Colors

I was hoping that someone would cover color theory and how ubiquitous the optical illusion it is in art!

First, great choice of introductory example. It's a fantastic example of how the optical illusion manifests in the everyday and how our brains tune it out.

This set of illusions is incredibly applicable to media synthesis--some people might say that it's a cornerstone of art--so I'm glad that you've covered the illusion in multiple environments. There are plenty of examples and tutorials out on the internet that demonstrate how relative colors affects composition and how viewers perceive the contrast.

I had saved a tutorial from years back that was my first insight into higher-level artistic techniques, and this image in particular is relevant to the topic you covered. I don't feel like I need to add more than what you have already covered, but hey. Here you go.

I've seen some of the examples you showed before reading this and I knew that color illusions existed I guess, but I never bothered to look into why. It's interesting though that the background has so much affect on what "color" a color looks like. I wouldn't have thought of this phenomenon as an 'illusion' but now I definitely see why. Color theory is definitely an interesting subject. Definitely didn't realize how much work a painter has to do or how much work the coloring of a piece of art actually is.
Have you ever heard of color psychology? My guess is that you have, but if you haven't, I feel that it's an interesting topic too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_psychology

Also, just wondering, but why do you switch between "colour" and "color"?

One last thing: #blackandblue

That coloring tutorial looks incredibly familiar.. I wonder if I've seen it somewhere before? It's totally on point, and it feels strange to still be learning such basic things about vision and colour considering just how much vision contributes to .. well, everything in my life.

I've taken a few psychology classes, and we did read up on how colour and perception affects human behaviour, but I can't say I went out of my way to search it up, since I felt that so much of it was intuitive. But in some sense I might have underestimated the level of individuality in color associations in different people. After all, people's favourite colours seem to vary a great amount, and sometimes they like a colour for the same reason, even though the colours themselves are completely different. (I can understand why blue and green is calming, but sometimes I also think of them is electrifying or pulsing. The result is that I tend to go for black as a more soothing colour... but it tends to have "darker" connotations for other people. heh.)

Ah. About that spelling colour/color thing. I'm from Singapore, tiny Asian island and ex-British colony (like many others). So, I was educated in the Queen's English. I did always feel like the z was underutiliZed though, so I had a bit of fondness for American English. But I prefer the more wholesome, cushioned mental acoustics of padding words with effectively silent consonants like the "u" in colour like some kind of toned-down French impracticality. Needless to say my personal written patois did not impress teachers who were of a more academic and therefore often grammatically inflexible breed. So I had to acquaint myself with switching rapidly back and forth between the two styles. Hence mah all-ova-da-place style and self-expression in writing (and often also speech).

That dress fiasco was so silly. It had people arguing about something inherently subjective even after everyone learned the reason behind the differing perceptions. However, it is a good topical example of your chosen topic. The example with the gray tiles in the shadow still gets to me after so many years of knowing that they are the same color. I still have to put my hands over the screen to see them as such. I like how you tied the illusion into works that don't necessarily want an illusion to occur.

I never really understood the dress phenomenon until now. This was really enlightening. I really liked the examples that you chose. It was really surprising to know that the "vibrant red" hair the girl had was actually a murky brown especially because it seemed to shine in the painting. I guess I can say I understand the phrase "that really brings out your eyes." It's all about what colors make other colors stand out. This was a really great analysis - I liked that the artworks weren't necessarily trying to cause an illusion, but color theory just somehow works that way. Great job!

I like how you weaved together the dress example, color theory and illusion, and then finally an artist's technique to bring out their "true colors" in their pieces. I never knew what it took for artists to choose the right color and how they had to implement it! In addition, I also never took the time to understand the color theory behind the dress example, but you explained it in a clear and concise way.

Also, I found that this example was very related to your research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvgOOKBvyQU