Now let's use the computer to create the illusion of transparency and focus on space illusion.
We're going to now look at the illusion of transparency,
the second of the Joseph Albers
color experiments.
In the first experiment,
we tried to make three colors look like two,
make five colors look like six.
We worked with monochromatic colors,
we worked with paper, we worked digitally.
We made three colors look like four in the end,
which was kind of interesting,
all in an effort to kind of prove the concept of simultaneous contrast.
Now we're going to move on to the solution of transparency.
This is another great assignment because it teaches you about color mixing.
So the first thing we're going to do is try to create a blend of two parent colors and just see
what happens when we mix the colors together in the blend itself.
Now we've already made blends
in the other experiments,
so we're going to be basically doing the same thing again.
Well, before I do that,
I'll talk a little bit about this composition.
Notice how these two outlines,
we have a rectangle here and a rectangle here,
and they're overlapping each other right in the
middle.
Now I produce this by taking two rectangles that were very similar in size and proportion,
putting them into this arrangement where they're overlapping,
and then I used Pathfinder to separate the shapes.
So now I have three separate shapes.
One here,
which is basically this background shape.
Two here, which is that shape.
And three here,
this third shape right in the middle.
So I can colorize those shapes just very quickly,
just to show you the three different shapes.
I'll make this one red.
I'll make this one blue.
In the intersection,
I'm just going to make that purple because I know that the mixture of blue and red is purple.
And immediately, I see that there's actually some illusion that the red rectangle is overlapping the
blue and that the red rectangle or the blue rectangle,
depending on which one you see
is overlapping, is transparent and is producing a color that is the mixture of these two colors,
the two parent colors.
So the red and the blue are the parents.
The purple is the child of these colors.
Let's just take off these backgrounds so we don't see those anymore.
And that's much more effective without it.
It's really interesting, right?
So now, if I made this middle color a
different color, let's just say randomly,
I'm going to say rather than purple,
I'm going to make it green.
Something like that.
So that really doesn't work.
There's no sense of transparency
here.
There's no illusion going on.
You can imagine conceptually that the colors are overlapping each
other and producing a different sensation here.
But this is not the illusion of transparency.
This is simply the idea of intersection.
If I go back to this and I go back to that purple,
we see how immediately that changes
because this is a mixture color.
So whenever you're mixing colors,
a good way to do that is just to make a blend.
Now I'm going to make a blend of these two background colors,
the blue and the red.
I'll make one side of the gradient red,
sample that.
I'll make the other side blue,
sample that.
So now I'm going to sample from the middle,
put that right here.
And we're going to see how close we are.
So that middle color is much less,
say, vivid than the purple I had before.
But the sensation is very similar.
Now, keep in mind that whenever you mix two colors,
you are desaturating the parents.
You're desaturating the original colors that you're mixing.
There's no other way around it.
You're always going to desaturate a color when you mix it.
It's going away from its pure state,
its purest hue,
and becoming something else, a mixture.
So that's that sensation of mixing colors.
You can try this with any colors you want.
Let's just say this is yellow.
And this is, we'll leave the blue on one side,
just go to yellow on the other.
Let's go down to our blend down here, select that.
Change one side of the blend to yellow.
Now, we know that the mixture of yellow and blue is green.
Most of us know that.
Pretty simple idea.
But if I sample from the middle of this blend,
it produces that green color.
And immediately produces a sensation of transparency,
the illusion of transparency.
I can continue to sample blue,
a little bit less vivid,
makes it more convincing,
more interesting.
As I sample closer to the center,
sensation of transparency becomes even more extreme.
Let's try another color.
Let's just try black and white,
just to see what happens.
Working with grays.
So I have a light gray on one side.
Actually, I'll make this darker on this side.
Go light on this side.
If I select the middle piece,
if I go down and sample from the middle of the blend,
again, I produce that sensation of transparency.
This is the middle color.
It's the middle mixture.
Now, Albers,
of course, wants us to conceptualize this process.
So he says,
try to mix colors with your eyes closed.
It's kind of an interesting concept,
too.
