Someone at Converse has been through 2d Fundamentals

I just saw these today and immediately thought of 2d fundamentals and color theory... Just sort of funny.

Color in 17th Century Popular Culture

As I was listening to some music today, I noticed something pretty interesting in the lyrics. I have a CD of English stage jigs- jigs were sort of like funny musical skits that followed major play performances in 16th and 17th century England. Shakespeare's plays certainly would have had them. In one of the jigs, titled "The Cheaters Cheated" from around the time of the English Civil War (1642-1651), two con-artists are trying to figure out how to distract a country bumpkin so they can rob him. One of them happens to have purchased a glass prism for that very purpose. Here are some selected lines about the prism and what it does...

Filch: Stay, prethee who comes here?
Nim: A gaping Country Clown.
Filch: Look how the slave doth stare;
Nim: He’s newly come to town
Filch: He gazeth in the air as if
The sky was full of rockets
Let’s fleece him.
Nim: But how shall we get
His hands out of his pockets?

Filch:Let me alone for that:
I lately bought a glass,
Wherein all several colours may
Be seen that ever was,
If held up thus with both hands.
Nim: A pretty new design,
This trick will fetch his fingers out—
Filch: And hey, then in go mine!

...

Filch: The rainbow never knew
Such colours as are here
Nim: Here’s purple, green and blew—
Wat: Zooks, what have they got there?
Good morrow Master, what d’ye cal’t?
Filch: Good morrow, good man Clot!
Wat: Nay vaith, vine gallant, there y’are out—
My neame is honest Wat.

Filch: I’le shew thee such a sight that
Thou ne’re saw’st, honest Wat,
Neither by day nor night yet.
Wat: Yvaith ch’ud laugh at that!
Filch: Here, take this glass into thy hand
And hold it to thy eyes,
Thou there shalt see more colours than
A dyer can devise.

Wat: I cannot zee a colour yet,
Nim: Thou dost not hold it high,
Wat: Che hav’t, che hav’t, che’ve got it now!
Nim: (steals Wat’s purse) I’faith, and so have I!
Wat: Here’s black and blew & gray & green,
And orange-tauny, white;
And now ich ave lost all again …
Filch: (steals Wat’s other purse) In troth y’are in the right!


So it's kind of nerdy, but I'm ok with that.

Color Journal #7- Extended Palette and Optical Blending

The low-intensity yellow threads build up to form a more saturated yellow.



From a distance, we assign a single color to describe the pumpkin stem. Up close, wee can see that it's made up varying oranges, greens, browns, and neutrals of different shades and hues.




The color on the right side of a tissue box is created up as the streaks and swirls of red build on top of each other



We tend to see grass as being a uniformly green expanse, but up close it is made up of a great many hues, tints, and shades of green, as well as other plants of varying chroma.



The layers of translucent cloth build up to form different variations of the same brown.



From a distance, this plant blends out so as to appear to be more of a neutralized green thanks to the low intensity red parts.

Color Journal #6

In line with some of the topics I discussed in my study into pre-Newtonian systems for ordering color, I wanted to analyze how bright colors could be in centuries past. To do this, I dug through photos I've taken (with a few from friends) at reenactments and living history events over the past year or two. All but one of the images are from close-ups of clothing based on/informed by extant garments, contemporary artwork, written sources, and more, and appeal to an aesthetic similar to what we are used to. Prominent use of primary colors butted up against each other in 18th century British uniforms and a blue coat with orange cuffs and collar might signal a late 17th century Bears fan. I'm fascinated by color and the way it has been appreciated and used throughout time. Why would anyone dress in drab colors when so many beautiful ones were and are available?

Texts From Last Night Meets Color Theory

(262): We're learning about the color wheel. Hello college. http://tfl.nu/yagx

A Nugget of Purest Green

A clip from the old BBC TV show Blackadder set in the 16th century. It stars Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean), Hugh Laurie (House, M.D.), Stephen Fry, Miranda Richardson, and several more well-known actors and actresses.

In this clip, Percy tries his hand at alchemy and creates "Green."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkZFuKHXa7w

Color All Around Us/Me

As I look around the living room and kitchen of my apartment, I can't help but wonder about why manufacturers choose the colors they do for their products.

