November 23, 2015

Materials Needed

• ruler, t-square, exacto knife
• pencils
• 9×12″ bristol
• glue
• colored pencils
• scraps (paper, photos, magazine images, fabric, candy wrappers, sandpaper, wrapping paper, etc. ) that have a broad range of value, saturation, and hue.
• Paints, brushes, etc.

Quick Critique:

• All Color Studies.
• Present all three saturation studies (Chromatic Gray, Muted, and Prismatic) around the room.

Discussion / Lecture:

Vocabulary REVIEW:

• Saturation: Refers to the relative purity or intensity of a color.
• Levels of Saturation
  • Prismatic Color: As pure a hue as possible with pigments/paint.
  • Muted Color: Colors that lie just outside the prismatic zone, created by adding black, white, gray or a complement of a hue.
  • Chromatic Gray: Grays that exhibit a subtle, but discernible hue, created by adding larger amounts black, white, gray or a complement of a hue.
  • Achromatic Gray: Grays that lack a perceptible hue and saturation.
• Luminosity: Refers to Value (light or dark) and the relative brightness of a color; lighter colors are more luminous than darker colors, but a lighter color is not necessarily more saturated.
  

  Photoshop color picker

Visual Hierarchy:  The expression of visual and conceptual order that communicates degrees of importance of the various parts of a composition. This can be achieved through contrasts in size, placement, proximity, color, value, etc.

• Temperature: Cool colors (blue/violet) recede, warm colors (orange/yellow) come forward
• Saturation: Chromatic grays and muted colors recede, prismatic colors come forward.
• Value: Generally, dark colors recede, light colors come forward.*

* There are always exceptions when saturation, temperature or other contrasts are involved.

Van Gough – Cafe

Cross-Sensory Metaphors and Synesthesia

• Cross-sensory metaphors (e.g., “loud shirt,” “bitter wind,” “hot pursuit,” “icy stare,” or “prickly laugh”) are sometimes described as “synesthetic.” Other times they are just creative design or branding solutions.
  

  cdnimg.visualizeus.com

• Synesthesia is the neurological mixing of the senses. Synesthes might associate a color with a number or sound with a letter or form.
  

  Synaesthesia test – click view!

• Color synesthesia is a form of synesthesia in which an individual’s perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors.
  

  Synesthesia

• Booba/ Kiki Effect: A popular experiment is the “Booba/ Kiki Effect”. In this experiment, originally designed by Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler, two shapes are shown to subjects. They are asked which one is a ‘booba’ and which one is a ‘kiki’. An overwhelming 98% of subjects chose the curvy figure as a ‘booba’ and the pointed figure as a ‘kiki’.  We can think of this type of cross-activation (sound and shape) as a cross-sensory metaphor.
  

  From Amber Jensen: Synesthesia. Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal. 2007. Volume 2 Number 1.

• Examples: Some accomplished artists, poets, scientists have synesthesia or work with cross-sensory metaphors.
  • David Hockney: Artist (born July 9, 1937). Music → color. Hockney sees synesthetic colors to musical stimuli. In general, this does not show up in his painting or photography artwork too much. However, it is a common underlying principle in his construction of stage sets for various ballets and operas, where he bases the background colors and lighting upon his own seen colors while listening to the music of the theater piece he is working on.
  • Richard Feynman:  Nobel Prize winning physicist (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988). Graphemes → color. Feynman experienced colored letters and numbers . He developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams.
    • “When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don’t know why. As I’m talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde’s book, with light-tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around.” — From Richard Feynman, p. 59.
  • Wassily Kandinsky: Russian-born artist Kandinsky is widely credited with making the world’s first truly abstract paintings, but his artistic ambition went even further. He wanted to evoke sound through sight and create the painterly equivalent of a symphony that would stimulate not just the eyes but the ears as well. (from “The man who heard his paintbox hiss.”)
    
