Colors and Perception; Mixing Our View

Color theory is a rather complex thing to analyze, but we must admit that colors make our world a lot more interesting. Color lets us decide is a vegetable is fresh, whether if an article of clothing is attractive, and so on. How we perceive colors can give a whole new meaning to the object we are looking at.


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The image above is a self portrait by artist Chuck Close. When the portrait is enlarged, the viewer can distinguish a diamond pattern filled with different colors. Chuck Close realizes that the human eye tends to mix colors that are similar together. He places similar colors close together in small areas so that the viewer will automatically recognize a unified form from this pattern.


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When the color is taken out, this close up of one of Chuck Close's portraits become much less unified and the bigger picture is harder to distinguish. The value of the colors still remains, so our eyes still strain itself to make sense of this pattern.