We have two Lazy Boy armchairs; both are of different fabrics but both are a sort of disgusting shade of something unrecognizable. They are neither a neutral, nor a brown, nor a gray, nor a green. They must be the very color (and I'm generous in using that word)of some kind of sludge one might have found underneath a prehistoric rock. I'm no home decorator, but I can't imagine a place where such drab monsters would ever fit.

The couch too has this problem. It's certainly by a different manufacturer, but it is equally sickly-looking. A pale jaundice-yellow overlaid with almost neutral blue, the bastard child of brown and "maroon," and a khaki green-gray that even the army would refuse.

Who designs this stuff?

Pre-Newtonian Color Systems (Up to Forsius)

Newton had to have gotten his ideas from somewhere, right? Many Western theorists existed before his time, and they seem to have gotten along just fine. That's not to say it wasn't a very good thing people developed more complete or different systems of ordering color down the line, but rather that it's just pretty neat that they had them so early on.

The philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras is believed to be amongst the first known men to put together a system to organize color. In his system, colors and music were linked to the creation of the universe and spirituality.




A little over two centuries later, Aristotle is known to have put together a system that both organized color, and perhaps more importantly, experimented with mixing color. His system was in part the result of blending blue and yellow light cast over marble during the daytime. His organization is very interesting in that it reflects the hypothetical, fleeting colors of light cast during the day- moving from white light at noon, and eventually gaining tinges of other colors and more or less transitioning until the apparent literal black of night. Interestingly it appears to leave out orange. He also notes his belief that black and white are opposites and that colors appear visually different when juxtaposed over other colors. Aristotle also began to identify colors as being connected to alchemic elements such as fire- a belief that will persist in medicine and the arts on through the 18th century or so in some circles.



The main event however, came about in the early part of the seventeenth century. In 1611 Aron Sigfrid Forsius, a Finnish priest and astronomer, developed a cyclical chart that could make sense without the added component of tracking light during the course of a day. It could stand alone as each color transitions into the next with a greater degree of sense than previous charts. In Aristotle's, for example, violet jumps to green, then green jumps to blue. A near impossible feat under normal circumstances. Forsius' moves relatively smoothly. It seems to have a flow, and even includes a gray, which Forsius believed to reside in the middle of all else. While looking at his chart, you might also note that his system also includes complementary colors- in general placed across from one another . He also believed that black and white were more or less colors from which all others were derived.



One should also note the named colors on the chart. They're much more than your boring "red" and "blue," and can tell us a great deal about the world of the people of the late 16th, early 17th centuries. In truth, they were not too dissimilar to us. We have Crayola crayons with a plethora of such creative colors as jazzberry jam, macaroni and cheese, and outerspace, while Forsius' system offers us tree, wheat, and apple mold in addition to more conventional names. If you look through wills, inventories, and other primary sources from the Early Modern Era, you will find many more interesting color names similar to these. Many lean a little to the outrageous side with such choices as the charming pallid gray of Dead Spaniard, Puke a lovely brown, and the self-explanatory Whey and Gooseturd.. Dead Spaniard, if not a flattering color to wear, alludes to the appreciation of the English people for Spain's not-so-friendly imperialism, some of the others to just how shy Early Modern people really were about embracing reality. They also had colors that related directly to places such as Bristol Red and Lincoln Green.

I think we ordinarily associate much of history with peasants, dirt, and ultimately drab colors. Highlighting the profoundly excellent title of a profoundly horrible book (It's content is poorly researched and encourages misconceptions), A World Lit Only By Fire, summarizes and reinforce this sort of idea we have of our ancestors being universally primitive for several centuries. This is clearly not the case.



Works Consulted

Crone, Robert A.. A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color. 1st ed. New York: Springer, 1999. Print.


Gage, John. Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (Color & Culture). Milwaukee: Bulfinch Pr, 1993. Print.


Mikhaila, Ninya. The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing 16th-Century Dress. London: B.T. Batsford, 2006. Print.


Morris, Robert. Clothing of the Common Man 1580-1660. Bristol: Stuart Press, 2005. Print.


Images provided by...
"The History of Colour Systems." BibliOdyssey. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. .

