Last night we observed that;
MIXTURES OF TWO PRIMARIES FORM THE SECONDARY COLORS, ORANGE, PURPLE AND GREEN.
The next rule is this:
IF YOU MIX CERTAIN SECONDARIES WITH A PRIMARY, YOU FORM A TERTIARY COLOR.
Here is the list on those;
- red, a primary mixed with orange, makes red-orange, a secondary.
- yellow mixed with green makes yellow-green.
- blue mixed with violet (purple) makes blue violet
- yellow mixed with orange makes yellow-orange
- blue mixed with green makes blue-green
- red mixed with violet makes red-violet
That leaves one more category of tertiaries, the compliments. I will go after them tomorrow night.
I have received so many complaints about the white text on black that I have decided to poll the readers. There is a poll at the upper right of my sidebar. Be sure to vote. However just like referendums in Massachusetts and California, I as administrator and virtual BLOG LORD reserve the right to ignore the results of the voting. We'll see how it goes.
I am moving my blog to Wordpress. The new URL address where I soon will be posting new entries is: stapletonkearns-blog.com. You can check it out right now but I am still in the process of moving. There will be a redirect of the URL stapletonkearns.blogspot.com that you are using now and all the links and feeds should still work without your changing anything. I also will leave this blog up just in case.
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45 comments:
Ok, new plan. I've decided to hire someone to mix all my colors for me. I will stand idly by sipping a scotch and puffing a Cohiba. They can have at it until it looks right to me and then I will command them to place the stroke in the right place. I think this will work. Hmm, I may even have them sign them for me, that would be innovative!! I hear Koons let someone go, I'll try to hire them. Once I sell all my paintings at White Cube, I will acquire the Stapleton Kearns collection and hang half in Dubai and half in Palm Springs. You are all welcome to visit!
The white text might be a little hard on the eyes, but it seems to me that paintings read better against a black background on the computer. My two cents!
Hi Stape, I like the black background - works great as long as I have the right glasses on!
Since it seems hard to find paints that match the color wheel exactly, I wonder if a post (or posts) about which "primaries" to mix to get "secondaries", and so forth, would be good. I know you've already done that for green in an earlier post. If I need a purple, I usually mix ultramarine and quinacridone or permanent alizarin. One day I thought I might try mixing phtalo blue with cadmium red, because blue and red make purple, right? What I got was a surprise! (I haven't allowed unruly thalos on my pallet for a long time.) I've been in some artists studios where they have huge handmade color charts with every hue, tint and shade possible, it seems. Is that a good idea?
I love your articles - I look forward to them every day - you give great info. But I, too, do not like the black - yes, it looks very cool, but no it is very hard to read.
If you don't want to lose the black background for paintings and color wheels and such, just plop a 4-pixel black border on them - that will be enough black with which to contrast to set them off.
And actually, stats are that an almost-black blue against an eggshell white is easiest to read.
Thanks for your posts -
aloha -
Angela Treat Lyon 100Days100Paintings.com
I put my vote in.
Jim, it wasn't the pthalo blue giving you the hard time, it was the cad red. Mix the pthalo with a quniacradone or a permanent alizarin and you will see something that looks very dark. But put just a TOUCH of white and you will see the beautiful color you mixed. As Stapleton Kearns said, there are colors and then there are pigments.
Cads are a particular opaque pigments and the reds, when mixed with non cad colors, act to dull the color mixture.
I had a hard time reading the "vote results", because of the orange background behind the "nays".
Gray is good background for reading and showing off images. That's what I use.
Ask fifty people you'll get fifty different answers on the color of your blog Perhaps rainbow would be the best.
We should all be grateful stape takes the time to teach us so much about painting instead of whining about text color. Not many people are as generous with there time and knowledge. It would serve us right if you stopped.
I for one am grateful for the help and dont care if you write it with your foot.
Tim Fitz
When I am tired (or my eyes are acting old) I can have as much trouble reading black on white as white on black - my solution is to increase the font size, it takes less than a second.
Stapleton, as you have said before, this is your blog. Please please yourself, it's your wisdom (and wit) that I keep coming back for, not your style. White text on black rules.
We will take what we can get. I think looking at a white background is like looking into the sun when trying to see something, but I agree with some of the others. It is so generous of you to share with us the knowledge you have accumulated over the years, however you deliver it, I will be grateful.
Welp, I agree this is your blog so you can do as you please, I count myself very lucky to have the privilege to visit anytime and garner your choice information.
Yet I will have to say customs of typography (I took a course on that subject a long time ago in college and forgot most of it) have lots to do with making the most of human eyesight needs.
If our human eyes see and read more effectively with black type color on a white background then it remains to explore why choose the other way around. It is possibly true the artwork is benefited by the black background--but the written material would be easier on the human eye by a white background. If this is true, then the conflict may lie in deciding whether you want the images to be read or the written matter.
Referenda should be ignored when the vote is on other people's personal rights, morality, or artistic taste.
