In the last lesson,
we learned about simultaneous contrast and color illusion.
In this lesson, we'll learn about the illusion of transparency and color mixing.
So again, using our colorated papers,
we're going to try to create the illusion of transparency
with two ground colors and a color that looks like the mixture of those two colors.
Again, we're thinking about what Albers says,
find the middle color.
So I'll start with a light color and again a darker color and I'm just using grays here to simplify.
I'm going to put them into an organization like this where they seem to be overlapping.
Now I'm going to choose a middle color and literally
looking at the range of colors I have and trying to find something that exists
in the middle, in between these two colors.
In this case, just in value.
Looks pretty good.
And I'll cut a little triangle off the corner.
And when I place this on top,
and I put these pieces in this proximity,
we create this color illusion where this color looks like
it's basically what we're seeing as seeing through this piece into this piece or seeing through this piece onto this piece.
That this is the middle color.
Creating the illusion of transparency.
Just with value.
Now keep in mind that these are perfectly opaque colors.
There's no actual transparency here, no physical transparency.
This is a solid piece of paper, solid color.
So it truly is an illusion.
We're being tricked into thinking that these colors are transparent.
Albers says,
I'm paraphrasing here,
but he asked us to basically mix colors with our eyes closed.
To try to use our imagination to think of a color that would be a middle color in between and go find that color.
I'm going to try one more thing while I still have these colors here.
Right now, some of you may think that this gray rectangle is overlapping the darker gray rectangle.
Or some of you might think that the darker gray is overlapping this.
So I'm going to try to make it more specific.
I'm going to try to make the gray rectangle look like it's overlapping the lighter gray rectangle.
I'm going to do that by cutting another piece of a darker gray and see what happens.
So again, this is where we started.
And the transparency effect is clear,
but it's maybe unclear as to where exactly the layers are.
But as soon as I put this piece on,
now it looks like this is overlapping that for most of us,
the darker color.
Because I've shifted this middle color toward the darker side.
Now let's try the same experiment using color,
in this case, blue and blue-green.
So I've got a range of beautiful blues here.
And ColorAid is so rich.
These colors are just amazing to look at.
Even if you never cut them up.
I have a lot of students who don't want to cut up their ColorAid because it's so beautiful.
So I'll choose a dark round.
Say this one, nice and blue.
And I'll choose a light ground.
Maybe this one.
And we'll do the same experiment.
I'll look for a middle color.
Something that lies in the middle.
That's a good middle color.
I'll cut a triangle of that.
I might have to change my juxtaposition here.
Here we go.
A little bit different juxtaposition.
So there the color effect is different now.
Still, we're creating that illusion of transparency.
My guess is that most of you are seeing this light blue rectangle
overlapping the darker blue rectangle.
But maybe not.
Maybe some of you are seeing the opposite.
It all has to do with this triangle, though.
This triangle,
which we think of as the child
of these two colors.
These are the parents.
This is the child.
It's affecting how the
space illusion relationship between these background shapes works.
This color either emerges or recedes.
You think back to Albers again,
his Homage to the Square,
which is all about receding and emerging colors.
Well, that's what's happening here.
The lesson that is to be learned here from this experiment is how to control colors to create
that sensation of emerging and receding.
And in that way,
you create visual hierarchy.
Look here first.
Look here second.
Look what's happening to this color.
It's emerging.
Look what happens to that color.
It recedes.
Let's just see what happens if I shift these colors away from the
blue now toward a blue-green.
I'll keep this dark blue background and I will choose a blue-green.
Very different.
This was my original blue.
Now I'm going toward a greener blue.
Again, I'm going to look for that middle color,
something that exists in between these two.
This is pretty good in terms of a middle color.
That's also very good.
Let's just try this one.
It's so vivid.
Again, so we produce a certain kind of effect by doing this.
Kind of an illusion there.
Again, you're like mixing colors with closed eyes,
right?
You're mixing colors in your imagination,
trying to find the color that's going to best represent
this idea.
So that, I think, is a little bit too vivid.
So I'm going to try one more color that's
a little bit less vivid.
This is a very vivid color,
and it might be getting in the way of the illusion of transparency.
So I'll try a color that's very similar to this
in value, but a little bit different in terms of saturation.
A little bit less saturated.
Also not quite right.
A little bit too yellow.
I think the other one was better.
Let's see what happens with this.
So much of this is trial and error,
right?
Just trying things out.
Again, looking for that overlap,
that illusion of transparency.
It's actually kind of nice.
So this is what we call color theory.
We're working in a perfectly experimental situation.
We're trying things out.
We're trying to do things using trial and error,
strictly as our operating principle.
Working with different kinds of colors
to get different results.
Seeing how colors can seem to emerge and recede based on this idea.
That's back to my original.
Kind of beautiful.
So we've seen a pretty good example here of how we can use colorated paper to create the illusion of transparency,
and to some degree, space illusion.
Now we're going to move on to the computer and do the same exercises there,
and try to actually exaggerate that idea of spatial illusion.