Bridging Intuition and Analysis: Tactile Technology

Understanding Brilliance: Through a series of digital and physical studies leading to final compositions, students investigate the concept of color brilliance as defined by Johannes Itten. By arranging hues in deliberate adjacency, they analyze how variations in value intensify visual contrast and luminosity. The project cultivates sensitivity to chromatic interaction and teaches students how precise hue relationships can create dynamic optical effects within compositional design.

Understanding Temperature: Students explore the contrast of warm and cool colors through a sequence of digital and physical studies leading to final compositions. Rather than emphasizing stark opposition, the project challenges students to create smooth chromatic transitions that move gradually from hot to cold. By working with hues of similar or equal brilliance, students develop sensitivity to temperature relationships and learn how subtle shifts in color can influence spatial depth, atmosphere, and emotional tone.

Experiencing Simultaneous Contrast: Students investigate how surrounding colors alter the perception of a hue by studying the optical phenomenon of simultaneous contrast. In preliminary studies, they select six surrounding colors and place a continuous hue at the center to observe its visual transformation within different contexts. Building on these observations, students create a final free-form composition that repeats the continuous hue throughout, demonstrating how spatial relationships and adjacency influence color interaction and perception.

Understanding Complementary Contrast: Students examine complementary color relationships through a series of digital and physical studies leading to final compositions. They begin by identifying complementary pairs that demonstrate light–dark contrast. When pairs do not naturally exhibit this relationship, students adjust value by adding black to create shades or white to create tints. Alongside their exploration of color dynamics, students investigate texture by incorporating tactile surfaces or simulating texture within their compositions, uniting visual and material contrast within a cohesive design system.

Understanding Contrast of Saturation — The Power of One: Students explore the expressive range of a single hue by examining how its saturation changes through modification. In preliminary and final paintings, they create four color scales that demonstrate the effect of adding white, black, gray, and the hue’s complement. The resulting monochromatic compositions reveal how subtle shifts in saturation can create visual contrast and depth. Students are encouraged to emphasize intermediary tones, allowing mixed colors to dominate the image while using the pure hue sparingly for maximum impact.

Space and Depth — Spatial Effects: Students explore how color relationships create the illusion of spatial depth. Applying the principles of Contrast of Saturation, they develop perceptual landscape paintings that integrate shifts in hue intensity to convey atmospheric distance. Preliminary studies focus on drawing the landscape from observation and refining value gradation as preparation for the final composition. The completed works demonstrate how modulation of saturation and value transforms flat color into the sensation of receding space.

Form and Color — The Shape of Things: Students explore Johannes Itten’s association of color and form by constructing a series of free-form painted designs. Through five exploratory compositions, they investigate how specific hues correspond to geometric and organic shapes, observing how shifts in form can influence color perception. As shapes evolve or morph into new configurations, colors transition in tandem—revealing the dynamic interplay between formal structure and chromatic expression.

Contrast of Extension — Balance and Proportion: Students explore the principle of color balance through the relationship of hue, brightness, and visual weight. Guided by the numerical ratios introduced by Goethe and formalized by Johannes Itten, they apply fractional systems to determine proportional harmony within small, concentrated compositions. The project concludes with an analysis of how the contrast of extension operates in cultural contexts such as popular animation and theatrical design, linking classical theory to contemporary visual practice.

In Sync — Color Harmony: Students investigate the development of thematic color relationships as the foundation for compositional design. Drawing from systematic arrangements on the color wheel, they construct balanced schemes—dyads, triads, tetrads, and hexads—based on geometric relationships of hue position. Through preliminary studies, students explore how these harmonic structures function visually and psychologically. One selected color scheme is then refined into a final composition in which each hue carries metaphoric or symbolic significance, linking formal harmony with conceptual expression.