Following the feedback from the second week of this project, I reflected on how to give the color catalog context and include more of the source material in the outcome.
I experimented with the idea of creating individual fish profiles, anthropomorphizing each amphibian and using the names of their corresponding colors as if they were dating profiles.
I took a page out of New York Magazine’s Lookbook, an irreverent compilation of New Yorkers at events around the city. The idea was to inject some humor and lightheartedness in what I felt had become a lifeless project, despite it being about color.
The outcome is as yet to be defined, but this experiment comes closer in spirit to the work I envision this becoming.
From the feedback I received on the experiments I presented, I decided to continue working on experimenting with reinventing the Burkhardt collection as a catalog of color palettes.
I knew I wanted to maintain the spirit of each of the original entries created by Burkhardt, channeling the specific type of information included and the format it was presented.
I created various experiments to find the right way to represent the proportions for each color, a challenge which I thought would be best resolved before trying to compose a more complete catalog.
Representing the color palette as fish did not achieve the aesthetic I had in mind, so I continued to iterate, but this time using more abstract forms and shapes to represent colors.
I decided to iterate with circles to represent each color, as it made it easy to show the proportion of each color by varying the size of the circle according to the percentage it represented in the color scheme.
Just to sense check the idea, I also created an image where the colors did not correspond to any proportions and were merely aesthetic.
The iteration that followed was closer to the objective that had been percolating in the back of my mind.
I wanted to capture the idea of the fish, without using the actual drawing. I also wanted to emulate the aesthetic of the original collection.
Lastly, I wanted to be thorough, ensuring each item in the catalog could be read as a repository of information, much like the primary source.
For this project I chose a collection of watercolors created by artist Jacques Burkhardt depicting freshwater fish. The illustrations were created in 1865 during an expedition to Brazil led by renowned naturalist Louis Agassiz, and are remarkable in their clarity, detail and vivid hues.
I began by considering the colors and shapes unique to each fish and creating a color palette and outline for various species.
From there I created abstractions of a couple of the illustrations and played around with the shapes and colors to create kaleidoscopic patterns, reminiscent of the way in which fish are perceived when underwater.
As I experimented with colors and patterns, I turned to color theory as a source of inspiration to understand how I could work with color in a more interesting and engaging way.
I came across the book Color Problems by Emily Noyes Vanderpoel and was immediately drawn to the simplicity and beauty of her color grids, which reflected her interpretation of the color components of different objects in her personal collection of antiques.
I thought this system could be a good starting point to create my own catalogue of the colors present in each species of fish illustrated by Burkhardt.
In the spirit of Noyes Vanderpoel’s grids, I began to create my own, using a five color palette to fill in each 10 x 10 grid.
The goal will be to break down the colors in each species of fish into a grid and then collate those colors and their frequency, in order to understand whether there exist any patterns in the color schemes presented.
The feedback I received on this iteration of the project correctly pointed out that the work had become too divorced from the original collection. Though I arranged the circles in a pattern reminiscent of fish scales and a fish tail, it was not immediately obvious to the viewer and needed to be clarified.
It was suggested that I use the original material as a way to compose the new graphics, and perhaps even include the fish itself in the composition. It was pointed out that the arrangements needed to be more deliberate and based on a critical enquiry of the material, rather than intuition. One suggestion was to turn each entry into a two-sided postcard, with the back showing more of the original catalog and giving context to the color palette.
References were made to Dulux and Farrow & Ball color catalogs, which take colors from history and the natural world, and turn them into commercial palettes entirely devoid of context. Exploring these catalogs could yield a starting point for a satire of the practice and thus bring further resolution to the work presented.
The feedback was very useful in seeing that the work is indeed missing context both from the original collection and as a whole in and of itself. There is nothing tying the work together and it therefore falls flat. A more interesting version of the work will find itself offering something beyond color, using color as a means to an end and thus giving the project a purpose. I am particularly intrigued by the possibility of using the catalog for the purposes of a parody or satire, but have yet to envision the right format for that outcome.
