Advice on approaching Value studies.

[kev ferrara]

Bill618, I'm not talking about the 3 channel collection method. That is generally the same pan-humanoid, unless there is a disability. Of course, we being organic beings will have variations in every organ, in every array of cells, in every bundle of neurons. And no, "how that info is subjectively dealt with after leaving the primary visual cortex" is NOT solely up to the frontal lobe. Because knowing colors is a form of language, and being able to distinguish one color from another is no different than learning to differ obsidian and black onyx, or the shades of meaning difference between poignant and tender. It all becomes structure. Either way, if you acknowledge differences between subjectivity, then you already agree with my argument.

Briggsy,

You're conflating matters/arguments. Obviously the relationship between lightness and chroma matters, and is widely known. But it requires no great knowledge of colorspaces to learn. It is literally the first baby step to learning about color. As soon as you get your first set of colors, you find out that the full strength of your red is the reddest red you will get. And adding white or black to change its value will dull it down.

The matter of software glitches is merely a technical problem. But good that you answered it. And sorry if it seemed I was discouraging the answering of such questions.

Of course Science wants to know the true extent of color space... if there was such a thing. It is no different than wanting to know where the colors fall in the EM spectrum. Why else all the attempts to make the best model of color space for lo these many centuries. This goes beyond the use of color spaces in art or for regulating global printing standards or for computing. (Yes, different color spaces developed over the years for technical or business reasons spaces different uses, but if you use photoshop to make art, most of them never come into play.) That color and value turn out to have differing mechanisms for interpretation in the brain, and that normal human color perception has typical organic variation are recent realizations comparatively, which have only served to confirm the problem of "true" color space as intractably subjective.

For science to say that if you want to create a painting with the vivid effect of a particular lighting and atmosphere, this is how you can build in the mathematical relationships that will do so - is not.

Show me how you've done this in your work. Let's see it. I mean really, you are sweet on the science of color, no doubt, good on software, but you are so clueless about art that it boggles the mind.

And incidentally, the program you are using to map color gamuts is not professional quality. You may be encountering some problems with your interpretations because of this. Try ColorThink instead. The interface is much more useful and the processing algorithms are more powerful. Its a program I use constantly and is much better for visualizing gamuts and color notes floating in color space. Although it too, limits how many points it can plot per image, though not as severely as the program you are using. The workaround is to cut any particular image up and load in the pieces as individual images and create a compiled gamut of all the gamuts of all the images.

[bill618]

Kev--You obviously don’t know what the functions of the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex are. Hint for one of them; language.
Try developing a visual language that can carry over to 2d pictorial art with a frontal lobotomy.

I do agree with you, very loosely, but disagree with the ‘weedy’ explanation of ‘color space’ in your previous posts. That's why I responded in the first place. That’s the problem (and virtue of concilient thinking) with us artists, we tend to communicate our experiences without consensus terminology. I just read an article last month on this issue on Journal of Vision where someone discussed the unreliability of info from visual artist test subjects when they were asked to describe their creative process.
In other words, I thought I new what you were talking about, but wasn’t sure of where you going with your particular use of ‘color space’.

I’ll be gone for a while, so I won’t be able to return a quick reply to your next inevitable response.

[kev ferrara]

Bill,

Here's the inevitable response you inevitably prompted with your previously inevitable post...

So,

You're an intelligent guy, but I think you're overusing your analytical abilities here to zero down on individual sentences and I'm pretty sure you're missing the total point I'm making (which justifies the sentences you are questioning); While the "words" of language reside in certain regions, there are many more aspects to language. The problem is a cybernetic one. It is ultimately not an analytic one. Language, thought, emotion, intuition, and experience are all bundled up... In life as in art! But not as in these ideal scenarios set up in a lab to isolate a single brain region undergoing controlled stimuli with no emotional stake. (And even then, there is arguments galore about each experimental result and boatloads of ongoing research.)

I think you must get my meaning by now. I'm running in and out IRL, so maybe I just haven't been as clear in my language as is necessary on such a complex topic. My apologies if that's the case.

