How to See Color and Paint It is about a practical situation where you really would rather not be subject to color illusions.
It starts out with an illusion like the one in this article—the author takes his art students to the shore of a bay at dusk and asks them the color of the brick buildings across the water. The students say “red”, and then he has them look at the buildings through holes in 3“ x 5” cards—the buildings are blue!
Not only are colors as perceived strongly influenced by expectation and surrounding colors, a lot about them operates below conscious perception. It’s claimed that white is actually a hue which is too light to be easily identified, black a hue which is too dark, and gray and brown are respectively cool and warm hues which are too muted to be easily identified.
The book teaches artists to look at color patches on objects individually, and mix paint separately for each patch rather than mixing what seems to be the major color of an object, and then modifying it for highlights and shadows.
I haven’t worked with paints following the book, but just reading it produces a short-lived altered state of consciousness for me. It’s amazing to realize that a t-shirt when being worn in ordinary light shows only very small areas of the color I think it is—most of it is either much lighter or darker.
Now I’m wondering if having read that book a few times is part of why clumsy photoshopping drives me up the wall. The way the light and shadows don’t hang together is completely obvious to me, and it must not show up for most people.
Crashing Through, a book about a man who recovered his sight late in life and had to work very hard to make any sense of it, mentions that if you can’t see optical illusions (these were perspective-based, not color-based), you can’t see.
Any theories about why people like optical illusions?
Sorry no cite, but I’ve read about a study which found that women in bars tend to prefer the dominant man in a group. This led me to deduce two possibilities: a group of men which trade off dominance on different nights (this would take a lot of trust, I think), or more likely, men who keep going to bars with the same dominant friends, hoping that the magic will rub off on them, and not realizing that their own subordination is the magic.
How to See Color and Paint It is about a practical situation where you really would rather not be subject to color illusions.
It starts out with an illusion like the one in this article—the author takes his art students to the shore of a bay at dusk and asks them the color of the brick buildings across the water. The students say “red”, and then he has them look at the buildings through holes in 3“ x 5” cards—the buildings are blue!
Not only are colors as perceived strongly influenced by expectation and surrounding colors, a lot about them operates below conscious perception. It’s claimed that white is actually a hue which is too light to be easily identified, black a hue which is too dark, and gray and brown are respectively cool and warm hues which are too muted to be easily identified.
The book teaches artists to look at color patches on objects individually, and mix paint separately for each patch rather than mixing what seems to be the major color of an object, and then modifying it for highlights and shadows.
I haven’t worked with paints following the book, but just reading it produces a short-lived altered state of consciousness for me. It’s amazing to realize that a t-shirt when being worn in ordinary light shows only very small areas of the color I think it is—most of it is either much lighter or darker.
Now I’m wondering if having read that book a few times is part of why clumsy photoshopping drives me up the wall. The way the light and shadows don’t hang together is completely obvious to me, and it must not show up for most people.
Crashing Through, a book about a man who recovered his sight late in life and had to work very hard to make any sense of it, mentions that if you can’t see optical illusions (these were perspective-based, not color-based), you can’t see.
Any theories about why people like optical illusions?
Sorry no cite, but I’ve read about a study which found that women in bars tend to prefer the dominant man in a group. This led me to deduce two possibilities: a group of men which trade off dominance on different nights (this would take a lot of trust, I think), or more likely, men who keep going to bars with the same dominant friends, hoping that the magic will rub off on them, and not realizing that their own subordination is the magic.
This is pretty much a standard part of being a ‘wingman’ in PUA.