Monday 18 October 2010





Course work: Worked on Project Five, Stage One, Optical Mixing. Some preliminary experimentation showed that small, fairly uniform dots could best be produced by stamping with a small, sharp piece of wood. A circle with ~1mm dots of cadmium yellow light and cerulean blue, straight from the tube, and a second with larger dots of the same colors, these made with a brush, were evaluated: I could not convince myself that I could see them as green at any distance, as the blue dots seemed to overpower the yellow ones. I then lightened the blue considerably with white, and repeated the two small circles, with slightly more convincing results. I then did a roughly square set of ~2mm dots, with an overall size of ~5cm; with this I could imagine that I could see a little green: the effect seemed stronger in indirect daylight than in incandescent light.





I then carried out a similar series using cadmium yellow light and cadmium red light: I was able to convince myself that I could see orange in each of the five areas. To assess whether the white background could make a significant difference, I painted a small solid yellow square and applied dots of cadmium red light to it: the effect was somewhat more convincing, but is outside the range of the project.



I was not fully satisfied with the results of the project so far, and set out to find a way to make small uniform easily-controllable dots. Colored markers proved effective: four small circles done with yellow and blue, yellow and red, red and blue, and red and green, yielded when viewed from a distance the impressions of green, orange, purple, and a reddish-grey neutral.



With this knowledge in hand, I returned to acrylics, and, making smaller and more closely-set dots, managed to produce a fair violet, a weak orange, a rather weak green, and by using red, yellow, and blue, a somewhat yellowish neutral.

My conclusions: (1) To provide effective optical mixing, dots must be small, uniform, and fairly evenly spaced (uneven spacing results in a tint shift). (2)Viewing distance is important: smaller dots mix optically at a shorter distance than do larger dots. (3) Selecting the proper amount of each color to use to achieve a desired effect is difficult. (4) I am unlikely to become a pointillist.





Reading and theoretical studies:



Johannes Itten The Elements of Color

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1961

Pp. 24-48



E. H. Gombrich Art and Illusion (11th Printing)

Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 1969

Pp. 63-90



Sketchbook work: A sketch of a closed hand.

Time today: Two hours 14 minutes (85h50m)