So, let's do an experiment. A simple thought experiment. At some point, go outside and find a mustard colored object in the shade of a building or tree. Analyze the strongest mustardy color on the object to the best of your abilities, taking care to note how the sky color is affecting the mustardy-ness. And then close your eyes and try to recollect that colortone precisely, then situate it in your mind with respect to a black/grey/white value axis in whatever working model of colorspace you have in your mind. Try to get the color exactly in your mind, noting some surrounding near neighbors in your visualization and maybe some hue axis to properly situate the note you are recalling. Then open your eyes and look at the source of the mustard color again and see if your inner vision matches what you are seeing. If it is exact, did you feel it was exactly matching right away? If it didn't exactly match, did you feel that it wasn't a match? How much analysis did it take to discover whether your inner vision matched up with the outer phenomena? Once you get the mustardy colored swatch in your mind to correllate as much as possible with the mustardy colored object, then go find a similar color somewhere else. Note how, if you happen to see another mustard colored object out of the corner of your eye, the color sorta jumps to your attention as you are scanning.

Now, run back through at all those mental processes you've just taken (interest, perception, analysis, sudden intuition, snap judgements, willpower, satisfaction, etc.) and figure out what brain regions all that necessarily went through.

These experiments have not been done in the lab yet. Because they can't be done in the lab. Labs can't replicate life. The lab is where analysis happens. But in order to understand something there must be synthesis. Which only happens upon reflection, if we're lucky.

This graph is clearer than what I have said with respect to the problems of over-reliance on analysis:
http://peterthomas.files.wordpress.c...to-wisdom1.jpg

Best wishes, inevitably,
kev

[s.ketch]

Wisdom is a function of connectedness and understanding. y=x.

[kev ferrara]

y=x.

hmmm...

I don't think that model means to indicate that the movement from data collection to wisdom is a perfectly straight vector at 45º. I would think one's state of wisdom about any particular topic can be anywhere in the quadrant. (Or in another quadrant entirely if everything you know about a topic is nonsense.)

Although, with a bit of reflection, I'm wondering whether it is possible to decouple understanding and connectedness... whether they are in fact the same thing.

Either way, the graph is not science, but pop philosophy. So we shouldn't take it literally.

[Black Spot]

Okay, I'm going to sound crass here, but I seriously don't understand people who can't memorise a colour. I used to be able to match a thread for sewing without having to take the material with me.


But this thread is about value, not colour picking etc. Draw more, come to mind.

[JeffX99]

Oh hey! New nicknames! Yay!

Rather than any lengthy response I'll just say if people find that in-depth, technical minutiae about color picking and color spaces of value in their art that is great - that is why we're here after all. Personally I don't but that's just me. In the attempt to back up my opinion I simply cite contemporary and historical artists whose primary message in their teachig is "Keep it simple...respond to nature...say something worthy." In the circles of my experience from concept art to graphic design to gallery fine art (peers, mentors and study of artists I admire) this kind of focus on the trivial would be considered absurd. That's all I've been trying to say. At the same time, if the approach to color advocated by briggsy is something that gets you going I can't argue with that.

Art is not a one-dmensional thing (no pun intended)...it isn't about the "right way to do something"...and it certainly isn't about absolutes. So yeah, when someone tells me I offer advice "some of which is 180 degrees in the wrong direction" or that I have "unusual theories about art" it doesn't sit well. Not so much because of personal ego but because it is a very narrow view and it is dismissive and insulting of the artists who have inspired and mentored me over the years. And by the way, I never mind if people disagree with my take on things, I simply ask that they back it up and try to maintain a level of professional courtesy. [Edit: case in point - Tim challenged my opinion that those charts have nothing to do with art. I explained my point of view - Tim responded professionally and backed up his experiences well. My eyes opened a little and I was reminded people learn and and process in different ways. That is the kind of discussio I appreciate.]

So, longer response than anticipated, just wanted to clear the air. Wishing all Happy Holidays (of whatever flavor) and a great new creative and enlightening Year in Art! Keep open minds and may your personal journey in art take you where you want to go!

[Chronos]

Theres an irony in learning all the technical babble about art, atleast for me anyway. The more I learn about it, the less I feel I need it.

