) and put those colors down as straight horizontal lines. (see my many posts of halation horizons)

I am very curious if this piece was created using a matrix of colors...

Happy Birthday Dad: Plum Halation

[the definitive page for halation has moved]

I was thinking my dad would like this set of colors, no idea why, but it's his birthday. Hey, Happy Birthday Dad.

When you move your mouse over the individual swatches, the background of the webpage changes to that color. As you move the mouse around to each swatch, you can see halations in the swatches.

The colors seem to change in the matrix as the background changes. The lower set of four boxes, is the same swatch set as the middle of the matrix above.

I had been curious how the middle boxes within the matrixes would respond without their parents surrounding them and keeping them separate from the background. Mostly, they serve as matching swatches to watch how different they look than the same swatches above as the background changes.

The Plum page is dedicated to my dad. He was born in 1939. Happy Birthday and may all your dreams come true!