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Are Antico's colourful paintings really a result of her tetrachromacy, rather than artistic flair? If she's painting such that the colours of the paint match wh

Are Antico's colourful paintings really a result of her tetrachromacy, rather than artistic flair? If she's painting such that the colours of the paint match what she sees, then trichromats should also think the paints match what they see, since they're less discriminating than she is.

wizzard 7y ago
It sounds like she doesn’t necessarily see new colors, she just can distinguish far more colors in things that look monochromatic to the rest of us. It’s not that the rest of us can’t see lime green, but we don’t see it in a pebble or tree bark.
cryptica 7y ago
Agreed, if the artist saw more range of colors than a normal person, I would think that they would paint using a smaller range of colors because they would find it sufficiently stimulating. - It should be easier for them to paint highly photo-realistic scenes. - They should struggle to find the right colors to buy in the shop. - They should be frustrated with mixing colors because they could never get the color right as they see it.
- kaitai 7y ago
  Disagree -- paints are made from pigments that are real-world things, that show many colors. Why would it be hard to get the color right from paints if you can see more colors? Probably tetrachromats are overrepresented in the paint-color-creating world! In addition, painting photo-realistically is more about edges and angles than colors.
  - OscarCunningham 7y ago
    I imagine paint mixing would be harder for a tetrachromat because they're trying to hit a target in a four dimensional space rather than just a three dimensional one.
  - goto11 7y ago
    Pigments are chemically designed to reflect particular wavelengths and combinations of wavelengths. But they are designed for the color gamut visible by trichromats. You can misx colors, but you cannot create primary colors by mixing other colors. Presumably tetrachromats would need a fourth primary color which might not be available. Just imagine if the pigment selection were designed by a color-blind person.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Distorting colour is a standard post-Impressionist painterly technique. But the moonlight painting gives it away. Most people don't see any colours under low light, and being able to see and paint a colourful scene under those conditions is a unique ability. Of course it could be imagination, but it doesn't look like it. The tree and the moonlight paintings have similar colours to the ones you'd see if you took a photo of a scene and turned up the saturation in Photoshop, with a few extra shades. It's a surprisingly literal and unimaginative form of exaggeration, and it's not how most painters distort colour for effect. So I'm more inclined to think it's a perceptual feature, not a creative choice.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
rebuilder 7y ago
I'm pretty sceptical, personally. I'm male, therefore not tetrachromatic, and long ago I had this idea of representing high contrasts as pure rgb values. For example, if you hold up your hand to shield your eyes from the sun, that's a pretty challenging situation to paint. But the way the after images of the sunlight interact with the silhouette of the hand suggested to me that the idea could be conveyed by painting a shimmering primary colour halo around the hand. And sure enough, Antico's paintings look much like what I had in mind.

wizzard 7y ago

It sounds like she doesn’t necessarily see new colors, she just can distinguish far more colors in things that look monochromatic to the rest of us. It’s not that the rest of us can’t see lime green, but we don’t see it in a pebble or tree bark.

cryptica 7y ago

Agreed, if the artist saw more range of colors than a normal person, I would think that they would paint using a smaller range of colors because they would find it sufficiently stimulating. - It should be easier for them to paint highly photo-realistic scenes. - They should struggle to find the right colors to buy in the shop. - They should be frustrated with mixing colors because they could never get the color right as they see it.

kaitai 7y ago
Disagree -- paints are made from pigments that are real-world things, that show many colors. Why would it be hard to get the color right from paints if you can see more colors? Probably tetrachromats are overrepresented in the paint-color-creating world! In addition, painting photo-realistically is more about edges and angles than colors.
- OscarCunningham 7y ago
  I imagine paint mixing would be harder for a tetrachromat because they're trying to hit a target in a four dimensional space rather than just a three dimensional one.
- goto11 7y ago
  Pigments are chemically designed to reflect particular wavelengths and combinations of wavelengths. But they are designed for the color gamut visible by trichromats. You can misx colors, but you cannot create primary colors by mixing other colors. Presumably tetrachromats would need a fourth primary color which might not be available. Just imagine if the pigment selection were designed by a color-blind person.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

Distorting colour is a standard post-Impressionist painterly technique. But the moonlight painting gives it away. Most people don't see any colours under low light, and being able to see and paint a colourful scene under those conditions is a unique ability. Of course it could be imagination, but it doesn't look like it. The tree and the moonlight paintings have similar colours to the ones you'd see if you took a photo of a scene and turned up the saturation in Photoshop, with a few extra shades. It's a surprisingly literal and unimaginative form of exaggeration, and it's not how most painters distort colour for effect. So I'm more inclined to think it's a perceptual feature, not a creative choice.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

rebuilder 7y ago

I'm pretty sceptical, personally. I'm male, therefore not tetrachromatic, and long ago I had this idea of representing high contrasts as pure rgb values. For example, if you hold up your hand to shield your eyes from the sun, that's a pretty challenging situation to paint. But the way the after images of the sunlight interact with the silhouette of the hand suggested to me that the idea could be conveyed by painting a shimmering primary colour halo around the hand. And sure enough, Antico's paintings look much like what I had in mind.