Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

I found this picture in Flickr. To see the rights of this photo click here.

This photo of a painting in a building is the perfect exemplar of fully saturated paining with desaturated colors around them. The wall has a lot of different strong colors such as bright red, blue, orange, pink, purple, and green, that look like sun rays that comes from this couple in the Victory Over Japan Day that was in August 14, 1945, where a guy grabbed the first girl he saw and kissed her infant of everyone. This picture itself being so popular because of the characters, attracts a lot the attention, and now even more for the saturated colors it was made of. The white color that shapes around them makes the painting be brighter because is next to some really saturated colors. As we can see around that building, the other colors are more desaturated than saturated because they are calm colors without brightness and energy on it, these colors are dark orange, beige, grey, and black. This makes the rainbow colors of the painting be way more visible for people looking at this picture because it is also right on the middle, but the brightness and amount of color used for this painting makes it be more interesting to see than what is around them. For me, the thing that comes to my eyes first is the couple itself because of the white shape it has, even thought is has some really pretty colors around. The real intention of making this painting so colorful was to have the attention of everyone really quick and I think it really worked. Also being right in the street and where people can see it so easy has a lot that influence on it. This picture even made my eyes close a little bit because of all the saturation it has, it makes me think that was edited in some kind of program online.

A photo by Stephen Bowler on flickr. This shows a range of colors working together.

When thinking about interaction of color, I immediately imagined the hues of nature. This photo shows how colors often work together in nature. The photo is highly saturated so we see each color in its full intensity. The purple flowers are the first thing that pop out to the audience not only because of the intensity of their color but also because of the way it is propped against its secondary color of the same intensity, green. Purple and green could also be called near complementary colors instead of secondary colors. Although there are no complementary colors, the secondary/near complementary colors next to each other emphasize the flowers and grass, working in juxtaposition with one another.

The photo is more contrasted than it would be if, say, the purple flowers were next to the blue sky, because the two hues are so close to each other on the color wheel. In fact, the greens and purples are both created from the primary color, blue, that is seen in the sky. The sky itself is made of lighter tints of pink and blue, which contrasts the hues of the plants in the photo because the plants are much darker shades. The lighter tints also work to balance the photo so that each aspect is not fighting for our attention. The upper sky colors reflect the colors of the flowers on the ground while the dark trees work almost as a barrier to split the photo into two different planes. The dark value of the trees also helps balance the image, so that not each color is intense and once again fighting for our attention.

The photo itself has a very calming, serene feel to it because most of the colors used are cool colors. This shows how colors work to instill emotions in us.

USSsteal – 1961 by Syd Mead. Syd Mead is a visual futurist artist. The image was found on flickr posted by James Vaughan with a creative common license of CC2.0

The image that I have chosen is USSsteal by Syd Mead to demonstrate color. Retro Futurism has always captured my interest because of the color palettes that are used to make the accents in the image pop and contrast. The color scheme that I see in this image is very interesting, you see the bright colors created by the nature and the darker grey and browns of the man made cars and structures. The reason that he made the bright colors so vivid is to make the modern sleek darker colors pop and contrast against the bright nature. In the image you can see yellows, oranges, greens, and reds that all appear to be over saturated to make the colors have that radiant look to them. The accent colors can be seen as complimentary, we were showing in “Graphic Design: The New Basic” that red, green and yellow work as complimentary colors. The reds of the hedges, the green from the leaves, and the yellows of the shirts.

Looking more at the darker colors now and how they act with the brighter colors of the people and plants. You can see in the foreground colors, the darkness of the tree framed on the right side with the grey rocks. You can also note the white of the left hand tree paired with the dark car in the image. The foregrounds darker and less vivid colors squish the bright colors between its self and the background of the grayish  brown buildings. By doing this it gives more meaning to the garden in the middle. Making the garden stand out more and be viewed as a sort of garden of Eden.

This is a photo I took of a painting I got from a French street artist in Paris., This photo demonstrates the effects of using colors with similar temperatures to create a warm overall feel.

I selected this photo because it shows how a similarity in temperature, intensity and value of hues affect the overall feel of an image. Intensity is the brightness or dullness of a color. Most of the colors featured in this image are medium in intensity. They are pastel, which is typically created when the colors are mixed with white. Mixing white and black is how you affect the intensity of a color, and thus affecting the saturation of the color. The colors are all of medium saturation, none are so bright that they draw your eyes to them immediately. The image employs pretty much every color on the wheel, it seems, but for the most part the colors that are paired together are analogous. The colors are all of a similar warm temperature, except for the upper-most part of the sky and the water. The sky and water are much cooler colors than the rest of the painting. This makes sense, considering the typical perceived colors of those two structures are cool. It is also interesting that the cool colors are at the very top and bottom of the image, giving the image a nice frame. The warm, pastel colors in the center third of the image are sandwiched between the cool top and bottom thirds. The top and bottom of the image also engages the theme of value. The image for the most part has a lot of lightness and brightness to it, but the darker pieces of the water, sky and roofs help to anchor the image, giving it some depth and help to show your eyes where to set on the image.

This butterfly sitting on a flower is my example of color interaction. I was not able to find any information about this photograph, but I retrieved it from this site.

Color is all around us; nearly everything that we can see or touch has color. Good use of color goes beyond making a composition eye-catching or pretty to look at – designers use color to emphasize, to detract, to highlight, and to hide. It can direct our view, or even play tricks on us! Though our perception of colors and the emotions they evoke in us change from culture to culture, basic terms of color theory and the relationships between colors are held as constant throughout the world.

For my photo, I used an image of a butterfly sitting on a flower in front of a blurred background. Interest in this photo is generated by the crystal clear focus on the subjects (butterfly on the flower) compared to the background, which is represented in mere shades of color. This photo is also a clear demonstration of the effectiveness of using analogous colors in photographs: the various hues of yellow to orange and green lie next to each other on the color wheel, giving a satisfying and pleasant spectrum of green > orange > yellow in various hues. The large amount of green in the photo offsets the bright yellow and orange of the petals and the wings, giving more emphasis on these aspects of the photo. The colors of the background in this image are lower in value, giving them a darker color than the objects in the foreground, which are lighter in color. I like this photo a lot because of the emotions it evokes; the temperature of this image seems warm and inviting and makes someone feel somewhat blissful or happy just looking at it.