Color Mastery in Two Steps
Two truths about (the biology of) vision and the importance of color grammar and visual literacy
We’ve all heard about ‘opening the doors of perception’ but what you likely don’t understand is how literal, at least in the realm of color perception, that concept is. We have 5 senses which determine our experience. The two essential things to know about visual perception are:
(1). Your eyes push contrast at edges to extremes beyond reality, and
(2). Brightness, or value, is processed in an entirely different part of our brain than color.
This post explains visual literacy, specifically color grammar, why that matters and how it applies to the rest of your experience of life.
TLDR; Visual literacy, like rules in math and grammar in language, is essential and objective. It’s essential because we are reading less and looking at visuals more. Color Grammar is objective because it’s based on science, it’s not artsy-fartsy “whatever you want it be”. The two keys to understanding and creating impactful visuals is learning to see the value of a hue and the degree to which vision pushes contrast (halation). These are the two keys to understanding the biology of vision and preparing yourself for a world requiring color grammar and visual literacy.
Make the sun vibrate like Monet? That‘s in step one. Create halation, so colors glow? Step two. But first you have to trust that I am speaking straight neuroscience and biology. I painted for years, intuitively grabbing colors off the shelf, and sometimes the combinations looked great, and other times, not so much. Now I get why, and you can as well. Mastery of color means you know the laws of color.
You see no sun when hue matches value
Recently I was asked for resources to “understand and feel color”, to not just “learn in a class or book, but dive in” to getting color.
Here was the question:
“Would you be open to suggesting some resources where I could dive in to color? Where I don’t just learn about it in some class or book, but can really start to understand it and feel it! I’m excited to start exploring this.”
My answer:
Where should we start?
To master anything, discern its essence to observable truths.
Can we reduce all of color mastery into two simple observations?
Let me offer two truths, two things, two essential elements, keys, methods, call them what you will, these are two testable things that explain how you see that you can prove or disprove for yourself right now.
To fully understand color perception know these:
(1). Halation
(2). The Value of Hue:
Step One
(1). Halation: *leveraged for harmony/glow: Enhanced contrast at the edge of adjacent colors creating an illusion of a halo spreading related color.
Our perception is hardwired to push the contrast at edges beyond what it actually is. The visual effect of halation is an illusion of a gradient within a solid color. Everything at the edges of contrast, like two sadjacent swatches is pushed to appear in greater contrast than it actually is. Our perception is hardwired to make things that are immediate, or touching, more extreme in their difference than they actually are. When this occurs among related colors, created in equal steps from the same two parents, as in an array of color, the halation is magnificent.
Step Two
(2). Value vs. Hue/Color:
*leveraged for vibration : Value (Same as “Brightness” and “Luminance”)
If you can trick the brain by matching the value of different hues, an object becomes invisible to the part of our brain that defines location.
The part of our brain that makes an object distinct, defines location of things and is, for example, responsible for catching a ball, is the part of our brain that sees value (brightness, AKA dark to light)… and is the same part of our brain that is active under moonlight. It’s in the cerebral cortex, one of the oldest parts of our brain in terms of evolution. Reptiles share this aspect of vision. AND it’s an entirely separate part of our wiring than how we see color.
Color and hue are experienced in the frontal lobes, evolved much later. This is no small matter, the insight of this distinction between value and hue has allowed artists to create the effect of vibration.
To clarify, the two essential truths to see are halation, where your eyes create an illusion of color spreading beyond where it actually exists and learning to see the value, or brightness, of a hue.
That’s it.
Most likely you are still attempting to understand what I am saying. It took me a few years being exposed to these concepts to really get it.
First, understand that we are talking about the truth of things:
(a). Objective truths, color grammar, visual literacy, the biology of how vision works — not some artsy-fartsy conceptual and subjective interpretation like “it’s whatever you want it to be”, not at all, AND
(b). Color is relative, always. We are talking about color in relationship, because appearance is always based on context. Always. You cannot escape the hard wiring of your perceptive system.
Accept that…
And/Or just perceive what’s obvious and in front of you.
