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31 July 2022 @ 12:19 am

Sunshine Challenge 2022 #7 (Opal) - part two

Prompt #7: Opal

In the last post I gave a couple of examples of how I play with graphics to produce new ones. In particular, I showed how I got the first variant in the trio below. That was back in 2010. Ten years later, I returned to play with it some more. A bit more experienced with the things Microsoft Picture Manager could do, I decided to lighten it, and then to saturate the colour more deeply.

I then ran this through GRSites' colour-wheel rotation doohickey. The following are three graphics that are shifted to a relatively minor degree:

The sensitivity of the eye to slight differences in hues in the green-yellow-orange range means that, even though the saturation has reduced the amount of muted (or grey) shading, the blend of colours makes up for it. The result is a rounded three-dimensionality.

Here, however, is a selection of variants derived by rotating the same graphic further round the colour wheel:

Clearly all these variants have a narrow band of contrasting colour running through the tips of the "feathered" areas. However, compared with the first three, they otherwise look much flatter (even though there are clearly differences in hue, most notably in the "V" area on the purple variant). This is partly because the eye is less sensitive to variation in the green-blue-purple-magenta range; but also the brain is more likely to interpret it as a change in colour rather than as three-dimensional shading. This is particularly marked with the blue variant, where the blue areas seem almost solid.

The textural difference was a surprise at first; but then I decided it would be interesting to play around with it.

One of the first things I did was try to produce a wider range of colour combinations. I did this by applying filters. For example, I took a green & blue variant (probably the first graphic in the set below) and applied a red filter. The combination of red and green turned those areas a rather muddy yellow, while the blue "feathers" turned magenta. Heavily increasing the saturation brightened all the colours to give the third variant.

If you compare it with the first set of examples, you can see that this method has produced a yellow variant whose feathering is magenta, while the original yellow variant had turquoise feathering. Of course, I then rotated the new graphic round the colour wheel to produce further new combinations. I also pushed the saturation to "flatten" the variants even further, as you can see:

Okay, I have to admit that sometimes I did take it too far:

So there were duds. Still, these (and other) graphics were the raw material from which I eventually produced background tiles such as these:

Most recently, I've worked on the following series. I think they have a sort of tapestry look to them:

Alas, with the demise of GRSites.com, I can no longer run them round the colour wheel. I wish I could: I'd like to see what happens.

Compare the original graphic with the variant below (which also came from this batch). It's travelled a long way just to get back to brown! Even so, the original pattern is still recognizable.