All Things Painter A Taste of Color by John Derry

During my high school years, I spent a lot of time in the art room. One day, Mike, a fellow art student, became interested in the various tubes of paint gathered on a table. He wanted to know what color tasted like. Being the adventurous sort, he sampled a bit of yellow. Mike promptly reported that yellow tasted terrible. For most folks, the story would have ended there, but not so with Mike. He proceeded to taste each and every color.

The Colors palette in Corel® Painter™ contains more than 16 million colors. How do you pick just the right color to express an emotion or an idea? Does someone looking at my finished image perceive the colors in the same manner as I do? Does anyone, for that matter?

Color is a major component of our visual world. Artists have long used color to express emotion, interpret the world around us, organize and clarify visual communications, and much more. The perception of color, however, is highly subjective and unique to each of us.

The 20th-century artist and teacher Josef Albers demonstrated the deceptive nature of color through a class exercise. Albers presented his students with dozens of color swatches–each a different shade of red. He then asked each student to use his or her color memory and pick the swatch matching Coca-Cola® red, the color used exclusively in conjunction with all things Coke® throughout the world. The number of swatches selected was usually the same as the number of students in the class. Often, no one picked the actual swatch representing Coca-Cola red. The lesson learned? Each of us perceives color uniquely.

Does the deceptive nature of color mean that we cannot reliably use it to communicate our emotions and intent to others? Not at all. What it indicates is that color–like music–is subject to individual interpretation. Each of us is certain to interpret a piece of music through the prism of our own biases. Color expresses meaning through two principal mechanisms: association and symbolism.

Many colors have an emotional weight that can be traced to associations in nature. A blue sky elicits peace and calm; the red of fire suggests energy and aggression. The emotions experienced in conjunction with a particular color found in nature have become associated with its use in artistic expression.

Color also acquires symbolic meaning through cultural contexts. For example, in Western culture, green is associated with growth and freshness. Green has also acquired the additional cultural meanings of luck, money, and envy. In China, studies have shown that green is not a good color for use in packaging. The Chinese traditionally associate a green hat to symbolize that a man's wife is cheating on him.

A color can also be deceptive. Depending on the colors that surround it, a single color sample may appear as two separate colors. Conversely, two colors can be made to appear as the same color, again based on the colors surrounding the samples. To demonstrate this phenomenon, Albers used the sense of touch.

Three containers of water were set on a table. From left to right, the containers held warm, lukewarm, and cool water. Students would place their left hand in the warm water and their right hand in the cool water. They would experience the sensation of warm on the left hand and cool on the right. Then they would place both hands in the middle container of lukewarm water. Now the sensations were reversed. The left hand feels cool; the right hand feels warm. The water, however, is neither warm nor cool–it is lukewarm!

Understanding how color, with its associations and symbolism, can produce surprising responses is a powerful tool that can expand your visual vocabulary. The dynamic environment of Corel Painter is perfect for experimenting with color. I also highly recommend Josef Albers's color guide and teaching aid, Interaction of Color, as an excellent resource for learning more about this fascinating subject.

What was the result of my friend Mike's color experiment, you ask? All the colors tasted terrible.

John Derry
Somewhere in Kansas

John Derry is a pioneer of digital painting and one of the original authors of Corel® Painter™. Since 1985, he has leveraged his background in drawing and painting to advance the look and experience of traditional art-making tools on the computer. John has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Fine Art and is a practicing artist and photographer. He teaches Corel Painter workshops around the country and is currently serving as Corel's Painter Ambassador-at-Large. John's Web site is at www.pixlart.com.