Visual Language 10/11/09

This week we looked at Subjective colour. We looked primarily at colours in context: How colour really is relative, and how different contrasts of tone, hue, saturation, extension, temperature and complimentary colours can completely change the way that we perceive a colour.

Firstly we arranged all of our coloured objects in graduation of hue:

It was interesting to have this large physical image of all the different colours, actually seeing them side by side.

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We then selected 5 of our orange objects, and also 5 of the blue objects from another group, so that we had the complimentary colour to work with as well.

We experimented with putting colour against colour, and seeing how they react against each other. These were the 10 most interesting of out experiments:

I think that the translucent nature of this blue object creates interesting shades within it, especially against the orange complimentary.

I think it's interesting how the bottom cap, although actually the same colour as the top one, stands out far more dramatically than the cap against the red and orange. We can conclude that this is because the bottom cap is a more saturated colour that the background colours, and the top cap is against a background very similar in both tone and hue.

In this image we arranged a blue and an orange object on a background which is there complimentary. In my opinion the orange object stands out more than the blue one; I think that this is due to the blue of the background being much duller and less saturated than the colour of the orange cap, creating a high contrast. The blue object is much more tonally similar to its background, preventing it from jumping out quite as much. If anything I think that the orange background is more saturated, drawing in the eye more than the object.

This example shows the way that the appearance of a colour is relative; while the orange stands out on the dusty blue background, it practically vanishes on the other side on the orange background. The same is true in reverse for the blue object.

This example helps to further illustrate the previous point; while the orange cap jumps out on the blue, it fades and looks almost red against the orange background, which is a more yellowy orange. See below example also:

In this image the blue savlon jumps out at the viewer because of the high contrast between the complimentaries, whereas the orange highlighter looks more red in hue and really doesn't stand out.

In these example we laid the paper out in a fan so that all the colours we had been using could be viewed. It allows us to see how the blue objects creates the most interesting shift with it's complimentary.

This final example also reflects the high contrast between the blue and the orange, while the other colours, particularly the colours closest to orange in the colour wheel don't create the same optical contrast.