Digital Color as a Paradigm for 3D Modeling

Abstract

Johannes Itten wrote in the 1920’s that seven distinct possibilities exist for the contrast of color: “Each (is) unique in character and artistic value, in visual, expressive and symbolic effect...together these constitute the fundamental resource of color design” Itten (1973). In either the digital world or in the world of painting, there has never been a more profound statement about color arrangement. Of Itten’s seven contrasts, the contrast of hue, value, and saturation, taken together have become a standard description of digital color today. As most projects reach the final stage of presentation, color selection becomes a possible paradigm for their development. It is customary to leave the selection of color to the end of a project — if time permits, then the colors are changed to make the project “appear better”, otherwise the selection of color is put in a pile of “good intentions” — overlooked. Proposed here is an alternative, a method of selecting color “up front”. Student projects are used to illustrate just how a building, or even a group of buildings may be better illustrated if one bases a presentation on a successful and understood work of art. The use of a painting as a source of color is proposed as a specific way of working. Most libraries contain an abundance of examples. The web, too, has many paintings; painters generally have more experience at putting colors together than architects and usually do not mind if their color ideas are borrowed, Done right, the result can be a happy merger of idea, emotion, and color, providing another paradigm for studying digital modeling.