Sunshine Challenge 2022 #5 (Peridot)

[greerwatson]

Prompt 5: Peridot

Basically, this post is about green variants of brown128.jpg—though things are going to get rather more interesting than simply rotating the original graphic round the colour wheel:



Peridot is often simply referred to as green; but googling makes it clear that it ranges in colour from yellow to emerald, as well as in various muted shades from olive to brown. In other words, in this post, it would not be appropriate to deal with blue-green or turquoise-green tones; so I'll save these for later.

Ihe full range of colours for the gemstone includes variants like the ones below, though the first one (a light olive green) seems to be the commonest shade in pictures of jewellery:



Of course, there are many shades of green—from deepest forest and ivy greens to pale spring green. Here are a few that are more deeply textured:



And as soon as different shades of green are combined (sometimes with white, grey, or black), then the possibilities multiply enormously:




One more thing should be mentioned: like red, green is often combined with yellow to "brighten" it. So here are a few green/yellow examples:



I've been asked how I create bicolours, given that the original graphic was basically monochromatic. Well, it's been a journey! Checking the Properties of some of the early graphics, it looks as though I started in the summer of 2010. You can see something of what I was doing back then if you look at the sequence below. The first graphic is the colour-rotated one that I showed up top. The muted areas in the design are greyish, but not truly achromatic. My first efforts at applying filters, therefore, came when I wanted to crisp up the design. As you can see in the second graphic, I tended to overshoot: this gave the "feathering" a faintly bluish tint, and eventually led to a family of green/blue variants as I refined the pattern. Around the same time, a different use of filters produced the third graphic:



And so it began. At some point in there, I proudly showed a selection of my newest creations to my sister. After about three or four examples, she kind of rolled her eyes and said, "I get it! I get it!" (Things have progressed a bit in the years since then; but I don't think tweaking background tiles is her thing.)

Actually, it took me a while to figure out how to reverse the colour wheel so that I could get variants with a green background and brown feathering where the original was muted. The key is that, when you apply a coloured filter over the whole graphic, the grey areas are affected completely, having no inherent colour, while the green areas are only modified. The first example here was created in 2011. The others are the product of ever-further refinement and development.



I still go back now and then, as I get better at playing with Microsoft Picture Manager. The last of those was made in 2020. However, since those days, I've come up with ever more intriguing ways of producing colour combinations. So let's look at a selection of more recent green/olive/brown variants:



Yes, I do like earth tones. Also, when you're in the green to brown range, slight variations (from a computer's perspective) produce major perceptual differences (from a human point of view). I think it has some evolutionary thing to do with distinguishing ripe from unripe fruit, and spotting things that are no longer good to eat.



Previous Days:
Prompts #1 and #2 (Amber and Topaz)
Prompt #2 (Rose Quartz)
Prompt #3 (Garnet)
Prompts #3 and #4 (Moonstone and Hematite)
Prompt #4 (Kyanite)

Comments

[dr_zook]

Super fascinating, thank you for taking us along! I especially like 7) and 9) of that last, earthen batch. Great job!

[greerwatson]

There've been some comments with questions about the methods I've used to get the variations; so I thought it might interest people. Both the ones you mention are fairly recent creations. I'm still finding new ways to play with the graphics.

[enemytosleep]

This entire post has such a calming, earthy vibe with all of the greens and browns. ♥

[greerwatson]

I was wondering at first how I'd work the green/brown variants in, since I didn't know of any gemstones with that combination. I'd always heard peridot described as green. When I googled images of the stone, though, I found it came in a range that included brown.

Certainly, the two colours go well together. Calming, yes. Comfortable.