Journal Entry #5: Ordering Color

I had to think for quite some time to figure out the best answer to the question of how exactly I order color. I suppose that I (and probably most other people too) have a sort of hierarchal thinking process about color. We all have our likes and dislikes, and respond differently to different shades, hues, intensities, and so on in a variety of ways. I order colors rather eclectically; I pick and choose from warms and cools, saturated or otherwise, etc. I usually rank brighter colors nearer to the top as being around them or thinking about them makes me a little bit happier. This translates directly to how I perceive or order color in my environment(s) as well; if I am in a place awash in beiges and shades of whites or neutrals, I sometimes feel a little depressed or feel like it's harder to think. Though impossible to a point, I wish that individuals had more say or control in environments around them. As things are, we have little control over how colors exist or are ordered in the world, but when we're lucky enough, we can choose where to go and/or what to look at.

Journal Entry #4: Seeing Color

When given this assignment, I started thinking about food labeling and wanted to see how often packaging is reflective of what's inside.

The truth of it is that containers aren't really designed to align with the food they hold. Think of the foam trays that meat is available in- usually pale pink or white. In all fairness, those can both be "meat colors," but they seem more arbitrary than anything. Same thing goes for all kinds of stuff- peanut butter in red jars, pasta and graham crackers in blue boxes, Nutella in white, sugar in pink, and so on.

There were a few products whose color was linked to the color of the packaging like sea salt in a pale blue container or corn starch in a yellow jar, but many more where the color of the packaging was linked to the "idea" of the product. So rather than a bag of murky blue-black corn chips being the same color, the bag had a lot of subdued earth tones and little bit of blue. A box of whole-grain Matzah (a cracker-like flat bread) is all neutrals and light browns and the colors on a tube of oatmeal are subdued and earthy-feeling. There are also a lot of cereals that are sticky-sweet with sugar and corn syrup and bright marshmallows that have very colorful, eye-catching boxes.






The above picture was taken just for the hell of it. I gathered some of the most colorful things I could find in my room and threw them on a table and just let things happen to see what sort of combinations they would make.

Journal Entry #3: Seeing Black and White

Cool ripples and writhing steel leave nothing to the imagination.



Crude when close up, it still does a pretty good job showing some variation in value.



Its shimmer fading in the cool consistent case, it still smiles in a sort of perverse bemusement. Warm and cool coalesce to simulate life even when it is long gone.



A base for a beacon; Is it just there to provide contrast or convince us that it doesn't in fact hold a light?



In the light of the camera, even the most neutral can become rich in wriggling trails of warmth and valleys of value.



Literally full of spicy-sweet life, but in itself bland and shallow.


Once lofty and sainted, now close-up and going nowhere fast.


Found Achromatic Images

Behavior

Journal Entry #2: Light

It is omnipresent. It lacks identity or personality of any kind. Looking at it (to be specific, looking at anything illuminated by it. Not the light source itself of course, that'd just be stupid) makes me want to heave a great sigh. It is inescapable- until I flip the switch. I hold the power now and can turn it off whenever I so choose to. Unless of course I wish to see. Not being able to see would pose a serious threat to any attempt at finishing my homework or drawing. This poses quite a conundrum.

Back to the point I suppose. The overhead light is just so boring; though there's something to be said about the marvel and miracle of being able to see at night. The downside is that it just feels so dead. We can tweak and toy with the light until it does our bidding- dim the lights to create what we affectionately label as "ambiance" or hussy up the bulbs so they can glimmer in any color we can think of. Still boring. Still dead. Still quite useful given the fact that it's dark outside.

Piled Clothes

Journal Entry #1: Color Memory

Color can both unite and divide; Whether we consciously acknowledge it or take it for granted, it shapes our lives and relationships with others and the world around us.

The earliest memory I have of color having a profound impact took place in my day care class when I was two or three years old. There, like or dislike of particular colors built, toppled, and maintained friendships. I managed to build an entourage of friends for a time based solely upon our mutual enjoyment of "blue." As the years passed, we learned that there was more to life than blue, so we went our separate ways. Though these events speak for a certain naivete, they help to demonstrate what sort of hold color in its many forms has on us.