Re: Futurese: Colours
| From: | Javier Barrio <uaxuctum@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Sunday, October 6, 2002, 12:52 |
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> No, it's a question of the perceived distance
between adjacent colors in
> that specific image, nothing at all to do with
grouping. Adjusting the
> brightness of some of the colors might help.
Well, but you shouldn't take that image as THE
reference. In learning materials, the reference
should be the six-colour scheme of primaries and
secondaries and the white/black opposition both
of which can be easily reproduced with accuracy
in both screens and books, since those are the
basic colours of RGB and CYM. Those eight colours
are starkly differentiated (I think everybody can
perceive there's a marked difference between cyan
and indigo). Then, after you've made yourself
a clear "mental representation" of the "essence"
of each of those colours simply by staring at
them attentively for a while, the remaining 7
additional ones are defined as those which seem
to be at equal distance between the former, and
once you have that "mental reference" of those
eight essential colours, it's not difficult to
perceive when a colour seems to be between two
adjacent ones from those but as different from
both as to make it difficult to classify it as
a kind of one or the other.
> > ...the immense sky at dawn.
> > Why the Russians would then bother to have a word
for it?
> I googled for "dawn" and checked a couple of the
pictures.
turns out to be more
> blue.
It's that borderline cyan at the middle of
the picture what I was referring to. When
the sky looks that way, I'd say its cyan
because that's the colour one first sees
before looking too upwards to feel your
neck comfortable. Some whiteness/greyness
near the horizon during the day is usual
regardless of the more cyanness or more
blueness of the rest of the sky.
> > Taking those into account, it would be completely
justified
> > *not* to separate orange from red and yellow,
since if
> > you look at those things, you'll see a colour
continuum
> > from red to yellow similar to the continuum from
cyan
> > to indigo in the sky.
>
>The whole spectrum is a continuum. That doesn't stop
>us from naming colors.
Yes, but, except in the rainbow and
somewhat in soap bubbles or the like
(getting the spectrum through a prism is
not at all an everyday experience for most
people), we don't usually see the whole
continuum of colours. Rather, we get it split
up in "chunks" such as the cyan-to-indigo
continuum in the sky, the red-to-yellow
continnum in a fire flame or in lava, the
yellow-to-green continnum in vegetation or
the green-to-cyan continuum in shallow sea
water.
> > I've been experimenting with the idea of a
"decimal system" for color --
> > using five evenly spaced hues as fundamental
colors instead of six, and
> > five secondary colors between them. The basic hues
are red, yellow, green,
> > blue, and purple
>
> > Those colours are by no means evenly spaced.
> These aren't the same exact hues as the
corresponding English or Futurese
> colors. The decimal system colors are evenly spaced
in hue _by definition_.
O.K. My mistake, sorry.
> They're reasonably similar enough to the English
colors that I use the
> English words for convenience, but they're not
identical.
>
> The decimal colors still don't _appear_ to be quite
evenly spaced, but I've
> been finding them a little bit more satisfactory in
that regard than the
> 6-color system, since the green and yellow are
farther apart. I've also
> found that adjusting the lightness of the colors to
make them appear more
> similar in value can make a big difference.
I'd been also trying a decimal system like
the one you propose. But in it the yellow
hue gets too greenish to match the English
and other Western languages equivalents and
none of the green hues matches well that
of those either. Also, it is harder to
reproduce the essential hues with accuracy
as a reference in books and screens, since
they don't match the ones used in screens
and printing. That's why I decided to give
it a try to the 12 colour scheme, even though
back then I agreed with you in that the
greens seemed to me too close. But now, after
practising it for some weeks, looking first
carefully at the six essentials and then
looking at the intermediate additionals and
paying attention to the colours in people's
clothes, cars, etc. I have little problem
recognizing them. OTOH, as I said, there
would be no need to actively distinguish the
greens and blues if you don't want to: just
take the central hue, which is more or less
the same as that of English and add the
morpheme for "extended" or "similar".
> > > The secondary hues are orange, yellow-green,
> > > turquoise, indigo, and magenta.
> >
> > You're then proposing almost the same scheme, but
> > in a far less coherent way
>
> "Different from your system" isn't the same thing as
"far less coherent".
> You _specifically asked_ for an alternative system,
> and you complain when
> you get one? Sometimes I wonder what's the point of
> commenting at all.
Sorry again, I made that comment because
I had misunderstood your words. I thought
that by yellow, green, etc. you were
referring to the central hues those have
in English.
> The problem is, even
> though you _can_ say "dark yellow", the color you
actually get when you
> darken yellow doesn't look like any kind of yellow
at all. So it makes
> sense to group the dark yellows with the dark
yellow-greens.
Well, dark yellow doesn't look like a kind
of yellow from the point of view of the
English concept of yellow, which only includes
the vivid variety of that hue, the same way
as English orange only includes its vivid
variety. Other varieties of the yellow hue are
named in English as beige, ochre, khaki or
(yellowish) olive and of orange hue as brown,
cinnamon, copper or sepia. But the concept
of "yellow" and "orange" I propose wouldn't
be reduced to that of the vivid variety, as
neither the concepts of English blue, green,
red or purple are reduced to the vivid kinds.
It's only a matter of practising with shadings
to get the concept that the "yellow" and
"orange" morphemes represent in my proposed
scheme. As I said, I myself didn't see brown
as any kind of orange at first, several weeks
ago; but now, after practising with shaded
colour areas that allowed me to perceive
clearly how orange subtly turns into brown
as it gets darker, and thus that the difference
between orange and brown is not one of hue but
just one one lightness/saturation, I learned to
perceive the common hue between both, which is
what in my proposed scheme would be referred to
by the morpheme "orange" (or I should rather
refer to it as "orangebrown"). The same as it
wouldn't be English yellow what would be
referred to by the morpheme "yellow"
("yellowkhaki") of my scheme, but the shared
hue among the different lightness/saturation
kinds of it. English orange and yellow would
be "vivid orangebrown" and "vivid yellowkhaki",
the same as vermillion would be "vivid red".
Cheers,
Javier
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