Color Power 3-D Paintings

This is one of those projects for which a blog post simply cannot do the work justice. 8^th grade Art students created these colorful paintings which, while cool looking on their own, are designed to be viewed in 3D using special Color Power 3-D Glasses. If you're reading this and you're part of the Calvert community, you just have to come check them out in person wearing the 3-D glasses, like them:

First, students were introduced to Fauvism, the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early twentieth-century artists led by Henri Matisse and Andre Derain whose works
emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over representational or realistic values.  The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction. Students used these qualities in their own paintings while following the rules of color encoding that produced the ability to view the work in 3-D. Some students looked at pieces of OP Art, Minimalist Art and Pop Art as inspiration, as works of art in these movements tend to work well as encoded holographic images.

The rules for color encoding relate to the natural color spectrum. In nature, the color order starting with the colors that appear closest to you and recede away are red, orange, yellow, green blue, indigo and then violet. Warm colors advance while cool colors recede. The color Power 3-D Glasses have an exception to this rule: Blue will appear further away than violet. Following this basic formula for color encoding (and some others listed far below), the students produced these very exciting masterpieces on canvas with acrylic paint:

Other rules for color encoding:

·        Pure colors make a bigger impact (the brighter, purer and more intense the color, the more dramatic the spatial effect will be). Adding tints and shades will push colors back or bring them forward. Using modeling techniques such as blending gives an interesting effect.
·        White rides in the middle ground, somewhere close to green. Adding white to a color will change its placement depending on the position of the color in the spectrum, by pulling it toward the middle ground.
·        Black, when placed on a color, will ride on the same level as that color. When mixed into any color, it will pull further away. Black patterns on a blue background will strengthen the color depth.
·        Isolating a color with a black outline with make its 3-D position more obvious. Black allows the eye to separate colors placed side by side.
·        Depth can still be obtained through normal avenues, like larger items appearing closer and smaller items receding.
·        Some colors, when placed on top of each other, refuse to follow these rules. Red on yellow will drop down, and red on green will do the same thing.
·        Some tinted colors create halos or appear to vibrate when used without a border.

Some pics of kids working: