{"id":56163,"date":"2017-08-02T11:58:02","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T15:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/?p=56163"},"modified":"2022-08-16T17:08:04","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T21:08:04","slug":"the-science-of-color","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/news\/articles\/2017\/the-science-of-color\/","title":{"rendered":"The Science of Color"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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August 2, 2017<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

How color fools our eyes \u2014 and what that means for art-making<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Julie Butters | Banner image by Alison Staffin
\nOriginally posted in the spring 2017 issue of Esprit<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

How many colors do you see in the above image?<\/h2>\n

You may have guessed four: one for each of the four squares. But the answer is three. The two small squares are the same color; they only appear different because of their contrasting backgrounds.<\/p>\n

The artwork, created by Alison Staffin (CAS\u201917) for a CFA studio class, reveals what a trickster color can be. It can change its appearance by \u201cstealing\u201d from the hues around it. The way our brain interprets color depends on context; as a result, the small squares appear to be different hues of gray.<\/p>\n

(Not seeing the illusion? Distance can enhance the effect: try stepping away from your computer or device to view the artwork. Still no luck? Screen display settings, or differences in how color can appear across browsers, could be altering the true colors of the original image.)<\/p>\n

\"Professor<\/a>
Professor Richard Raiselis shows students how mixing red, green, and blue light creates white. Photo by Morgan Bush.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At CFA, students learn how to master this elusive element of art by studying color \u201cproblems,\u201d experimenting with different combinations to create artistic sleights of hand. They discover that color isn\u2019t so much about what viewers see as about what they think they see.<\/p>\n

\u201cColor class prepares us to be fooled, and to enjoy the swindle, to use [artist Josef] Albers\u2019 word,\u201d says Richard Raiselis<\/a>, the associate professor of art who teaches the course. But the goal of learning about how colors affect each other, how context impacts perception, and how to quantify subtle differences in colors\u2019 shades, isn\u2019t just to perform impressive tricks\u2014it\u2019s to cultivate superior artistry.<\/p>\n

To use color effectively\u2014whether to grab attention in an ad, set mood with stage lighting, or create the appearance of depth in a painting\u2014artists need to be as familiar with colors as magicians with cards in a deck, and manipulate them with the same dexterity.<\/p>\n

Color Scientists at Work<\/h2>\n

Raiselis brought the class to CFA in the 1990s. Like many art instructors, he based it on what was likely the first such course in America, taught by German-born artist Josef Albers<\/a> at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and later at Yale University. Albers, who had studied and taught at Germany\u2019s famous Bauhaus<\/a> art school in the 1920s and early 1930s, was part of a mid-20th-century shift in art that rejected the depiction of real things or people in favor of focusing on color itself\u2014and its power to create illusions.<\/p>\n

\u201cColor class prepares us to be fooled, and to enjoy the swindle, to use [artist Josef] Albers\u2019 word.\u201d<\/em>
\n \u2014Associate Professor Richard Raiselis<\/em><\/p>\n

From the time he was a toddler, Raiselis was interested in art, but his parents encouraged him to choose what they considered a more practical career. He studied biology at Yale in the early 1970s, with an idea of continuing to medical school. But in his second term, while writing a paper about color vision in insects for a zoology class, \u201cIt was obvious that the art part of me was still alive,\u201d he says. The next year, he took a color class under Richard Lytle, Albers\u2019 former assistant in instruction, and switched his major to art. He was captivated by the beauty of the silk-screened Color-aid paper, the process of trial and error in completing color assignments, and the stimulating challenge posed by the seemingly simple task of cutting and pasting paper swatches. After graduation, he taught a color class at the City University of New York in Jamaica, New York, and the University of Michigan School of Art before arriving at BU.<\/p>\n

Raiselis\u2019 class, which meets in a studio on the fifth floor of 808 Comm Ave, is structured as a series of progressively difficult assignments derived from Albers\u2019 1963 book, Interaction of Color<\/em><\/a>. It\u2019s also peppered with museum visits and lectures by Raiselis on topics such as artists\u2019 use of color throughout history. The class is open to all BU students, which allows for an exchange of perspectives and knowledge. For instance, Morgan Bush (CAS\u201916), who majored in psychology and minored in visual arts, says she \u201chad something to contribute when we were talking about how the brain processes color.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Esprit<\/a>
Students in CFA\u2019s color class complete assignments that make optical illusions and show how colors affect each other. For the assignment above, Alison Staffin (CAS\u201917) used paper to re-create lighting effects produced by overlapping slide projections. The project demonstrates additive light, in which mixing colored light creates lighter hues than those being mixed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Raiselis introduces the class\u2019 central concept\u2014that color is relative\u2014on day one, by asking students to line up two sheets of blue and red silk-screened Color-aid paper and stare at their boundary. The color of each paper acquires a neon brightness along the horizontal join, and the remaining portions of the papers seem to grow duller by comparison.<\/p>\n

