AfterImageAnd Complements

But First…

POP QUIZ!!!What is happening in the following slides?

After Image: occurs when eye grows tired of a given hue and spontaneously creates the complementary hue as a result.

The major Complementary Colors includethe three Primaries and their Secondaries:

(Primary) (Secondary)

Red Green

Yellow Violet

Blue Orange

Complements are bold contrasts!Great for sports teams.

What are Complementary Colors?Colors which lie directly across from each other on the color wheel.

Also called Color Dyads, since they’re in pairs.

What complements are visible in this painting by Hans Hoffman?

BUT…Complementary Colors can also neutralize or cancel each other

out. When mixed together, their original INTENSITY is suppressed, leading us to Chromatic Neutral Grays…

Simple Color Wheel

AFTER IMAGE

AFTER IMAGE IN FULL COLOR

successive contrasts (afterimages)

First Exercise

Try to create an optical illusion using the complementary effect.

You are making complementary reversal Keep it simple: a bull’s eye, a flag. You may use Color-Aid Paper or the computer.

Remember white and black act as reversers.

Andy Warhol

commissioned work of Muhammed Ali

Next Exercise

• Download a portrait from the web (a celebrity, a gurning participant, your husband or a friend.)

• Change the image to black and white and then apply complementary colors in Photoshop using the spray brush OR I can print the black and white and you can paint on the image.

• You are making your own Warhol, not as a screen print, but as a computerized or painted rendition.

Before PhotoBooth, there was gurning…

Cobra Artist: Karl AppelCobra’s was a European avant garde movement based on spontaneity and

experiment, and they drew their inspiration from children’s drawings, art of non-western cultures and the examples of Paul Klee and Joan Miro.

,

COBRA artist: Cornielle

• Next exercise,• Using Photoshop and the brushes (or paint

and real brushes) paint a small abstract or semi-abstract composition using a complementary palette.

• Use at least two sets of complements.• In the spirit of Cobra, be playful, gestural and

bold.

Next Albers’ Exercise: Making two colors look like one. Use Color Aid Paper. In this case the yellow subtracts the red to orange and the maroon is assimilated into the orange,

create equal appearing colors.One side is subtractive, one side shows assimilation.

What color relations seem to best create this effect? Begin by choosing the two colors that will look alike, they should be similar but differeing in the amount of one color. The blue-green tint at left has more blue than the one at the right which has more yellow and

less blue.

The pinkish-violet color on the left has more red-violet than the mauve color to the right which has more blue. Therefore the left must go on a bluer

background and the right on a more pinkish-violet. Find two colors that differ by slight amounts of two other colors and try out different backgrounds. When you have a match, then get creative. These are high school students, so I want

you to up the ante with your cut-outs.

For cut-out inspiration… Look to China…

Mexico…

Or the Victorian art of cutting cameo silhouettes…

Just remember…

• The cut-outs must be much smaller than the surrounding hues that will act upon them to equalize your chosen hues. You may want to use small curved scissors rather than the exacto knife.

• All three of these exercises must be finished by next week. In addition, please read “The Case of The Color Blind Painter” by Oliver Sacks (downloadable from blog) and comment in your sketchbook.