Knock Three Times ... makes me pay ATTENTION

Our eyes deceive us.

Three times this week my reading and thoughts and interactions with people drew to this subject.

Someone looking for a log cabin center using bars of primitive red and blue and yellow to construct the cabin thought black might be the answer. Not possible, because the blue, so dark, does not allow the black to show against it. it is also too heavy a colour for the yellow.

The choices are light neutral, bright orange, bright brown, yellow green. No green please, don't like neutral, hate brown ( poor maligned brown) that left orange.

Now the key here is to understand an orange that looks good with blue and holds it own with yellow will not show up against red. Someone wanted only to use one piece of wool for the service of these hearth squares. This would not work because the half of the center square where it butts up against red must be even brighter.

To create a square that appears to be one colour it must contain two oranges, one more temperate for the blue and gold side, one from the hot equator on the red side.

This is the only way to have cohesion and unity of weight and not have the square disappear and reappear al over the rug.

This was a tough sell.

Two months ago I got a book The Artist's Eyes.

I just started reading it this week.

It is very scientific and contains very small print but it is all about this very subject, how our eyes deceive us, what needs to be done with colour to make things appear as it should, as we desire it to. There is so much to absorb and I'm exceedingly keen on this subject but I can only take this info in with small doses. For instance red lines laying on a half white, half black back ground, you would think the red would shine up on the white like nobody's business, instead it appears dull and even pink. I love all this scientific proof of things I've been trying to tell people for ages. In rug talk: a light coloured background steals vibrancy and power from colours, it diminishes them. A dark one empowers them.

It gonna take me a year to read this but I'm relishing it.

Just this morning I chanced to see this great talk by Beau Lotto.

Once again it reiterated what has been buzzing in the studio.

He has a website with activities if you want to study further on this topic of colour.

I cannot say often enough no colour can be judged on its own. You can make an assessment, yes you see red, it is dull, it is dark. BUT it will change it's behaviour radically depending on who it hangs out with. Sometimes unbelievably so.

I guess I'll chew on this some more.

I'm going to try to not have any visual input here until next Tuesday, tell me how you like/despise it.