Harold Cohen's talk for the SISTA colloquium was pretty interesting. In particular, I was intrigued by the relative simplicity of his color selection algorithm. Essentially, he used a random number generator, or some kind of mathematical pattern to select 9 numeric values, which he rescaled to become values (no pun intended) for the 'V' component of the HSV color model. From those 9 values, he randomly selected a high, mid, and low that ended up serving as the bright, medium, and dark parts of AARON's paintings.
What's interesting about this is that I have some semi-formal education in fine arts painting, and this very much echoes what I was taught. Highlight, Halftone, and Shadows. I literally have charcoal drawings of nine squares in various shades of gray.
However, in oil paint, I was taught to create my halftones and shadows not by adding black, but by adding a complimentary color. This had the effect of producing more neutral-looking halftones. I'm not really very well-read in color theory, but I'm curious how this method would be replicated algorithmically.
In my third assignment, I built a processing application that drew very simple Mark Rothko style images. Perhaps like rothko, the composition was deliberately simple; my focus was on building a color selection algorithm that was decently good at finding colors that look good with each other. All in all, I'd say my app gets it right maybe 1/3 of the time. And I think the problem is that I can't create truly natural-looking color selections when I'm only varying the V in HSV. I need to figure out what to do with the S at the same time.
And I have no idea how, because I don't know anything about color theory.
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