    

    Kandinsky – ibiblio.org

References:

• The Most Beautiful Painting You’ve Ever Heard
• Seeing Colors: Grapheme-Color Synesthesia
• Other well-known Synesthes (scroll down to the bottom of the article)

LAB: Collaborative Free Study

Objective:

Via a collaborative FREESTUDY exercise, demonstrate the ways in which Cross-Sensory Metaphor (or meaning) and visual hierarchy can be conveyed using Saturation, Value, Color Temperature, and a Grid.

Swiss Style Band Poster

Working in groups, create a poster for a band, which is named after a cross-sensory word or phrase. The colors, composition, and style will be based on the (3) cards you choose.

1. Choose (1) Color card. It will be warm or cool. Consider your concept card before choosing one or two colors for your palette.
2. Choose (1) Composition card. Using a piece of tracing paper, ruler and pencil, define the grid that is used in the sample poster layout.
3. Choose (1) Concept card. Come up with a cross-sensory word or phrase that has at least two sensory meanings (Sight, Sound, Touch, Taste, Smell.) Consider your composition and color temperature before finalizing your word or phrase.
4. SWAP! The color, Concept and Composition should work together. If one of your cards doesn’t fit. Swap one of your cards with another group- it must be the same type of card.
5. Transfer your sample poster grid to a piece of bristol. Using paper scraps and/or paint, create a composition using the sample poster as a guide, your cross-sensory word or phrase, and appropriately warm or cool colors. You must use all three levels of saturation in your design (prismatic, muted and chromatic gray). The title of your poster will be the cross-sensory word or phrase that you choose and you will need to cut the letters out from scrap paper or paint them. Take note of the fonts used in the sample poster. Try to emulate the font style. All other smaller copy/text on your poster could  be represented by appropriately sized and colored rectangles of paper or paint. Make sure all elements in your composition are aligned to the grid.
6. Your composition should be complete by the end of class. If it is not, decide as a group how you will complete it.

References:

Poster Archives

• swissted.com
• designarchives.aiga.org
• behance.net/gallery/A-serie-of-geometric-movie-posters/2328152
• commarts.com/Exhibit/Posters

Swiss Style Typefaces:

• fontsinuse.com/tags/265/Swiss%20International%20Style

Homework:

Post your group’s completed Free Study to the Class Blog. Be sure to credit each member of your group! And comment on at least one other group’s project.

Next class: We will recreate your poster in Illustrator or InDesign.

• Bring a thumb drive and any images that you think will be useful.
• Download your group’s sample poster from Swissted.com and bring it on a drive to use in class.

November 18, 2015

Materials Needed

• all gouache paints from Supply List
• brushes, water containers, palette
• ruler, t-square, exacto knife
• pencils
• 9×12″ and 14”x17” bristol
• glue
• tracing paper

Announcements!

Reminder: if you miss a class it is your responsibility to complete the work BEFORE the next class meeting and make sure you have turned in all work on time. All of the information you need is right here. Ask if you have questions. No excuses. 🙂

All work must be properly protected. Work will not be accepted unless it is covered with tracing paper, as indicated below.

Yes!

NO!

Critique:

• Chromatic Gray Studies #1 & #2
• Muted Color Studies #1 & #2

Discussion

Review Color Concepts

• Classes 18 + 19 + 20

Saturated Color in Graphic Design Trends and History:

• History of Flat Design
  • Swiss style (International Typographic Style – use of grids, saturated color, sans-serif typography, and clean hierarchy of content and layout, often include large photographs with simple and minimal typography.) IMAGES
  • Minimalism (Geometric shapes, few elements, bright colors, and clean lines dominate) IMAGES
  • Swissted : poster re-designs
  • Swiss Style Poster Generator

Prismatic Color Studies:

• These colors are as pure a hue as possible using paints. Essentially Prismatic colors are the colors that can be seen when white light goes through a prism. Please work with primary (red, yellow, blue) and secondary (orange, violet, and green) hues. Do not use browns, blacks, grays or white.
• The value of your prismatic colors is determined by its place on the color wheel not by adding darks or whites. Squint your eyes and look at the color wheel. The lightest colors are yellows, the darkest colors are violets. A prismatic study in high key will be created with yellows. A prismatic study in low key will be created with violets.