[s.ketch]

The reason why I started down this line of posts was because I can't see any reason why something that's dedicated to finding truth, simultaneously has no right answers or right way to do something. It seems right-out contradictory. Even if it's a different kind of truth than science and more akin to ethical or moral truth. This seems more like the philosophy of specific artists rather than that of art in general. Of course, this is more meta than the act of creating things through pigment or computers. The point of this thread was the latter so I do apologize. Merry Christmas.

[bill618]

Kev--I see I should have reworded the tail end of my last post.

Language, thought, emotion, intuition, and experience are all bundled up... In life as in art!

I’m in total agreement here, and have been since a young teen artist in the 70s. I’m to “left-handed” with a mild case of Synesthesia, besides being an artist, not to be aware of this through intuition, let alone direct study. The disconnect is with head butting over nuance details, e.g. the frontal lobe thing. You'd be grossly mistaken to assume that I’m too analytical across the board. When it comes to art, I check the geek at the door and ride that horse of tacit artistic sensibility, into the sunset.

I like the thought experiment you put forth. Irony made me grin. When I'm out in a natural setting I am always viewing the landscape thinking about oil color equivalents (though not by visualizing some 3d Munsell model) and imagining painting the scene in oil. I guess I better dust off the ‘real’ brushes and give the Wacom pen a rest.

Best wishes, invariably,

Bill

[kev ferrara]

Bill,

No, I wasn't implying that you were over analytical in general. But we all have our areas of learning which we haven't really challenged enough.

You should definitely try visualizing colors within a color space in your imagination. Being able to fly through a color space in your mind is very useful, I find, for learning the language of color. I'm still learning to imagine all the colors at will, but the whole matter is coming along. And being able to previz colors most certainly is helping my painting.

On the head butting over factoids, there's so many papers I've read over the years in neurobio that go into this, but they're named stuff like 19285039.pdf on my computer so going through them would be endless. So I had to try to quickly google for them. I think the most recent "important" study that gives us a clue to the issue is from March of this year:

Metaphorically feeling: comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex. Lead author: Lacey

Conceptual metaphor theory suggests that knowledge is structured around metaphorical mappings derived from physical experience. Segregated processing of object properties in sensory cortex allows testing of the hypothesis that metaphor processing recruits activity in domain-specific sensory cortex. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we show that texture-selective somatosensory cortex in the parietal operculum is activated when processing sentences containing textural metaphors, compared to literal sentences matched for meaning. This finding supports the idea that comprehension of metaphors is perceptually grounded.

Now if you think about how visual metaphors must be processed, you see just how fluid the idea of language is. It seems that art is a language that falls in between text-based language and pure unconscious emotion. Yet it is a language nonetheless. Again, science isn't really up to speed on just these questions, so we have to reason about them in order not to be caught in fallacies of induction, (where we take what data has been collected and assume it to be complete enough to form judgments.)

The reason why I started down this line of posts was because I can't see any reason why something that's dedicated to finding truth, simultaneously has no right answers or right way to do something. It seems right-out contradictory. Even if it's a different kind of truth than science and more akin to ethical or moral truth. This seems more like the philosophy of specific artists rather than that of art in general. Of course, this is more meta than the act of creating things through pigment or computers. The point of this thread was the latter so I do apologize. Merry Christmas.

s.ketch,

The contradiction comes from the way you are wording the question, only. Art that is interested in truth, seeks to present truth. If it presents the truth it means to in an effective manner, the artwork has been done correctly enough. Just like anything that functions as a table is a table enough.

There is no reason to assert that art’s truths are akin to ethical or moral truths. Except insofar as telling any truth might be considered a moral act, (and that, for an artist, truth-telling is an ethic.)

The truths that art can aspire to present can be anything at all, so long as the concept transcends the facts and corresponds to experience for the viewer. The feeling of a rainy day is a truth just as justified as making you feel the inertness of a lonely man, or getting across the grueling strain of hard labor, or the cruelty of unrequited love. Such sensual expressions are at a higher level of generality than facts and are of a different type of abstraction than; energy releasable from a mass equaling the mass of an object times the speed of light squared.

[briggsy@ashtons]

you are so clueless about art that it boggles the mind.

