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In the last lesson,

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we learned about the teachings of Joseph Elbers and Johannes Ittmann.

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In this lesson, we'll perform some of the color experiments from Joseph Elbers' Interaction of Color.

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When Elbers began teaching his color experiments at Black Mountain College and Yale, he used

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whatever materials he could find.

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He preferred to use colored paper.

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He didn't like his students to use paint.

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He felt like paint produced too many visual textures

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and seemed to be distracting from the actual color experience.

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So he would go to printing plants and, say, packaging,

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random pieces of paper,

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where he could find them.

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And those were the colors that his students would use in their color experiments.

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Eventually,

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the students became aware of another product called ColorAid.

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And ColorAid was a product developed for,

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I believe, the textile trade,

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as a form of creating color systems of different textile designers having the same box of ColorAid and being able to compare colors and talk about colors in a universal sense.

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Elbers saw this as a great opportunity to have a kit of colors that students can use for their color experiments.

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And that's what we have here.

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These papers are ColorAid papers.

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As you can see,

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they're approximately a good size to use,

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very beautiful in terms of their color finish,

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their matte finish.

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So it's very much like painting gouache on top of ColorAid paper.

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It's non-reflective.

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And so the color experience is very pure.

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With ColorAid paper.

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And literally, for the last,

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say, 60 years,

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students have been doing the Elbers assignments using ColorAid paper.

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This pack of ColorAid paper has 314 colors.

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And as you can see, they're just beautiful.

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And there's vivid colors,

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dull colors,

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light colors,

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dark colors.

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The entire range of the chromatic scale is there for us to use.

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I've isolated a few colors to begin our experiments.

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We'll start with gray.

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So ColorAid comes with a number of different grays.

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In a pack of 314 colors,

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I believe that there

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are 19 different grays,

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plus pure black and white.

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So that allows us to really create a lot of room

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for different kinds of experiments with value change,

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light and dark.

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And this is a great place to start,

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just thinking about the idea of simultaneous contrast.

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The idea that color is relative,

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that it's contextual,

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that the same color can look different on two different grounds.

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And we'll start with gray,

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because we're just dealing with value.

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So here I've chosen a number of grays,

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from light to dark.

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And one of the things that Elbers says,

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the only clue he actually gives his students is to say,

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find middle color when you're doing these experiments.

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So I'll do that.

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I'll start with something light as a ground.

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And I'll start with a dark color as a ground.

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Now these might be a little bit too extreme.

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And I'm gonna try to find the middle color,

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as Elbers has instructed us.

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So I'll take one of the grays from the middle of this range,

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and lay it over the top.

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Then I've got a piece of white paper.

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I'm just gonna put these colors over here momentarily.

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And I'm gonna put this over the top.

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You might be able to see this on camera.

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You see how the gray on this side

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looks light against this dark ground,

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and on this side looks dark against this light ground.

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So this is a very simple demonstration of simultaneous contrast.

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The same color,

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looking different on two different grounds.

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So now, I'll cut swatches of this color,

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and just see if it actually works.

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So the same color here,

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the same color here.

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And we can see how here,

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the gray looks light,

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and here it looks dark.

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And in fact, if you stare at the center,

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you'll see that this gray starts to look

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almost like this ground.

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And this gray looks a lot like that ground.

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Now, if I want this color to look just like that ground,

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I'll have to lighten up that ground just a little bit.

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So I'll go back to my grays.

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And I'll choose a ground color that's just a little bit lighter than this.

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I'll take that same swatch,

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and I'll put it on the top.

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And now we have a pretty good representation of three colors looking like two.

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So we have one,

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two, three colors, these are the same color.

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But here,

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this color looks like this ground,

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and this color looks like that ground.

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So three looks like two.

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Now we'll try the same experiment with these green swatches.

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So I'm going to move these

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two swatches out of the way,

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to the side.

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Now,

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ColorAid gives us different tints and shades,

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different hues of green.

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So I'll choose a dark ground and a light ground again.

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And do the same experiment.