I am really enjoying what I am learning from your blog, and I appreciate the fact that you take the time to post all of this!
As to the blog and wording color; maybe just enlarging the text a little would suffice. I like it the way it is (and I did vote :)
Text/bg. White on black isn't so hard to read, initially, but there is this strong after image (looks like your eyes suddenly gets window blinds, everything is striped), and it dances around, making it difficult to read after a while. Also, the beautiful pictures look striped...
I guess we who experience this will be around 20-30% of the voters. Seems that is the usual rate of more sensitive people (sensitive = react stronger, sense clearly).
I love your blog and I prefer black for looking at the paintings. Please do not change a thing for any reason other than to satisfy your own desire for esthetic appearance.
I come here for the content, the manner of its presentation matters little.
How many times can I vote? (Just kidding. I assume once is enough)
There are a number of ways to increase the size of what you read on your monitor.
- For Chrome users: Press CTRL and roll the scroll wheel to change the size of the display
-For Internet Explorer users:
a - in the View menu select Fonts and check a larger size.
b - or, Customize your toolbar by enabling the Font icon and select the Font icon to access the font menu
c - Press CTRL and roll the scroll wheel to change the size of the display
d - or Right click on the toolbar area and check Status Bar. Now, in the lower right corner the little Percent Number can be used to manually resize the display or to see what magnification factor is currently being used.
e - You can also change the size of the display output to have fewer pixels. Changing the display size to 1024 x 768 instead of 1280 x 1024 can make a tremendous difference as most web pages actually work pretty well in the narrower format.
f - get one of the new GIMONGOUS HDTV monitors that is the size of a football field.
Since most of the new daily blog information is in the left side of the displayable area, you can almost double the display size to zoom in on the text. I also find that resizing the display works to increase the size of small images. This works on some images better than others and may relate to the file encoding scheme but as long as the pixels aren't individually showing, some images can be enlarged quite a bit before they begin to objectionably blur.
For some bizarre reason (probably because most web designers are younger than me and have better eyesight and seem to want to do 75 things at once on their computers) the default font size is set to Medium. This is barely acceptable on a 19 inch monitor at 1280 x 1024 and my home monitor is only 17 inches which is why I know all about these viewing tricks.
Stape! Do what you like, I like what you do!
When I was younger, I couldn't wait for"Wonderful World of Disney"
to come on.
Now that I'm older, Your Blog brings back that exciting feeling of something new and interesting.
It's elegant the way it is.
MCG;
Don't take that scotch to Dubai.
.....Stape
HKP;
That was how it got there.
.............Stape
Debra:
Are they 3D glasses?
...............Stape
Jim:
Cad. red is a weird mixer. Try alizarin.
................Stape
Playtest;
You are LOSING!
.................Stape
Marian;
That is one of the reasons I miss vermilion.
..............Stape
Simone;
There is no provision for a gray vote.Black or white only please.
................Stape
Tim;
You are welcome. But, I don't have feet.
.............Stape
Tim;
You are welcome. But, I don't have feet.
.............Stape
Chris;
I know that black on white is easier to read. But white on black is cooler. Easy to read, or cool theres the naked choice.
...............Stape
Yvonne:
Thank you.
.........Stape
Yvonne:
Thank you.
.........Stape
Sandra:
I want it to look cool.
...................Stape
Sandra:
I want it to look cool.
...................Stape
Sandra:
I want it to look cool.
...................Stape
Sandra:
I want it to look cool.
...................Stape
Bob;
Referenda I agree with will never be ignored. How did that Massachusetss state income tax reduction referendum go for you? And the seatbelt referendum. Both carried, and both were ignored.
...............Stape
Sunny;
The new wordpress version has slightly larger type.
.............Stape
Sunny;
The new wordpress version has slightly larger type.
.............Stape
Charlie;
The point of a vote is majority rule. If I let the 20% win, why vote? I eat sensitive people.
...............Stape
Poppy;
Thanks. I am going to lay this monster to rest once and for all, just watch.
.............Stape
Poppy;
Thanks. I am going to lay this monster to rest once and for all, just watch.
.............Stape
Mike:
Thanks, that is very useful.
...........Stape
bill:
I remember when Disney was the only show in color except Bonanza!
..........Stape
Lucy:
Thanks. I thought so.
..............Stape
Lucy:
Thanks. I thought so.
..............Stape
I put in my vote!
IF you were to think about changing from black to a very dark blue you need to take into account that different browsers can read color codes differently and that not all can recreate the custom color you've created and will default to whatever it thinks is closest - which could be something completely different and horrible. And if you've got a custom colored background with a custom colored text, what shows up in browsers other than your own is completely unpredictable. Stick with the white on black to be safe! I'm just kind of wondering if everyone who is having trouble reading uses the same browser? - eg most of us may use Explorer but those having difficulties are all Firefox users ... or something along those lines where the browser's translation of the code produces more intense color. Of if those are the folks with monitors with shiny glass screens as opposed to matte/frosted finish? Either of those could easily be a factor!
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