Kev, you have a record of descending into personal abuse when you get into a corner, so I'll exit the conversation here. This particular insult is entirely gratuitous anyway, since to defend the statement you quoted it is only necessary to show that particular colour relationships have a particular visual effects. There are plenty of examples already on the site, and more coming. You agree that it is useful in painting to visualize colours in terms of hue, value and chroma, and you have agreed that understanding different digital color spaces (if that's what you mean by "software glitches") is useful information, if "merely technical"; I don't recall anyone saying they are all there is to art. You are mistaken about some of the technical points you raised, but I won't waste time arguing over those. I see your own recent figure paintings have become very nice indeed, so congrats on those.

[kev ferrara]

From Briggsy's imaginary corner...

Dear sir,

If I make an assertion about a topic around a group that has some expertise in that topic, and I am called clueless, I ask why. One never knows when one might learn something.

Yes, it is quite obvious that certain color relationships have certain effects. Apparently it is less obvious to you that all color relationships have some effect. All value relationships have effects too. So does every edge relationship, every shape relationship, every line relationship, every location relationship, every relationship of scale or measure, texture, pattern, distance, depth, saturation... in fact every graphic relationship in an artwork is part of an effect.

That would be an infinite number of effects, if you're counting.

(pause for refreshment)

The issue is not what are the effects, the issue is what idea are you trying to convey? If you know what you are trying to convey, your experience and your imagination and your knowledge will lead you toward the graphic solutions that resembles your vision. Provided you have an imagination, a visual memory, can draw, know how to use reference, and understand how compositions work.

Now there are classes of effects that one can be made aware of. But there is no scientific formula for how to produce them at whim. Mainly because the effect must be in harmony with the picture for the effect to be believable. And the possibilities for pictures is, again, infinite. This prevents any formula for an effect from being anything more than a quick hack method to attract eyeballs.

Unless, maybe you plan to develop a formula for every kind of sunny day for every kind of sunny picture? Every kind of hazy day? Because I've seen a thousand different sunny day images and a thousand different hazy day images. Are you going to develop a formula for sad color and happy color? A thousand different ones of each of those I've seen too.

Or are you going to find a formula that creates one single kind of effect and tell people, that's the way you make sunshine for every picture you ever want to make? (This is the equivalent of learning manga symbols for hair, in my estimation.)

Hey, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't mind being called clueless, provided I learn something afterward.

P.S. There is every possibility that your use of the word "science" is too broad and I'm reacting to that negatively. And equally that you haven't sufficiently educated yourself in the field of expression to a point where you can adequately discourse on the two terms of art you are using; relation and effect.

[s.ketch]

Mainly because the effect must be in harmony with the picture for the effect to be believable.

You just narrowed it down from infinite. If a certain effect only works with certain others, then the set of possibilities is reduced. Once an effect is down on canvas, you either select with replacement or without. Then the size of the set of possible effects changes. Even if the effects themselves aren't susceptible to analysis, your decisions are. Adding effects is just adding another number in a lottery drawing or another marble in a sack.

Unless, maybe you plan to develop a formula for every kind of sunny day for every kind of sunny picture? Every kind of hazy day? Because I've seen a thousand different sunny day images and a thousand different hazy day images. Are you going to develop a formula for sad color and happy color? A thousand different ones of each of those I've seen too.

Could you recognize a sunny day picture from a hazy day picture? If we took all the colors off the canvas and put them on a palette, could you decide which was which?

[dpaint]

You just narrowed it down from infinite. If a certain effect only works with certain others, then the set of possibilities is reduced. Once an effect is down on canvas, you either select with replacement or without. Then the size of the set of possible effects changes. Even if the effects themselves aren't susceptible to analysis, your decisions are. Adding effects is just adding another number in a lottery drawing or another marble in a sack.

No, the solution is always infinite. If you sat Chase, Sargent, Rembrandt, Manet, Gerome, Bargue, et al down and had them paint from the live model all would be brilliant paintings that capture the models personality as well as the mood of the artist at the time they make the painting.


[/QUOTE]Could you recognize a sunny day picture from a hazy day picture? If we took all the colors off the canvas and put them on a palette, could you decide which was which?[/QUOTE]

No, you couldn't, because again the quality of the elements and angle of the view in relation to the scene depicted is infinite. And so would the solutions to paint it. Sunlight is not a single color, neither is overcast light.