Prismatic Color Studies – Exercise #1:

GOAL: Make a 6×6″ gouache collage using at least six shapes with a BROAD VALUE range of muted colors.

All shapes should be painted with PRISMATIC colors from a BROAD value range (from light and dark) and a BROAD range of hues (R, O, Y, G, B, V). The white paper is not considered a color – the entire surface of your 6×6″ paper should be covered with painted shapes.

Prismatic Color Studies – Exercise #2:

GOAL: Make a 6×6″ gouache collage using at least six shapes with a NARROW VALUE range of PRISMATIC colors.

All shapes should be painted with PRISMATIC colors from a NARROW value range (high or low key). This means you will either create a composition with prismatic yellows, yellow-orange, yellow-greens (high) or prismatic violets, blue-violet, red-violet (low). The white paper is not considered a color – the entire surface of your 6×6″ paper should be covered with painted shapes.

Homework

1. Finish ALL Saturation Studies: (Must be complete and mounted upon arrival!)
   Make sure each composition is neatly mounted and protected with tracing paper.
   • Chromatic Gray Studies #1 & #2
   • Muted Color Studies #1 & #2
   • Prismatic Color Studies #1 & #2
2. Materials for Next Class:
   • Box of Materials: An assortment of materials that have a broad range of value, saturation, and hue: paper, photos, magazine images, fabric, candy wrappers, sandpaper, wrapping paper, etc.
   • Glue
3. Come PREPARED to work in class!

November 16, 2015

DUE:

• Chromatic Gray Studies #1 & #2

Materials Needed

• all gouache paints from Supply List
• brushes, water containers, palette
• ruler, t-square, exacto knife
• pencils
• 9×12″ bristol and scrap bristol

Share

• NPR : How Animals Hacked The Rainbow And Got Stumped On Blue
• Show and Tell: Everything Wrong With Humanity In One Short Animation
  
• Radio Lab: COLOR (listen to this later)

Critique

• Present your Chromatic Gray Studies #1 & #2
• And you Color Wheel Freestudy

Review

• Color Concepts and Vocabulary from last class
• How to mount your collages, if you haven’t already.

Lecture

Questions + Outcomes:

• What is muted color?
• Where does muted color sit on the scale of saturation?
• How does a muted color palette affect the mood of a composition?
• How is a focal point / area of emphasis created with muted color?
• How do value and saturation affect contrast?

Muted Color:

Examples of Muted Color:

• Graphic Design Trends: Pastels and Muted Palettes
  • Muted Colors in Flat Design | History of Flat Design
  • Window of New York
• Web Design: Muted Color Palettes
  • here
  • and here.
• Film:
  • Grand Budapest Hotel Palette | Trailer
    • Interview with Annie Atkins: the film’s graphic designer
  • Moonrise Kingdom Palette | Trailer
  • The Many Muted-Yellows of Wes Anderson’s Film Color Palette

• 

  Wes Anderson Films Color Palette
  http://excusemyinspiration.com

Lab

Muted Color Studies:

(NOTE: ONCE THE CONCEPTS ARE UNDERSTOOD, IT SHOULD NOT TAKE MORE THAN A FEW HOURS TO COMPLETE THESE EXERCISES.)

Prep:

• Prepare 2 pieces of 6×6″ square bristol using your pencil, ruler and exacto knife. This will be used for presentation only.
• You are making collages and will paint on scraps of bristol first, arrange, and then assemble/glue down on your 6×6″ square.
• Choose the same types of shape you used for your last set of studies.
• Muted colors, which range from just outside the Prismatic zone to the most saturated Chromatic Grays, are created by adding complementary color and/or white to a prismatic color.
• You may have some tests from the last study that were too saturated to fit into the Chromatic Gray category-  feel free to use them for this study.

Muted Color Studies – Exercise #1 BROAD VALUE / BROAD HUE:

GOAL: Make a 6×6″ gouache collage using at least six shapes with a BROAD VALUE range of muted colors.

All shapes should be painted with MUTED colors from a BROAD value range (from light and dark) and a BROAD range of hues (R, O, Y, G, B, V). The white paper is not considered a color – the entire surface of your 6×6″ paper should be covered with painted shapes.

