Color Theory and Emotional Effects

1. Colors are the gateways to expressions on oneself. They are not necessarily anything by themselves but when they combine with intent by something they form something else other than just colors or pigments. I think colors effect emotions by how the person experiences colors in their daily life and how that evokes a reaction. Intensity can also have an effect on emotions because depending on the intensity can change emotions, even within the same color but by using a different pigment. If you have a darker color it make evoke strong feeling such as a red color, it is said to evoke strong feelings of love or comfort. This can be true in most pigments of red but the pigments that Mark Rothko used make you feel trapped and makes you uncomfortable. This is also due to the value of the red being as dark as it was.

2. The aspect of color that intrigues me the most is the two different color systems that were created, the additive and the subtractive system. The subtractive system is based on mixing pigments and dyes while the additive system deals with mixing light.  It intrigues me that you can make a color system based of mixing light and not just dyes and pigments to make colors. The possibilities of the colors that you can make using these two systems is quite large which is what makes this so interesting. Also the fact that they consider shining different lights onto works to make them complete is something I didn’t realize that artists do. The different colors that can come out of the different combinations of red, green and blue is very cool.

3. What made the biggest impact on me was about the restaurant painting that were made in order to make sure no one would ever want to eat there and destroy the appetite of everyone single person who went in there. The feeling the red and maroon gave off from those painting were the exact opposite of what those colors normally represent and how they made me feel. When it first opened into that room, I didn’t like the atmosphere of that room at all and I didn’t want to even watch that part of the video and then when I heard that that was his intention, I thought damn did he hit the nail on the head with that one.

4. The thing that made the biggest impact on me was the use of color to make such dark works of art. That the darker colors were used to make these works were all the same group of colors, that group only being about 4 different colors with different shades. There were whites, blacks, browns and some bluish colors. It is amazing how these colors can be used to make such dark works of art and evoke such sadness and despair that Francisco Goya was feeling as he created those paintings. How else would you describe a painting about a father eating his own children, in a gruesome way?