#3 Black & White

#3 Black & White
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The basis of most design is black & white. Of initial sketches, anyway. (I always use a black pen & usually scribble on a white napkin.)

Black is my very favorite col­or — & yes, it is a col­or. So is white. How is it so that black & white are both col­ors, you ask? & what about the pop­u­lar (but erro­neous) the­o­ry that states black & white are not col­ors? Read “chaz sez” below.

Black & White, my third Amper­Art piece, is prob­a­bly when I decid­ed to cre­ate a series. One per month, more if inspi­ra­tion hits & time allows. [Update: As of April 2017 and the 100th issue, at least one Amper­Art edi­tion has been released per month, albeit some­times just min­utes before the cal­en­dar flips to a new month.]

Some edi­tions are full col­or, some grayscale, a few just black & white. Many con­tain an amper­sand that is custom-​drawn as part of the main image. Oth­ers fea­ture type to con­vey the char­ac­ter & mean­ing. Some rely on the amper­sand itself to car­ry the mes­sage. You can always see the cur­rent Amper­Art release on the home page of Amper​Art​.com. Or see them all here.

If you are inter­est­ed in the cre­ative process of each piece, scroll to the bot­tom & read the pro­duc­tion notes.

Please tell your friends (espe­cial­ly amper­sand fans) to vis­it Amper​Art​.com. Once they sub­scribe, they will receive Amper­Art #3, Black & White, as well as the pre­mière edi­tion, Amper­Art #1, Art & Design, to start their own collection.

Back is a col­or! Not the absence of col­or, nor the com­bi­na­tion of all col­ors. It is col­or. So is white. So why do peo­ple say it’s all the col­ors or no col­or? Because they don’t know the def­i­n­i­tion of col­or. “Col­or” means the descrip­tion of the hue, val­ue & tone. Pure yel­low is a col­or that has a hue some­where between orange & green on the col­or wheel, a very light val­ue (high-​key, or very bright com­pared to very dark such as navy blue), & min­i­mal tone (gray­ish­ness; mauve & sage green have medi­um tone).

The col­or black is defined by no hue (red, yel­low, blue, etc.), the dark­est val­ue, & zero tone. White is defined by no hue, the light­est val­ue, & zero tone. So you see, black & white have no hue & no tone, but they are both colors.

If you want to have some fun with all the oth­er col­ors, check out the Cray­ola web­site, espe­cial­ly the his­to­ry & the Cray­ola Expe­ri­ence where kids (includ­ing big kids) get to play & cre­ate among all things Cray­ola, & see how they are made. If you can’t make it to the fac­to­ry in Eas­t­on, Penn­syl­va­nia, watch this video: How Cray­olas Are Made.

I love Cray­olas. (I won’t use any oth­er brand; the col­ors aren’t as pure, they’re waxy & they just aren’t Cray­ola.) I remem­ber when the box of 64 pre­miered, with the awe­some Built-​In Sharp­en­er. I prob­a­bly have the few stubs that are left of my orig­i­nal set some­where, but today I have The Ulti­mate Cray­ola Col­lec­tion — 152 dif­fer­ent col­ors! — on my desk. I use them fre­quent­ly, & always to sign impor­tant legal doc­u­ments. For that task, of course, it’s Cray­ola Blue Green.

PRODUCTION NOTES FOR #3 BLACK & WHITE:
Original size: 10×15 inches
Program: Photoshop (I have no idea why I didn’t create this one in Illustrator)
Fonts: Kabel, Broadway
Ampersand: Broadway, modified