Day: November 9, 2012

JL emailed:

Kind of neat link about a color picker in an ipad app, and the research that went into emulating color mixing in software..
I like seeing their non-consumer-facing prototypes, the sort of thing professional designers derisively term "programmer art." Otherwise it's just another narrative of "devs getting it right," finally finding a use for this weird vector math from the 1930s.
A flat, mottled "watercolor" look is the end result. Haven't used the app. Maybe if you hold down your finger, it emulates paint seeping into flat off-white paper. One shot showcases the effect of scribbling a note to yourself in pencil, and then redoing the strokes in pen. It will probably take another year before they capture the voluptuous joy of watching ink dry.
The article itself is criticized in the comments: "You're comparing additive and substractive color models, intellectually dishonest."

I don't really get this article/practice/worldview at all.
I use a color picker and if the color looks crappy, I can put another color next to it and make it look uncrappy.
That's called being an artist.
The article assumes we all know and understand what beauty is and it's just a matter of getting the right software to attain color-mixing perfection.
I understand that a professional illustrator needs a certain uniformity and predictability to work across platforms -- that is miles from what a non-illustrator artist thinks about.
Bricolage, baby, bricolage.

This has been another installment of Ask Mr. Lo-Fi.