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The purpose of this Creative Project was to examine several aspects of color and to apply the results to a series of watercolor and oil paintings of rural subject matter. The process involved several steps: literature research, a series of photographs, and pigment color analysis. To begin with, landscape painters from the seventeenth century to the present were researched for their use of color in portraying the illusion of light and form on a two dimensional surface. A series of photographs was taken over a one year period. These were used to record changes of color on objects due to seasonal and atmospheric differences. Finally, watercolor pigments were analyzed for the range of mixing possibilities they could create. The findings from these three steps were applied in a series of eleven paintings which portrayed the illusion of light and solid form through the use of color. / Department of Art

Red dwarf stars are one proposed solution to the dark matter problem in the Milky Way Galaxy These cool, low luminosity stars are difficult to detect and segregate in surveys. This study utilizes photometric data obtained on the Kron-Cousins photometric system to develop criteria that classifies stars as red. Two of the color indices are then used to create a two-color diagram to allow separation of giant and dwarf stars. An algorithm based on calculated equations is provided to separate the giant and dwarf stars after detection. A third class of stars, subdwarfs, is addressed as a potential problem in future surveys. Some suggestions for detecting and removing these contaminating stars from the data are offered. Finally, a colormagnitude diagram is developed for red dwarf stars with KronCousins photometry. This curve allows for fairly accurate determination of photometric parallaxes for the red dwarf stars.An attempt was made to segregate the red dwarfs into velocity classes prior to calibrating the color-magnitude diagram. It was found that this approach offered no additional useful information. / Department of Physics and Astronomy

The creative project, which focused in painting and print making was the conclusion of my graduate program in studio art. I executed eleven oil paintings and eleven woodblock prints which demonstrated my development as a twodimensional artist.Although oil painting is the primary medium that I worked in for this project, I expanded my visual vocabulary to include woodblock printing. These paintings and prints were exhibited at the University Theater Gallery on Ball State University's campus in April of 1992.Painting is a vehicle to express my ideas to others. It is also a vehicle for my personal discovery' Being Japanese (Eastern) living in America (Western) has created a cultural duality in my life, which is the main focus of this creative project. The emotional content of each piece is expressed through visual metaphors.This project involves the exploration of the female figure as a self-portrait, rendered in an environment that visually represents my emotional state of mind. It is a visual diary which started out with the creation of small black and white woodblock prints. I created the images of the four seasons with a female figure surrounded by decorative patterns. This idea expanded as I worked on the oil paintings, which are larger in format (human scale). My intention was to provide a stimulus for emotional response while gaining a greater understanding of how colors, shapes, and other elements operate expressively. For example, in most of the images I intentionally positioned the figure so that the face is turned away from the viewer and not portrayed. This allowed the viewers to project their own feelings onto the work.Along with the creation of the paintings and the prints, I researched past and contemporary artists who shared my ideas and concerns. These artists include the post impressionists--Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin; the Nabis--Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard; the Fauves--primarily Matisse; German Expressionists; and a contemporary English artist, Howard Hodgkin. / Department of Art

This study examined the effect of colors and typography on attraction towards a product, tones evoked by the product, and likelihood that a participant would buy a product. Prior research has addressed how color and type influence visual design and those who come in contact with it in a multifaceted way. To measure this, participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk were asked to take part in an online survey on Surveymonkey.com. Assigned to one of four conditions of color and font combinations, Black or Purple paired with Modern or Script, participants answered questions about a sample product, a soda can. The study examined the combined and individual effects of the colors Black and Purple and the font types Modern and Script on the participants’ likelihood to purchase the product, their attraction toward it, and the perceived tone the product gives off. A 2x2 ANOVA was run to measure likelihood of purchase and attraction and a Pearson’s Chi-Squared test was used to measure both tonal questions. It was found that attraction to product was 1.19 times more likely with the product displaying Script font regardless of color and likelihood of purchase was 1.15 times higher with Script font regardless of color. Purple and Modern were most highly associated with the tonal word “Modern” for tonal question number one and for Black, the overall largest tonal association term was “Traditional,” for tonal question number. The finding for the color Purple approached significance and the other two of these findings were consistent with the hypothesis.

This study examined how various combinations of colors and fonts in email advertisements affect a consumer’s likelihood of purchasing a product and her judgment of appeal. It further examined overall perceptions of email advertisements. The study conducted a survey containing eighteen simulated emails that was distributed over Amazon MTurk. A total of 116 participants in the United States took the survey. Results showed that most participants preferred a yellow foreground to orange and purple, and a blue background to red and green. Findings also revealed that Georgia font style was consistently preferred over Onyx font style. Results showed that emails comprising of a blue background, yellow foreground and Georgia font style were especially significant in influencing consumers to purchase a product and were the most appealing.

This thesis examines the existence of colour preferences in butterflies. Two polymorphic species - the Mocker Swallowtail (Papilio dardanus) and the Silver-Washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia) are used as study species. Both the basis of colour preferences in mate choice and flower choice during feeding, and the implications of the preferences for the evolution of the species and morphs are investigated. In the Silver Washed Fritillary a non-genetically determined preference exists for highly saturated orange coloration in both mate and flower choice. This is shown not to be due to a bias for orange in colour reception through the use of electroretinograms, measuring the electrical output of the retina when exposed to light of varying wavelengths. It has not been possible, however, to rule out the possibility that the preference for the most common, orange, female morph is learnt. The flower colour preferences of the Mocker Swallowtail are investigated, and it is demonstrated that individuals show an initial preference for blue flowers, and also learn rapidly to feed off flowers of other colours that prove profitable. Their decision to try flowers of other colours is shown to be influenced by the behaviour of other individuals. In previous mate choice experiments, experienced males of the species have been shown to have a preference for the most common, black and white, morph. The colours of the morphs and the spectral sensitivities of the butterflies are analysed quantitatively. The initial and subsequent preferences of naive males are investigated in behavioural experiments, and a possible influence of learning on their subsequent choices is discovered. No influence of female choice is found. This information is then used to create a mathematical model of the population structure, for which it is also necessary to determine the relative payabilities of the model and mimic, and the mating frequency of wild males. The model demonstrates how the observed population structures might arise through evolutionary time. Measurements of the morphology of males and females of Papilio dardanus, and one of its putative models, Danaus chrysippus, shows that in Papilio dardanus females the centre of gravity is positioned significantly further back than in males and in Danaus chrysippus. This positioning far from the wing base has already been shown to handicap an individual escaping from a predator due to decreased acrobatic ability. It has also already been shown that mimetic species tend to have centres of mass positioned further back than non-mimetic species, and hence it is possible that the position of a centre of mass of a butterfly (and its effect on agility) may be a factor in the evolution of mimicry in a species or (where females carry a large egg load) in females of a species only.

Traditional appearance based face recognition (FR) systems use gray scale images, however recently attention has been drawn to the use of color images. Color inputs have a larger dimensionality, which increases the computational cost, and makes the small sample size (SSS) problem in supervised FR systems more challenging. It is therefore important to determine the scenarios in which usage of color information helps the FR system. In this thesis, it was found that inclusion of chromatic information in FR systems is shown to be particularly advantageous in poor illumination conditions. In supervised systems, a color input of optimal dimensionality would improve the FR performance under SSS conditions. A fusion of decisions from individual spectral planes also helps in the SSS scenario. Finally, chromatic information is integrated into a supervised ensemble learner to address pose and illumination variations. This framework significantly boosts FR performance under a range of learning scenarios.

Peter Paul Rubens' creative genius, as expressed with consummate mastery in his paintings, is but one of the many elements that have compounded to establish his fame. He is also renowned as a man of immense erudition. Indeed, his reputation is such that it is taken for granted that his great learning informed all aspects of his art in a fundamental way. / In accordance with this kind of thinking, current scholarship on Rubens accepts, as a matter of course, that the artist, whilst creating his painted works, followed the dictates of a colour theory, as we would know it today. In fact, on the basis of circumstantial evidence, it has been accepted that Rubens invented a colour theory that may be seen as innovative for his time. / This thesis assesses the evidence which has led researchers to formulate such a conclusion. As a consequence, it investigates the circumstances of Rubens association with Francois de Aguilon during the final stages of the latter's publication of his book on optics, the Opticorum libri sex. ... As well, the artist's correspondence with his friend, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, which contains allusions to an autograph manuscript purported to contain Rubens' thoughts on colour, is re-examined. Indeed, this very correspondence reveals that Rubens did not consider himself particularly knowledgeable about the theoretical aspects colour. / On the basis of a thorough review of these existing documents; an investigation into relevant biographical circumstances; and an examination of the artist's technique, it is here proposed that Rubens did not consciously apply theoretical principles to his craft, but rather, that any of the discernable elements of what is considered to be modern colour theory are in the paintings only because the demands of the painter's craft serendipitously parallel art historians' theoretical hindsight.

Color plays a vitally important role in the world we live in. It surrounds us everywhere we go. Achromatic life, restricted to black, white and grey, is extremely dull. Color fascinates artists, for it adds enormously to aesthetic appreciation, directly invoking thoughts, emotions and feelings. Color fascinates scientists. For decades, scientists in color imaging, printing and digital photography have striven to satisfy increasing demands for accuracy in color reproduc- tion. Fluorescence is a very common phenomenon observed in many objects such as gems and corals, writing paper, clothes, and even laundry detergent. Traditional color imaging algo- rithms exclude fluorescence by assuming that all objects have only an ordinary reflective com- ponent. The first part of the thesis shows that the color appearance of an object with both reflective and fluorescent components can be represented as a linear combination of the two components. A linear model allows us to separate the two components using independent component analysis (ICA). We can then apply different algorithms to each component, and combine the results to form images with more accurate color. Displaying color images accurately is as important as reproducing color images accurately. The second part of the thesis presents a new, practical model for displaying color images on self-luminous displays such as LCD monitors. It shows that the model accounts for human visual system’s mixed adaptation condition and produces results comparable to many existing algorithms.