"In order to change a color it is enough to change the color of its background"
-Michel Eugene Chevreul
Chevreul worked as the dye master at the tapestry-weaving studio Gobelins. While working here he became very intreged with color and reactions of color. Here is where he developed the concept of Simulatenous Contrast and published his findings in The Principles of Harmoney and Contrast of colors.
Here is what he discovered…
The eye requires the complementary hue of any color …” the imposition and enhancement of color onto an adjacent area of color is know as simultaneous contrast”
Example of perception in which the perceived color of a foreground tends to take on the complementary hue of the background
A gray square on a red background will take on a greenish tint.
Simultaneous contrast can also affect shading
There is 2 types of simultaneous contrast……
Chromatic and Achromatic
Chromatic simultaneous contrast concerns itself with hue changes that occur due to the influence of the surrounding hues.
A hue or color can be manipulated by placing it within another color.
The separate areas should not be placed close together and should be rather small in order for the effect to be seen clearly.
If put orange on yellow background and a red background it will appear redder on the yellow background and more yellow on the red.
The yellow is subtracting the yellow from the orange resulting in a reddish orange in the second the red subtracting the red from the orange resulting in a yellowish orange
It is also possible for two different colors to appear to be the same color by placing them on two different specifically chosen backgrounds. Using the same yellow and red backgrounds it is possible to have a yellow-orange on the yellow ground and a red-orange on the red background appear the same color when there is the right combination. The mixtures depend on but hue and value.
Achromatic simultaneous contrast deals with black, white and gray. When gray is place on black or white the gray undergoes a change. A middle tone value of gray is darker on a light background and lighter on a dark background.
Light values will appear lighter a dark ground. Dark values will appear darkers on a light background. When white is a on black, the white area appears larger because white spread and back contracts due to contrast.
Click the pictures below....
This illustrares the effect of a surrounding color can have on the vividness of the color of the circles.
