Course work: Taking a sheet of grey paper, I painted a red cross on it, stared at the center for a timed 30 seconds, and, as expected, saw an evanescent light green cross when I diverted my gaze downward. Out of curiosity, I made further experiments with a yellow, a blue, and a grey cross on the grey paper, and with a red and a grey cross on white paper. The yellow cross produced a convincing violet…the strongest effect of the series. The blue cross produced a barely discernable dirty yellowish image. The grey cross on grey paper produced an image slightly lighter than the grey paper. The grey cross on white paper produced an afterimage lighter than the white paper (which certainly provides food for thought) and the red cross on white paper a stronger green image than was noted with the red cross on grey paper. Here is a composite image of my experimental setups:
Reading and theoretical studies:
E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art
Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford 1978
Pp. 94-124
Johannes Itten The Elements of Color
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1961
Pp. 49-71
Sketchbook work:
Another color circle, this one using Grumbacher Red, cadmium yellow medium, and cobalt blue as the primary colors. A strong orange, and a usable, but somewhat neutralized, violet and green result from two-primary mixtures. Mixtures of each primary with its mixed complement produce useful brownish neutrals. A mixture of all three primary colors produces a strong near-black brown.
These three colors plus white would allow one to do reasonably satisfactory work, though the vermillion-arylide yellow-cobalt blue triad remains the most successful of those I have tested to date.
A red-chalk sketch of the cone of a white pine, a fairly uncommon tree in this area.
Time today: Two hours 25 minutes
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