Colour and Perception

I participated in the course “Colour and Perception” by Sini Vihma during my master studies in New Media. In the course, we did practical exercises with colour paper to get a deeper understanding of colours in the visual world. I then transferred these practical works and my gained knowledge into the digital world.

Spatial Effect and Illusion


Minimalist illustrations of an urban night scene based on a photo by Lena-Marie Gribl. First, my aim was to achieve a clear sense of space and depth through the use of the same colours and visual cues as in my photo reference. I then used exactly the same colour palette but changed the order of colours to break the illusion of depth. In the other versions, I used vibrant colours of equal saturation and brightness to explore if and how the image could be perceived differently.

2023_ColourAndPerception_ReferenceByLenaMarieGribl

2023_ColourAndPerception_2

2023_ColourAndPerception_3

2023_ColourAndPerception_4

2023_ColourAndPerception_5

One Color Looks Like Two


In this exercise, I aimed to create optical illusions by making one colour look like two. I achieved the effect by surrounding one colour with two different background colours. I tried several combinations and concluded that the effect is strongest when choosing a light and dark background colour and a colour for the inner square of brightness in between the two backgrounds. This worked for chromatic, analogous, and even complementary colours.

2023_ColourAndPerception_6
2023_ColourAndPerception_7
2023_ColourAndPerception_8

Year

2023


Type

Colour Study

Software

Illustrator
After Effects