[kev ferrara]

If a certain effect only works with certain others, then the set of possibilities is reduced

That's not what I said. This is what I said:

Mainly because the effect must be in harmony with the picture for the effect to be believable. And the possibilities for pictures is, again, infinite.

Since the picture can be anything, its possibilities infinite... and the effect must marry to the picture in order to be believable... Therefore, the effect must be adaptable to an infinity of pictorial solutions.

You know, just check out Armand's websites and just look at how many different days he's painted. Its a longstanding saying in art that no two days are the same.

[Great Distance]

From Briggsy's imaginary corner...

Dear sir,

If I make an assertion about a topic around a group that has some expertise in that topic, and I am called clueless, I ask why. One never knows when one might learn something.

Yes, it is quite obvious that certain color relationships have certain effects. Apparently it is less obvious to you that all color relationships have some effect. All value relationships have effects too. So does every edge relationship, every shape relationship, every line relationship, every location relationship, every relationship of scale or measure, texture, pattern, distance, depth, saturation... in fact every graphic relationship in an artwork is part of an effect.

That would be an infinite number of effects, if you're counting.

(pause for refreshment)

The issue is not what are the effects, the issue is what idea are you trying to convey? If you know what you are trying to convey, your experience and your imagination and your knowledge will lead you toward the graphic solutions that resembles your vision. Provided you have an imagination, a visual memory, can draw, know how to use reference, and understand how compositions work.

Now there are classes of effects that one can be made aware of. But there is no scientific formula for how to produce them at whim. Mainly because the effect must be in harmony with the picture for the effect to be believable. And the possibilities for pictures is, again, infinite. This prevents any formula for an effect from being anything more than a quick hack method to attract eyeballs.

Unless, maybe you plan to develop a formula for every kind of sunny day for every kind of sunny picture? Every kind of hazy day? Because I've seen a thousand different sunny day images and a thousand different hazy day images. Are you going to develop a formula for sad color and happy color? A thousand different ones of each of those I've seen too.

Or are you going to find a formula that creates one single kind of effect and tell people, that's the way you make sunshine for every picture you ever want to make? (This is the equivalent of learning manga symbols for hair, in my estimation.)

Hey, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't mind being called clueless, provided I learn something afterward.

P.S. There is every possibility that your use of the word "science" is too broad and I'm reacting to that negatively. And equally that you haven't sufficiently educated yourself in the field of expression to a point where you can adequately discourse on the two terms of art you are using; relation and effect.

Okay, I believe briggsy here was talking about the techniques that are available to create visual art. You are talking about the meaning of the visual art. Yes, the meaning and the idea are all important, but if you don't know any techniques on how to make that idea visible to other people, it's all meaningless. And yes, one of those tools, techniques, whatever you like to call them, is a better understanding of color relationships. And yes, everything else you mentioned, edge relationships, line relationships, is a part of the toolset, too.

Just because we're discussing a very small aspect of art it doesn't mean that we are dismissing all the other aspects. It is just terribly impractical to cover everything while going into enough detail on one thing to make any discussion of it at all.

Honestly I don't see what you're arguing about here. You're both right, as far as I can see, nothing you say negates the things the other is saying. And vice versa. Just go home and enjoy the holidays.

[briggsy@ashtons]

Just go home and enjoy the holidays.

Already gone!

[bill618]

You should definitely try visualizing colors within a color space in your imagination. Being able to fly through a color space in your mind is very useful, I find, for learning the language of color. I'm still learning to imagine all the colors at will, but the whole matter is coming along. And being able to previz colors most certainly is helping my painting.

My approach to color visualization/identification is holistic. I do not need a 3 dimensional color model spinning around a grayscale axis in my head to ‘see’ hues in all of their tint and tone incarnations, and I personally hope you don’t either. Yes, learning is a life long process and life is a perpetual work in progress, and so goes my personal relationship with color (almost sounds religious). I have a solid and evolving understanding of color (gleaned through experience and study) and its isolated characteristics as well as its relative contextual characteristics in relation to surrounding color and light source temperature/type and intensity, also including its metameric failure and psychological effectiveness, etc., etc. I view all of this holistically, instead of via a 3d visual contraption twittering around a value axis in my nugget.
My holistic system of color identification works well for me. You can can call it, by defult of personal preference, a “color space” if you like.

