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August 2009 Archives

August 9, 2009

Taj Mahal

Light is obviously quite important in the occurence of color. How important exactly can now be assessed through the billions of snapshots that have been uploaded onto the web. Many of those snapshots are from the same landmarks, such as the Taj Mahal in India. Waht would happen if you place a number of these snapshots next to eachother? What does it do to the appearence of the Taj Mahal?
I searched the popular photo site flickr.com for pictures of the Taj Mahal. It didn't took much effort to find thousands of them. That made it easy to identify several hundreds of snapshots of the exact same view. Here's a series of 6. You can tell by the shadows that I assembled them to represent different times during the day, from early in the morning till late in the evening.
tajtijd1.jpg
tajtijd2.jpg
tajtijd3.jpg
tajtijd4.jpg
tajtijd5.jpg
tajtijd6.jpg

Taj Mahal 2

Here's another series of Taj Mahal snapshots. Now at around the same time but on different days.
taj1.jpg
taj2.jpg
taj3.jpg
taj4.jpg

August 11, 2009

Colorjive

Here's the latest project I'm working on:
Colorjive
Visit the website for more information...

August 12, 2009

Picking colors for your home, 5 tips

How to pick colors for your home:

1
Think combinations, not colors.
Picking colors is in fact about picking a combination of colors. One color is no color. Did you know the human eye can't even perceive single colors? We can only see color differences, in other words: we only perceive contrasts. Therefor it's no use fretting over a single color for your walls. Because the million dollar question is: how does that wall color relate to the existing color of your floor.

2
Start with the colors you can't change.
Obviously, a palette is made up of different colors that need to fit together. If you want to paint your room and you have colors you cannot change, like flooring, curtains or furniture, they still need to be part of the palette. Therefor always keep them in mind when picking the rest of the colors. As a rule of thumb, you start with the colors with the smallest range and work towards the widest range. For instance: look at your existing flooring and furniture first, then pick the new curtains, and finish with the wall color.

3
Get inspired.
There are many ways to get inspired. You can search the web. You can pick a flower and match its colors to a paint fan deck. You can take any picture or painting you like and extract colors from it. It's really not that hard. Just pick something that inspires you and match it to paint colors to produce a great palette. A few hints to keep in mind when making a palette:
• Try to include light as well as dark colors. Remember: contrasts are key.
• If you go for greys, pick at least one bright color to accentuate.
• If you go for bright colors, combine it with at least one shade of grey to provide your palette with a neutral tone.

4
Visualize
Once you established at least some idea of a palette and a rough idea of what it should look like, you can start experimenting, using Colorjive (for now, only here). Just try out different ideas. Don't be shy, you can change colors in an instant. Once you know your wall should be blue for instance, you can try different shades of blue till you find the one that works for you.
You can use the software to show the result to your friends and family. After all, they'll have to put up with it.

5
Check your choice
When you use the color codes to order paint in the shop, first take a good look at the color swatch to make sure this is the color you want. Colors onscreen may differ from real life colors. If you are still a bit uncertain, buy a sample or a small pot of paint first. Then paint a small surface to see if it works. And remember: it's only paint. Worst case scenario is repainting. So you can afford to take some chances.

About August 2009

This page contains all entries posted to Livelygrey in August 2009. They are listed from oldest to newest.

January 2009 is the previous archive.

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