Chromatic Induction: Is this why our paintings look weird?

I’ve always wanted to make art, but in a way have always believed I couldn’t. That I lacked the innate talent to ever create a masterpiece. As I grew older I began to understand there was a certain level of obsession inherent in art creation. You had to LOVE it. Really spend time with it.

You had to devote yourself to it.

I wasn’t going to do that.

This class, however, has made me devote a considerable amount of time to art creation and last week, when I turned in my midterm project, I was severely disappointed by the way it appeared at the end. It was nothing like I’d imagined in my mind. The colors looked strange and I couldn’t figure out why.
Reading Bevil’s piece, “Doing Science, Making Art”, made me realize my mistake. Chromatic induction, or as explained better by Bevil’s introduction of a conversation Cezanne had with his dealer, is the phenomena of color appearing slightly off when surrounded by a different color. Bevil writes of a watercolor piece he created where he left space around each color in order to keep the colors from changing when influenced by the color around them. He writes he kept some white around each color- “So the color of each mark as it appears in the final picture is similar to the color of the mark as it was made during the painting’s development”.

This makes a ton of sense, and I wish I’d been aware of the phenomena earlier.

For this week, I might redo my midterm project. Just to see if it looks any better.