• Starting with R, O, Y, G, B,  or V,  add varying amounts of complementary color and/or white to achieve a range of muted colors.
  

  Change saturation with complements
  http://www.paintdrawpaint.com/

  

  Add white to change the saturation and value.
  http://www.dsource.in/

• Arrange your shapes until you achieve a unified composition and then carefully glue down your pieces.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Yellow, Yellow-Orange, and Yellow-Green can not be darkened enough to reach the low-key value without losing saturation and becoming Chromatic Grays.
• Violet, Red-Violet and Blue-Violet can not be lightened enough to reach the high-key value range without becoming Chromatic Grays.

Muted Color Studies – Exercise #2 NARROW VALUE / BROAD HUE:

GOAL: Make a 6×6″ gouache collage using at least six shapes with a NARROW VALUE range of muted colors.

• All shapes should be painted with MUTED colors with a NARROW value range (high, middle, or low key) and a BROAD range of hues (R, O, Y, G, B, V). The white paper is not considered a color – the entire surface of your 6×6″ paper should be covered with painted shapes.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Muted Yellow, Yellow-Orange and Yellow-Green can be used to create high-key muted colors.
• Muted Violet and Blue can be used to create low-key muted colors.
• Muted Red and Green can be used to create middle-key muted colors.

HINTS:

• To prevent streaking, thoroughly mix paint before use, only adding enough water to get the consistency of cream.
• Wash and dry your brush on a paper towel after each use.
• Have a container of clean water and a container for wash water.
• At the end of  your painting session, paint out any extra paint onto scrap bristol for future use.
• Use the technique demonstrated in class for gluing down your painted bristol shapes.

HOMEWORK

Due:

• Finish Muted Color Studies #1 & #2 and mount NEATLY on a 14×17″ piece of bristol.
• Posts & Comments to Class Blog:
  • Saturation Studies: Phase 1
  • and any past posts that you missed while the site storage was full..

Materials:

• same as today!

Materials Needed

• all gouache paints from Supply List
• brushes
• ruler
• t-square
• pencils
• scissors, Exacto knife
• drafting or removable tape
• 9×12″ bristol
• color wheel

Discussion

• Poster for Learning Communities : Humument
• Student show prep

Lecture: Saturation

Color Concepts and Vocabulary:

• Saturation: Refers to the relative purity of a color.
  
• Prismatic Color: As pure a hue as possible with pigments/paint.
• Muted Color: Colors that lie just outside the prismatic zone, created by adding black, white, gray or a complement of a hue.
• Chromatic Gray: Grays that exhibit a subtle, but discernible hue; created by adding larger amounts the complement and white.
• Luminosity: Refers to hue’s inherent light; lighter colors are more luminous than darker colors, but a lighter color is not necessarily more saturated.
• Primary Triad: yellow, blue and red, form an equilateral triangle.
• Secondary Triad: orange, green and violet; evenly spaced between the primaries; are mixed from primaries (example: red + yellow = orange)
• Complements: colors opposite on the color wheel.
  In the traditional color wheel:
  • Red and Green are complements
  • Yellow and Violet are complements
  • Blue and Orange are complements

As designers, why is understanding and using Saturation important for communication?

• Packaging Design
• Graphic Design / Poster Design
• Broadcast Design
• Illustration / Animation
• Advertising Design
• Webby Awards: good place to explore career/academic study options

Critique

• Color Wheel FreeStudy

Lab

Chromatic Gray Studies

(NOTE: ONCE THE CONCEPTS ARE UNDERSTOOD, IT SHOULD NOT TAKE MORE THAN A FEW HOURS TO COMPLETE THESE EXERCISES.)

Prep:

• Prepare 2 pieces of 6×6″ square bristol using your pencil, ruler and exacto knife. This will be used for presentation only. You are making collages, so paint on scraps of bristol first, arrange, and then assemble/glue down on your 6×6″ square.
• Choose one of the following shape types, or invent your own!
  • zebra stripes
  • camouflage
  • squares

Exercise #1:

GOAL: Make a 6×6″ gouache collage using at least six shapes with a BROAD VALUE range of chromatic grays.