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We'll try to find the middle color.

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These are all sort of in

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the middle, maybe not this one.

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But these two are in the middle.

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And I'll do the same exact experiment.

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I'll lay the white over the top.

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And again, my goal is to try to make this color look like that ground,

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and this color look like that ground.

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Try to work a little bit.

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Try with this swatch.

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That's maybe a little bit better.

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See what happens if I put this color in the background.

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Not enough contrast.

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I'm going to try cutting some swatches out of this,

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lay them over the top,

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and we'll see what happens.

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So we can definitely see how this color looks light here.

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It looks darker on this side.

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But this color is not coming close to that.

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This color looks a lot like that ground,

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but this one is not coming as close to this.

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So that means I either have to lighten up this background

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or lighten up this background.

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So I've sorted through my greens,

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and I found a few other greens that might be useful.

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As you can see,

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they're shifting in saturation.

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But we'll just experiment.

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And Albers always talks about trial and error being such an essential part of this experience.

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And if you think about it,

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you really are.

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You're learning so much just by looking at the colors and thinking about their relationship

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to the colors in front of you.

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This idea of simultaneous contrast is really dependent on two factors, value and hue.

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So right now, I can just think in terms of value, light and dark,

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and not be so concerned about hue.

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They're all green, but they're different kinds of greens.

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So I'm going to look for a color that is a slightly lighter value for this background.

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Now it's a little bit lighter.

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A very different version of green.

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It's kind of interesting.

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Much more of a yellow-green.

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So I'm still getting a good subtraction on this side.

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The background is subtracting its darkness,

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making that look lighter.

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It can look a lot like this ground on this side.

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But this is so yellow in comparison.

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So here's another green that's more yellow.

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I'll try that on this side.

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And of course, I'm going to have to find different swatches now for the top because I've shifted

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the hue so much.

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Let's see what happens with this.

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It definitely looks darker on this side,

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but this is nowhere near as light as that.

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What's that happen?

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So Albers calls this pushing the ground.

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Now I'm changing the ground color.

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And there I have it.

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So the first thing I thought about was hue,

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all the same color, all green,

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different kinds of greens.

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And then I found that that wasn't working.

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The simultaneous contrast effect wasn't coming through clear.

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I started to think about how the background was subtracting itself in terms of value and hue from these foreground shapes.

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I switched greens and went to a different kind of green,

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more of a yellow-green,

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something I had more of in my Colorade pack.

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This is something, if you work with Colorade, you'll see this.

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It's frustrating at times because there'll be ranges of greens that will work and other ranges of greens that won't work.

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Same thing with blue and red and yellow and orange.

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And even different Colorade packs will often have different kinds of colors in them.

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But I think I nailed it here.

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So this color looks like that ground,

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and this color looks like that ground.

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And in order to do that,

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I had to look for colors where the background would subtract itself from the inside color,

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subtract just enough value,

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in this case lightness,

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to make that look dark like this.

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And on this side,

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subtracting just enough darkness to make that look light like that.

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So this is a fairly good example of simultaneous contrast.

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So again, Albers likes to say that we see colors two different ways,

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or we understand colors two different ways.

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That there's factual color,

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meaning the scientific name for a color,

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say the RGB value or the CMYK value or the Pantone code for a color.

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That's the factual color.

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And then there's actual color,

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what we actually see.

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So if I take these two swatches off,

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and we look at them right against the gray or against the white,

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we see that they're factually the same color.

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When I put them on the opposite backgrounds,

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now we're seeing the actual color.

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And actually,

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these colors look different,

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even though factually they're the same.

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This color looks like that,

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that color looks like that.

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Again, just like with the grays,

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we made three colors look like two.

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So again, you can try this with colorated paper.

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You could even try with just colored papers that you have.

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Colors from magazines, clip outs,

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cutouts from magazines.

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It's all going to be basically the same thing.

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You're always looking for that idea of trying to make color look different on

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different grounds and practicing this idea of simultaneous contrast.

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Now let's shift away from this paper to working on the computer.

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the reading.