PS--As a digital artist, and artist in general, I am quite familiar with color space(s).

[kev ferrara]

My approach to color visualization/identification is holistic. I do not need a 3 dimensional color model spinning around a grayscale axis in my head to ‘see’ hues in all of their tint and tone incarnations, and I personally hope you don’t either.

The issue is not about visualizing particular notes, but their relationships within and to the gamut of the picture. This comes into play when imagining a complex of lighting in the context of a realistic picture with a particular atmosphere and mood. The mental model can be fluid, it need not be a contraption. I see you mostly create technical illustrations, (nice ones too) so this may not matter in the ordinary course of your business, so maybe I shouldn't have bothered to suggest it.

[bill618]

Kev--thanks, but tech illustrations aren’t part of the focus at my end either. We are, actually, talking about the same thing here, in the same frame of contextual reference, minus imaginary contraptions. Nonetheless, the conversation is interesting.

[JeffX99]

The reason why I started down this line of posts was because I can't see any reason why something that's dedicated to finding truth, simultaneously has no right answers or right way to do something. It seems right-out contradictory. Even if it's a different kind of truth than science and more akin to ethical or moral truth. This seems more like the philosophy of specific artists rather than that of art in general. Of course, this is more meta than the act of creating things through pigment or computers. The point of this thread was the latter so I do apologize. Merry Christmas.

I'm not sure I follow...what is the something that is "dedicated to finding truth"? I'm guessing you mean "art" in this context (correct me if I'm wrong)? In any case I'll base my response on that assumption.

"Art" is about personal truth and personal expression...it can't be about any absolute truth in either a philosphical or scientific sense. This means there are indeed no right answers or right ways to do things. Don't get me wrong, I definitely believe there arebetter ways to do things, particularly when it comes to learning. However these "better ways" are entirely dependent on what your goals are, your personality and what kind of statement you want to make - so again they become personal and not absolute.

Again the analogy of music is applicable...there is definitley a solid understanding of learing methods when it comes to the various instruments and styles of music..."better ways" if you will. Every musician however finds their own truth through their music and their own expression. In other words there is no "musical truth" or absolute music, any more than there is an "art truth".

I'm not sure that answered your question? I hope it shed a bit of light on the conundrum. BTW...I don't see any need to apologize? Have a great New Year yourself!

[bill618]

On artistic truth.

One truth that embodies a work of art, and often goes unseen by audience as well as artist, is in the genuineness or integrity of intent of the artist. Pure intention on the part of an artist is easily muddied by the countercurrent undertow of ulterior motivation. A work of art is a body of evidence.

[JeffX99]

On artistic truth.

One truth that embodies a work a art, and often goes unseen by audience as well as artist, is in the genuineness or integrity of intent of the artist. Pure intention on the part of an artist is easily muddied by the countercurrent undertow of ulterior motivation. A work of art is a body of evidence.

That would be about the only absolute! Well said Bill.

[s.ketch]

Thank you guys for being patient and taking the time to respond. The subject requires more thought on my part.

A work of art is a body of evidence.

That's a sharp line.

[dose]

(Sorry-late to the game here. I typed most of this out a couple days ago but haven't had a chance to finish it up and post until just now. There have been a decent number of posts since then, but I'll go ahead and post this anyway because, hey, I already typed it up)

Rather than any lengthy response I'll just say if people find that in-depth, technical minutiae about color picking and color spaces of value in their art that is great - that is why we're here after all. Personally I don't but that's just me. In the attempt to back up my opinion I simply cite contemporary and historical artists whose primary message in their teachig is "Keep it simple...respond to nature...say something worthy." In the circles of my experience from concept art to graphic design to gallery fine art (peers, mentors and study of artists I admire) this kind of focus on the trivial would be considered absurd. That's all I've been trying to say. At the same time, if the approach to color advocated by briggsy is something that gets you going I can't argue with that.