All shapes should be chromatic gray (grays that exhibit a subtle, but discernible hue) with a BROAD value range (from light and dark) from a BROAD range of hues (R, O, Y, G, B, V). The white paper is not considered a color – the entire surface of your 6×6″ paper should be covered with paint.

• Use scrap pieces of bristol to create your painted paper shapes. Cut these out with scissors or exacto knife and assemble into a composition.
• Starting with a small amount of a Prismatic Color (Red, Blue, Yellow), add the complementary color (Green, Orange, Violet) to create a range of chromatic dark grays. Paint a shape with each dark chromatic gray.
  

  Dark Chromatic Grays http://www.paintdrawpaint.com

• Then experiment by mixing your complements with more of one hue than the other.
  (Example: mix 30% red with 70% green for a greenish chromatic gray.)
• Then add white to each of your dark chromatic grays to create a range of lighter gray values.
• All the grays (light, midtone, dark) should have a subtle, discernible hue, but should lie closer to the center of the saturation spectrum (achromatic gray) than the end (prismatic color).

Exercise #2:

GOAL: Make a second 6×6″ gouache collage using at least six shapes with a NARROW value range (high, middle, or low key) of chromatic grays from a broad range of hues (R, O, Y, G, B, V). The white paper is not considered a color – the entire surface should be covered with paint.

• To make a low key composition, use your dark chromatic grays.
• To make a high key composition, your dark chromatic grays should be lightened significantly with white.

Mounting/Presentation: Arrange your shapes until you achieve unified compositions and then carefully glue down both compositions #1 & #2 on your 6×6″ squares. Then mount both on a clean, fresh piece of large bristol. Pay close attention to margins, craft, and cleanliness.

HINTS:

• High-key Example: Change the value by adding white to your chromatic darks.
  To create a chromatic gray in high-key with a subtle yellowish hue, mix more Yellow with Violet and mix a small amount into a large amount to white.
• Low-Key Example: Use your chromatic darks (without adding white).
  To create a chromatic gray in low-key with a subtle hue of red-violet, mix a red-violet together with yellow-green.
• Painting Tips: To prevent streaking, thoroughly mix paint before use, only adding enough water to get the consistency of cream/yogurt. Paint should be flat and opaque. No paper should show through.
• At the end of  your painting session, apply extra paint onto scrap bristol for future use. Don’t waste your paint.

HOMEWORK

• Finish Chromatic Gray Studies #1 & #2
• Finished Studies should be cleanly and professionally presented- mounted on bristol.
• Post your work to the Class Blog. Don’t forget to comment on at least 3 other student’s posts. NOTE: the blog should have more space to post images shortly. If you missed any previous posts or comments due to this issue, please make sure to do them.

November 9, 2015

Materials Needed

• Print out this Template
• mini color wheel
• primary colors gouache set – Utrecht Designer Gouache
  OR
  Any brand gouache primaries, including:
  • black
  • white
  • rose tyrien or primary magenta
  • turquoise blue or primary cyan
  • brilliant yellow or primary yellow
  • flame red or primary red
  • ultramarine blue or primary blue
• brushes
• ruler
• t-square
• pencils
• 9×12″ bristol.

Discussion

• Poster for Learning Communities
• Student show prep

Lecture

• What is color? And how do we see it?
• What are Primary and Secondary Colors?
• What do the CMY, RGB, and RYB color models represent?
• What is a color wheel?

Introducing Color:  When light hits objects, some of the wavelengths are absorbed and some are reflected, depending on the materials in the object. The reflected wavelengths are what we perceive as the object’s color.

Visible light is made of seven wavelength groups. These are the colors you see in a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

Our eyes are the input channels for this light and our retina contains different types of light sensors.