If you close your eyes and try to visualize a color,
it's pretty hard.
It's a fleeting experience.
It comes and goes.
Until you fixate on that color or try to visualize an object that's that color,
if you say, I'm going to visualize a lemon,
you can immediately see a color.
Whatever yellow you associate with lemon, you'll visualize that.
But if you just try to say,
visualize the color of yellow without an object,
no lemon,
no school bus, nothing,
you just visualize that idea of the color yellow, it's fleeting.
But that's what Albers wants us to do.
He wants us to say,
look at these two grays,
these two parent colors.
Try to visualize the middle color in between those two and then go look for it.
Hunt around for it.
So we're hunting down here within the blend.
Now, we can take this idea,
this experiment, one step further and create the sensation of space illusion.
It's very interesting.
So by changing the middle color,
this area right in the middle,
we can actually create the sensation that one of these rectangles is in front of the other.
So right now,
this rectangle is sampled
from the middle of this blend,
right in there.
But if I sample it closer to the light side of the blend,
you see what happens.
Now, it looks like this rectangle is overlapping the dark rectangle.
Simply because I changed that middle color.
I made it closer in value to the light parent.
If I go down and sample this color from the darker side,
here now what happens?
Now, it appears as if this darker color
is overlapping the lighter color.
Although, because of the way we think,
because of our knowledge of transparency,
it's harder for us to visualize this idea
that this is a transparent color.
So some of us might even still visualize this as being overlapping.
But it's not overlapping in the same way that it was when we sampled this from closer to the light side.
Now it really feels like this is in front.
It's harder to tell.
For me, it looks like the dark rectangle is in front of the light rectangle.
Now let's try this in color.
Let's just assign two colors back here.
Again, maybe we'll go with magenta and yellow,
or magenta and yellow-green and see what happens.
Actually, we'll use complements.
This will be interesting.
Magenta on that side.
A bit of a yellow-green on this side.
Maybe more of a green.
It's yellow.
There we are.
Maybe even more of green on this side.
Something like that.
Make this background magenta.
I always have to hold down the shift
key in order to sample that correctly.
Make this side sample the green.
And then we're going to sample the middle color.
Actually, it already looks transparent.
I'm going to sample this from the middle of the blend.
Right in here.
So when we look at this,
it's hard to tell if the green rectangle,
again,
hypothetical, imaginary green transparent rectangle,
is in front or behind of the magenta transparent, imaginary transparent rectangle.
But if I sample this color closer to the green,
now it definitely looks like the green is in front of the magenta.
And if I sample this more toward the magenta,
now it looks like the magenta is in front of the green.
So by controlling this
middle color, we can make these background colors seem to emerge and recede.
Some people will say emerge and retire or recede and emerge,
but it's all the same idea.
Colors that seem to
move back in space or project themselves out one way or the other.
And it's all based on what
happens in this middle.
So just by sampling this in different ways,
we get such a different effect.
Again, if you sample right from the middle,
sensation is that, well, those colors are equally transparent.
It's hard to tell which one's in front and which one's in back.
As soon as I sample a little bit closer to the green,
it becomes a little bit more clear as to where these colors lie in terms of their
relationship to each other in terms of layers.
Right.
Let's try two other colors.
Let's try something like this.
We make this one brown.
Maybe an orange, something like that.
Those are kind of nice.
So I selected it closer to the brown side,
so it looks as if the brown is overlapping the orange.
I select it closer to the orange side,
and it'll look like the orange is projecting itself
forward like it's in front of the brown.
So that's the illusion of transparency and space illusion.
And we can control that idea of emerging and receding by changing the overlapping color,
giving it that sensation of one plane being in front of another.
And by the way,
you can use any shapes you want for this,
right?
You can try circles,
you can try rectangles,
you can try complex shapes,
and always use Pathfinder to separate the shapes out,
create the same exact effects,
all going back to the blend.
We're going to come back to this,
and we're probably going
to be using some of these exercises in our poster design.
So save everything.
In this lesson, we learned about the illusion of transparency and space illusion.
In the next lesson, we'll switch gears and take a tour through a brief history of poster design.