This is not some artsy-fartsy conceptual and subjective interpretation like “it’s whatever you want it to be”
Now we have to get into definitions, the three dimensions of color:
Hue, Saturation (Chroma) and Value (Brightness,Luminance).
Saturation
Saturation is also called chroma. Think of it as the richness of a color. When you think of a kid’s room full of primary colored toys, those are fully saturated.
Saturation can clearly impact the value of a color, but to explain this critical point about color perception, we are going to stick to comparing hue and value (brightness) because this is a stunning and relatively unknown aspect of how we see.
So let’s get into the second and third dimension of color. Hue and Value.
Hue
“Hue” is where we are on the color wheel. Hue is often thought of as color but a hue is a hue regardless of value and saturation:
Value=Brightness
The term “value” is synonymous to “brightness” and “luminance”. Value is the intensity, lightness to darkness, in the most obvious case, value is most thought of as a range of white to black.
We can see value in color as well, for example pure yellow is lighter than black obviously, but it’s also lighter than pure blue:
What we are reaching towards, is this explanation of how our eyes and brain process and interpret hue vs. value in entirely different systems, and most importantly how understanding this is essential to knowing color grammar and visual literacy.
If we look at pure yellow vs. pure magenta, we can agree the magenta is darker than the yellow.
And if we flip the color array, and then lighten the magenta, making it more of a light pink, and darken the yellow, we now have a darker yellow than magenta.
We can do the same thing by lightening blue, below the blue is lighter than the dark yellow.
So why does this matter? Because hue is processed in our frontal lobes, it’s an entirely different part of our perceptive system than the part that sees value.
Take a circle, like Monet did the sun, and match its value to the value of the hue surrounding it, like Monet’s blue/purple sky and what happens is stunning: the object, the sun, disappears.
In luminance perception:
colors with the same brightness vibrate and/or disappear. Learn to see the value of hue — such that you can predict if it’s indistinct in a black and white photo — and you master your brain, as you master color.
There is nothing you can do to override the hard wiring of your perception.
Take halation, where you push edges of color fields beyond the existing contrast. Despite knowing the gradient is an illusion, you can’t help but see it.
Art is subjective in so many ways, of course, but there are elements of color in relationship that have predictable and determined outcomes. Color is rarely if ever what it appears to be. Vision, like the rest of our perceptive system is dynamic.
We are analog, not digital, creatures. There are laws of color and that’s a good thing because that means it can be learned. Math has rules, language has grammar, and so does color.
While I’m putting forth these two concepts to aid your understanding of color grammar and visual literacy, I can’t claim that these are the only two required truths, these are just the two tools that I believe work and are complete. Everything I share are concepts that are apparent to your eyes, that you can prove or disprove for yourself, based on your experience. I strongly advise you do your own research.
For example, a core experiential aspect of your perception is “after image”. Vision is analog not digital. The longer you look at an image, the deeper in burns in your retina. For more on this, check out the incredible insights provided by this post on Complementary Colors. Know that true color exists only in our minds as color is always dependent on context.
Local color exists only in our minds
Despite the dynamic essence of color, that it changes based on (1). surrounding colors (2). lighting of your environment (your monitor/screen or indoor/outdoor lighting) and (3). the dimension of time, or after image, these only further to strengthen the importance of the laws of color, the grammar of color and the impact of visual literacy.
As kids in school these days, it being 2018, are less and less learning cursive, less compelled to learn language grammar because language has less and less potency. It’s astonishing the degree that we are illiterate in visual literacy and color grammar. Understanding these two rules is more essential now than ever before. Hue has value, and halation reveals the biologically exaggerated contrast of our vision.
I’ve been pushing the importance of visual literacy and color grammar for some time now.
What does it mean to be a color master? Most of us dismiss color as subjective, if not happenstance. That is not the case. Designers and artists have monopolized color for too long. You can master color because there are organic truths that make it teachable. It’s in front of your eyes right now. These observations are based on science— the hard-wiring of our biology. Most importantly, it relies on your own personal, diligent, pursuit of the truth of things.
Further reading and resources:
Color Master Dick Nelson who advanced the Joseph Albers’ color course
Abstract Art Explained
Huedoku Brain Zone
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