• Rods: record brightness and darkness (value).
• Cones: Each one optimized to absorb a different spectrum range of visible light. (1) One set absorbs long, low-frequency wavelengths, the reds. (2) Another absorbs mid-size wavelengths, the greens. (3) The third absorbs short, high-frequency wavelengths, the blues.

http://www.livescience.com

Watch these short videos to understand how and why we see color:

• What is color? – Colm Kelleher
• How we see color – Colm Kelleher
• Why do we see color? Finding the Origins of Human Color Vision – PBS.org

NEW Vocabulary:

• Hue: Designates the common name of a color, determined by the specific wavelength of a ray of light and/or its position in the spectrum or color wheel.
• Primary Colors: Three colors when mixed in equal or unequal amounts can produce a variety of colors. Traditional primary colors are: Red, Yellow, Blue
• Secondary Colors: Colors created by mixing equal proportions of any two primary colors. Traditional secondary colors are: Orange, Green, Violet

RGB Additive Color Model (Light/Digital)

RGB Color

Humans can perceive three primary colors of light: red, green and blue. When overlaid or “added together”, they produce the secondary colors of light: yellow, cyan and magenta as in the diagram. Your digital devices all rely on RGB light to produce all the colors your see on screen.

• Red and green light together are perceived as yellow.
• Blue and green light together are perceived as cyan.
• Blue and red light together are perceived as magenta.
• All the other perceived colors can be produced by blending specific amounts of red, green and blue light.
• White light can be produced by mixing a color light and its opposite or equal amounts of red, green and blue light.

CMY Subtractive Color Model (Printing / Pigment / Real Life)

CMY Color

The absorption and reflection of the light that shines on an object produces the color that we see. Each color of pigment absorbs its opposite (complementary color) and the rest is reflected back at us as color. This is called “Subtraction.”

• Magenta pigment absorbs green light and reflects red and blue light, which we see as magenta.
• Yellow pigment absorbs blue light and reflects red and green light, which we see as yellow.
• Cyan pigment absorbs red light and reflects green and blue light, which we see as cyan.

The color of the light that is not “subtracted” and reaches our eyes determines what color we see. Light on a black object subtracts all colors and no light is reflected. Light on a white object does not subtract colors and reflects all the colors.

Digital Color Mixing

RGB CMY(K) complements

Color Wheel

A color wheel is an organization of hues around a circle. It is a tool used to help us understand color relationships and is traditional in the field of art and design. Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colors in 1666. Since then, scientists and artists have studied and designed numerous variations of this concept.  

RYB Color Wheel (Traditional)

• Primary Color Triad: Red, Yellow, Blue
• Secondary Color Triad: Orange, Green, Violet
  • orange (mix red + yellow)
  • green (mix yellow + blue)
  • violet  (mix blue + red)

CMY Color Wheel (Contemporary)

• Primary Triad: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta
• Secondary Triad: Red, Green, Blue
  • Green (Yellow + Cyan)
  • Red (Yellow + Magenta)
  • Blue (Cyan + Magenta)
  • What about orange???

CMY Color Wheel

Lab

Color Wheel FreeStudy

http://www.craftsy.com — jollyjeanne

Using the handouts provided, work with your partner to plan out a Traditional Color Wheel, but also incorporate CYM (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta) gouache, if you have them.

Start with the primary triad from the CYM system (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta) and create a color wheel that includes all the colors in the visible spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet.

Visible Spectrum http://en.wikipedia.org/

Practice mixing and applying colors on a piece of scrap bristol first. Create colors from primary colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow (Example: Magenta + Yellow = Red) and then secondary colors from Red, Yellow, Blue (Example: Red + Yellow = Orange) . Do NOT use pre-mixed paint hues. Try to create all colors from Cyan, Magenta, Yellow.

Once you have successfully experimented with the triad relationships (primary and secondary) from both systems, think about how the colors relate to each other.

• Think about what each color might represent: mood, emotion, object.
• Experiment with mixing each triad together, what color is produced?
• Create a numbering or labeling system to identify the different color systems.

Make sure your final color wheel composition is laid out with a clear connection to the original primaries and secondaries.

Here are some examples of interesting color wheels:

• http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/12/11/unusual-color-wheels-found-in-life-and-art/

HOMEWORK

• DUE: Completed Color Wheel FreeStudy.
• Materials Needed: Same as today!