I hear you Jeff, and thanks for this response. I guess I'm coming at it from another angle--I don't really view this as technical minutiae--it's just knowledge. And knowledge is ultimately just a tool, to be used when appropriate and not used when it isn't appropriate. I don't think anyone is advocating to always use Lab or HSB or whatever. Just: here's another way to look at color that doesn't have the same pitfalls. To me, it's effectively like arguing for or against the metric system--in the end all that matters is that you get something to the right size and shape and it doesn't matter if you used imperial or metric measurements . But you could also say that the metric system does have a lot of advantages over the imperial system if you're going to use a measurement system--which is not to say that imperial isn't useful or worthwhile. Heck--even imperial has some advantages in certain situations. IMO, all that's happened in this thread is that some people pointed out some problems with the imperial system, and explained that there are other systems that don't exhibit these same problems. That isn't technical minutiae to me. Technical minutiae would be going into the physical basis of the metric system (based on sizes of atoms and whatnot). While that's interesting to me personally, I completely agree that the science behind a measurement system or any color space is not important for art, just how to use the information practically.


I remember being baffled at all sorts of things about how light behaves throughout my artistic career--even as far back as the basics of shading. Despite my lack of knowledge at certain points I was able to paint some decent pictures--a few I might go so far as to say they were good paintings (nothing great yet, though!). So I can understand your points about that and actually agree completely about the supreme importance of good observation. But I can also tell you that learning the following made my life a lot simpler, and in some cases my ability to create decent or maybe even good paintings:

• The basic rules of light falling on a form
• How perspective relates to light falling on a form
• The difference between specular and diffuse reflection and how to spot it on a form
• The difference between brightness and lightness
• How to compress values in a scene with a wide range of brightness into the limited range of brightness/lightness available in paint or on the monitor
• What a color gamut is and how to translate one into another
• How the rays in a diffuse light source behave
• That a blue sky functions as a light source that illuminates shadowed areas diffusely on a sunny day
• How to break down complex forms in perspective in several different ways
• What spatial frequency is and how it relates to painting
• That mixing complementary paints create "grays"
• That mixing complementary paints don't usually create true neutrals
• How to think of mixing paint within a 3D color space
• That adding white or black paint to another color shifts the hue and chroma along with the value
• That paints don't mix together in straight lines in any color space
• That perceived color of a paint only suggests how it will mix with another color, but does not dictate exactly how
• That transparent colors can achieve higher chromas in some situations than opaque paints
• That scumbling colors has a cooling effect in some situations
• That decreasing brightness in HSB corresponds to the way color will behave as a form turns at a very basic level
• That two colors of equal brightness in HSB don't necessarily appear the same value to the human eye
• That two colors with equal L from Lab will appear very close to the same value to the human eye
• That hue in Lab/LCH is inconsistent as value changes
• That a and b from Lab correspond to opponent primaries
• What additive averaging mixing is and how it relates to things like pointillism, broken color, and when it occurs in nature
• and more!

All of these are in a similar sort of class. I've either used each of those items to advantage in an actual painting or had trouble in one because I wasn't aware of it and things were not coming out how I expected or wanted. They're all sorta sciencey, but you don't necessarily need to know the science behind them in order for them to be useful for making art. Usually just being aware of it is enough. It's true that none of them would actually make a painting great by themselves, and it's also true that I wouldn't recommend focusing on any or all of these as a main strategy for learning to create art. However, I would say these are useful things to know for the artist, and have found that having some fluency with these types of things often frees one up to concentrate on the larger issues of picture making without being bogged down by the potential pitfalls that any of these might create. Of course, there is a definite and grand pitfall of obsessing with these types of things as a magic bullet to good picture making, but that to me is a "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" kind of thing--it doesn't make them inherently bad.

Edit: case in point - Tim challenged my opinion that those charts have nothing to do with art. I explained my point of view - Tim responded professionally and backed up his experiences well. My eyes opened a little and I was reminded people learn and and process in different ways. That is the kind of discussio I appreciate

Thanks, Jeff. I really do enjoy this type of discussion here. It's one of the few places I can come for higher level discussion about art and actually learn something and be challenged by other valid viewpoints. Elsewhere it's mostly just flames, ego, politics, ignorance, and dogmatism. There's plenty of that here, of course, but in between that there's some great discussion.