In the last lesson,
we learned about the teachings of Joseph Elbers and Johannes Ittmann.
In this lesson, we'll perform some of the color experiments from Joseph Elbers' Interaction of Color.
When Elbers began teaching his color experiments at Black Mountain College and Yale, he used
whatever materials he could find.
He preferred to use colored paper.
He didn't like his students to use paint.
He felt like paint produced too many visual textures
and seemed to be distracting from the actual color experience.
So he would go to printing plants and, say, packaging,
random pieces of paper,
where he could find them.
And those were the colors that his students would use in their color experiments.
Eventually,
the students became aware of another product called ColorAid.
And ColorAid was a product developed for,
I believe, the textile trade,
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.
Elbers saw this as a great opportunity to have a kit of colors that students can use for their color experiments.
And that's what we have here.
These papers are ColorAid papers.
As you can see,
they're approximately a good size to use,
very beautiful in terms of their color finish,
their matte finish.
So it's very much like painting gouache on top of ColorAid paper.
It's non-reflective.
And so the color experience is very pure.
With ColorAid paper.
And literally, for the last,
say, 60 years,
students have been doing the Elbers assignments using ColorAid paper.
This pack of ColorAid paper has 314 colors.
And as you can see, they're just beautiful.
And there's vivid colors,
dull colors,
light colors,
dark colors.
The entire range of the chromatic scale is there for us to use.
I've isolated a few colors to begin our experiments.
We'll start with gray.
So ColorAid comes with a number of different grays.
In a pack of 314 colors,
I believe that there
are 19 different grays,
plus pure black and white.
So that allows us to really create a lot of room
for different kinds of experiments with value change,
light and dark.
And this is a great place to start,
just thinking about the idea of simultaneous contrast.
The idea that color is relative,
that it's contextual,
that the same color can look different on two different grounds.
And we'll start with gray,
because we're just dealing with value.
So here I've chosen a number of grays,
from light to dark.
And one of the things that Elbers says,
the only clue he actually gives his students is to say,
find middle color when you're doing these experiments.
So I'll do that.
I'll start with something light as a ground.
And I'll start with a dark color as a ground.
Now these might be a little bit too extreme.
And I'm gonna try to find the middle color,
as Elbers has instructed us.
So I'll take one of the grays from the middle of this range,
and lay it over the top.
Then I've got a piece of white paper.
I'm just gonna put these colors over here momentarily.
And I'm gonna put this over the top.
You might be able to see this on camera.
You see how the gray on this side
looks light against this dark ground,
and on this side looks dark against this light ground.
So this is a very simple demonstration of simultaneous contrast.
The same color,
looking different on two different grounds.
So now, I'll cut swatches of this color,
and just see if it actually works.
So the same color here,
the same color here.
And we can see how here,
the gray looks light,
and here it looks dark.
And in fact, if you stare at the center,
you'll see that this gray starts to look
almost like this ground.
And this gray looks a lot like that ground.
Now, if I want this color to look just like that ground,
I'll have to lighten up that ground just a little bit.
So I'll go back to my grays.
And I'll choose a ground color that's just a little bit lighter than this.
I'll take that same swatch,
and I'll put it on the top.
And now we have a pretty good representation of three colors looking like two.
So we have one,
two, three colors, these are the same color.
But here,
this color looks like this ground,
and this color looks like that ground.
So three looks like two.
Now we'll try the same experiment with these green swatches.
So I'm going to move these
two swatches out of the way,
to the side.
Now,
ColorAid gives us different tints and shades,
different hues of green.
So I'll choose a dark ground and a light ground again.
And do the same experiment.
We'll try to find the middle color.
These are all sort of in
the middle, maybe not this one.
But these two are in the middle.
And I'll do the same exact experiment.
I'll lay the white over the top.
And again, my goal is to try to make this color look like that ground,
and this color look like that ground.
Try to work a little bit.
Try with this swatch.
That's maybe a little bit better.
See what happens if I put this color in the background.
Not enough contrast.
I'm going to try cutting some swatches out of this,
lay them over the top,
and we'll see what happens.
So we can definitely see how this color looks light here.
It looks darker on this side.
But this color is not coming close to that.
This color looks a lot like that ground,
but this one is not coming as close to this.
So that means I either have to lighten up this background
or lighten up this background.
So I've sorted through my greens,
and I found a few other greens that might be useful.
As you can see,
they're shifting in saturation.
But we'll just experiment.
And Albers always talks about trial and error being such an essential part of this experience.
And if you think about it,
you really are.
You're learning so much just by looking at the colors and thinking about their relationship
to the colors in front of you.
This idea of simultaneous contrast is really dependent on two factors, value and hue.
So right now, I can just think in terms of value, light and dark,
and not be so concerned about hue.
They're all green, but they're different kinds of greens.
So I'm going to look for a color that is a slightly lighter value for this background.
Now it's a little bit lighter.
A very different version of green.
It's kind of interesting.
Much more of a yellow-green.
So I'm still getting a good subtraction on this side.
The background is subtracting its darkness,
making that look lighter.
It can look a lot like this ground on this side.
But this is so yellow in comparison.
So here's another green that's more yellow.
I'll try that on this side.
And of course, I'm going to have to find different swatches now for the top because I've shifted
the hue so much.
Let's see what happens with this.
It definitely looks darker on this side,
but this is nowhere near as light as that.
What's that happen?
So Albers calls this pushing the ground.
Now I'm changing the ground color.
And there I have it.
So the first thing I thought about was hue,
all the same color, all green,
different kinds of greens.
And then I found that that wasn't working.
The simultaneous contrast effect wasn't coming through clear.
I started to think about how the background was subtracting itself in terms of value and hue from these foreground shapes.
I switched greens and went to a different kind of green,
more of a yellow-green,
something I had more of in my Colorade pack.
This is something, if you work with Colorade, you'll see this.
It's frustrating at times because there'll be ranges of greens that will work and other ranges of greens that won't work.
Same thing with blue and red and yellow and orange.
And even different Colorade packs will often have different kinds of colors in them.
But I think I nailed it here.
So this color looks like that ground,
and this color looks like that ground.
And in order to do that,
I had to look for colors where the background would subtract itself from the inside color,
subtract just enough value,
in this case lightness,
to make that look dark like this.
And on this side,
subtracting just enough darkness to make that look light like that.
So this is a fairly good example of simultaneous contrast.
So again, Albers likes to say that we see colors two different ways,
or we understand colors two different ways.
That there's factual color,
meaning the scientific name for a color,
say the RGB value or the CMYK value or the Pantone code for a color.
That's the factual color.
And then there's actual color,
what we actually see.
So if I take these two swatches off,
and we look at them right against the gray or against the white,
we see that they're factually the same color.
When I put them on the opposite backgrounds,
now we're seeing the actual color.
And actually,
these colors look different,
even though factually they're the same.
This color looks like that,
that color looks like that.
Again, just like with the grays,
we made three colors look like two.
So again, you can try this with colorated paper.
You could even try with just colored papers that you have.
Colors from magazines, clip outs,
cutouts from magazines.
It's all going to be basically the same thing.
You're always looking for that idea of trying to make color look different on
different grounds and practicing this idea of simultaneous contrast.
Now let's shift away from this paper to working on the computer.
the reading.