Ironic Imagery: an exploration of color through collage inspired by Art Chantry

Ironic Imagery: an exploration of color through collage inspired by Art Chantry Bethany Buchanan Spring 2020 Additive system (rgb): As colors are mixed in light the value becomes more and more white. The primary colors of light are red-orange, blue-violet, and green because these cannot be created through mixing other colors. In this system, when red-orange and blue-violent mix they produce a magenta. When blue-violet and green mix, cyan is seen. When green and red-orange mix yellow is produced. These secondary values are all lighter than the primaries that create them.

Subtractive system (cmy):

Colors made from pigments or color matter are seen as light hits them and reflects off their

surface. One subtractive system color model is made up of cyan, magenta, and yellow. When all of these colors are mixed, black is produced. Magenta and cyan create a darker blue, cyan and yellow make a darker green, and yellow and magenta make a darker red.

Subtractive system (rby): Another subtractive color system is made up of blue, yellow, red. Yellow and red make orange. Blue and yellow create green. Blue and red result in purple.

Hue: Hue is that attribute of a color by which we distinguish red from green, blue from yellow, etc. There is a natural order of hues: red, yellow, green, blue, purple. A hue is the most saturated form of each color. Munsell identified five principal hues: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple, along with 5 intermediate hues (such as Red Yellow, etc.) halfway between adjacent principal hues.

Value:

Value is defined as the relative lightness or darkness of a color.

Saturation:

Saturation describes the intensity (purity) of a hue. As a color becomes desaturated it moves closer to becoming grey.

Transparency: Creating the illusion of transparency can be done by finding the middle value and saturation of each color that is overlapping. If the hues are matching, the value will become darker in the transparency.

Optical Mixing:

Optical color mixing is a phenomenon that happens when a viewer perceives color in an image as a result of two or more colors that are positioned next to, or near each other.

Warm and cool colors are established through the phenomenon of perceived temperature of each hue. Cool colors recede, and are generally purple to green in the spectrum. Warm colors come forward and traditionally include magenta to yellow.

Warm/Cool:

When complimentary colors are placed directly next to each other and are of the same spatial hue and value, the colors can appear to be moving or vibrating.

Vibration:

Simultaneous Contrast:

Simultaneous contrast refers to the way in which two different colors affect each other. The

theory is that one color can change how we perceive the tone and hue of another when the two are placed side by side.

Achromatic: Achromatic colour is that which technically has zero saturation and therefore no hue, such as neutral greys, white or black. Simply it means ‘without color.’ Analogous: Analogous colors are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. For example, yellow, green-yellow, and green are categorized as analogous colors.

Triad: A triad is a color scheme, a special variant of the split-complementary color scheme, with the equal distance between all colors. All three colors are distributed evenly around the color wheel, causing there is no clear dominance of one color.

Monochromatic: Monochromatic is a color scheme based on only one, single color tint. It uses only variations of a single hue, made by altering the saturation and value of the base color.

Colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel are considered to be complementary colors (example: red and green).

Complementary:

Ironic Imagery: an exploration of color through collage inspired by Art Chantry Bethany Buchanan Spring 2020 This series of collages was inspired by artist and designer Art Chantry, pioneer of collage and typography in the punk-grunge era. Chantry designed as a way of communicating culture, intaking and responding with images and text. He began his career in Seattle designing posters and promotional material for art galleries, regional theater companies, and rock bands. Chantry’s style gained him notoriety, designing mostly analogue with rough textures, nostalgic imagery, innovative type, and ironic messaging. The tactile experience of creating each composition is integral to his way of designing. Today, Art Chantry lives in Tacoma, WA and continues to design compelling pieces, connecting with his audience via the internet and social media, making design accessible to all people, not only the elite.

Through this series, I experimented with analogue collage making, tongue in cheek messaging, and repurposed type. All of my designs were created by hand, then photographed and rendered digitally.

I layered each of my collages with different colors and images to communicate an individual color concept, alongside expressing a humorous typographic message. I infused each of my designs with my own artistic style: clean colors, simplistic straight lines, modern imagery, and messaging that relates to my current worldview.

Sources: Lasky, Julie. “2017 AIGA Medalist Art Chantry.� AIGA, AIGA, 4 Sept. 2017, www.aiga.org/2017-aiga-medalist-art-chantry.