\u201cColors steal from each other what they already have,\u201d explains Raiselis. \u201cBlue wants to steal lightness and blueness from this red. Red wants to steal redness and darkness from this blue. You could call it simultaneous contrast. One exaggerates the differences of the other, just as positioning a tall person next to a short person exaggerates their differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each class assignment is treated as a problem for students to solve: for example, as in the artwork at the top of this page, how to make one color look like two (other assignments might include making two different colors seem the same or making three colors look like two). Raiselis shares examples of the color illusion they\u2019re going to create\u2014such as artwork by Albers himself\u2014and weighs in as students work, but lets them discover \u201cempirically, through trial and error,\u201d how to create the desired effect. Students use various combinations of the 314 colors in their personal pack of Color-aid paper; in some assignments, they have the option of using stripes, squares, or rectangles. Although there\u2019s no one solution to a problem, there are a lot of ways things can go wrong. As anyone who\u2019s attempted to match socks in a dimly lit room knows, light affects how colors look. Students can unintentionally ruin their artwork by removing it from the natural sunlight of the north-facing studio to tinker under fluorescent dorm lights.<\/p>\n

\"Esprit<\/a>
For the project above, students were told to use stripes of any thickness, color, and composition to create a vibration effect. This is achieved, says the artist, Alison Staffin (CAS\u201917), by choosing different hues with similar degrees of lightness or darkness and by using thin stripes as opposed to large swatches.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Students discover that \u201csome colors are better actors than others,\u201d Raiselis says. Take the artwork by Staffin: a neutral color works well for the small squares, because its muted nature makes them more susceptible to being influenced by surrounding colors. \u201cIt is impossible to see a single color in an isolated system without it being affected by anything else,\u201d says Staffin. \u201cYou don\u2019t see color for what it is, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brain Teasers<\/h2>\n

The scientific explanation for why our eyes are fooled by this kind of illusion has to do with how the brain interprets color. \u201cYour perception of the world is not based on what the actual visual world is,\u201d says Jeff Gavornik, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of biology. \u201cIt\u2019s based on your brain\u2019s attempt to make sense of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is impossible to see a single color in an isolated system without it being affected by anything else. You don\u2019t see color for what it is, ever.\u201d \u2014Alison Staffin (CAS\u201917)<\/em><\/p>\n

The eye, he says, tells the brain what color it\u2019s seeing in relation to adjacent colors\u2014in terms of contrast and boundaries. When we look at a piece of white copy paper, our cornea and lens project that image onto the back of our retina. \u201cWhat your brain responds to, what your retina responds to, are the retinal cells that lie across the edge of the paper in that image, where there\u2019s high contrast,\u201d says Gavornik. The brain effectively fills in the spaces between the edges to interpret the entire page as white. When we look at Staffin\u2019s image, our eye can\u2019t directly compare the color of the two small squares; it can only tell the brain about the color of each square relative to the color surrounding it.<\/p>\n

Color class is a favorite with students, not only because it\u2019s full of surprises, but because it elevates their craft. Tanner Gauvin (\u201918) says he\u2019s become \u201cmore experimental\u201d and \u201cmore knowledgeable of the colors that I\u2019m using\u2014picking and choosing when I really want to grab the viewer with a certain pairing of colors, and when I want the viewer to be relieved by a really subtle shift of colors.\u201d Dina Martinelli (\u201915,\u201916), an art teacher at Jaworek Elementary School in Marlborough, Massachusetts, says what she\u2019s learned about how dissimilar colors enhance each other has added stronger contrast and the illusion of depth to her collage work. And Staffin, a biology major who now studies graphic design, says she\u2019ll use her color knowledge to control what elements in an infographic stand out to the viewer first.<\/p>\n

Even Raiselis is still learning a thing or two. \u201cI think there are color relationships in my paintings that didn\u2019t exist [in my work] a couple of years ago,\u201d he says\u2014and although he\u2019s been teaching color for decades, it still gives him a thrill. \u201cTo see people\u2019s eyes open [to what color can do] is pretty exciting. For me it\u2019s magical, and there\u2019s always something we can learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more articles in Esprit<\/a>, the publication for alumni and friends of the Boston University College of Fine Arts. <\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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