When Colour Feels Resolved

A colour can look settled on a screen and still not feel finished.

That has become one of the quieter truths of our process. Early on, the image may already have presence. The hue may already be vivid. The relationships may already seem clear. And yet something remains provisional, because the screen is only one condition among several. Until the work has been tested against other conditions, we do not yet know whether the colour is merely convincing in that one view, or whether it continues to hold.

For us, resolution is not the same as intensity. A colour can be strong and still unresolved. It can also be restrained and still unfinished. What we are looking for is whether the relationships continue to make sense when the image leaves the state in which it was first judged.

Strong is not the same as resolved

Vibrance is not automatically excess. In our work, colour is often intentional and sometimes highly saturated. That is not a problem in itself. The problem begins when colour starts competing with itself, or when one voice becomes so dominant that the rest of the image loses hierarchy.

We tend to judge colour relationally. A hue is rarely assessed as an isolated value. It is assessed through what sits beside it, how soft or hard the transitions are, how much contrast the image can carry, and whether the eye still finds a place to rest. Saturation alone is a weak criterion. What matters more is whether the colour relationships remain coherent.

This is close to a principle we return to often: restraint does not mean muted colour. It means colour used with discipline. Strong colour can create atmosphere without becoming noise, provided the surrounding relationships remain clear. Too many competing colour voices can flatten that clarity. Too little structure can make even a beautiful hue feel unsettled.

So when we ask whether a colour feels resolved, we are not asking whether it looks impressive. We are asking whether the image still holds together.

A digital work has to leave the screen

For digitally made works, the screen is a necessary beginning and an incomplete one.

Seeing the image only there is not enough for either of us. Mock-ups give us additional insight. They are not treated as finished room documentation, and they are not mistaken for real installations. They are evaluation tools. Placing a work into a spatial mock-up helps us understand more clearly what the colour and composition begin to do once the image is no longer floating in an interface. Scale, distance and surrounding materials start to matter in a different way. The colour is no longer only a screen event. It becomes something that has to occupy a wall.

We also print works in progress. Seeing a composition on archival paper changes the judgement again. From those physical prints we sometimes decide to increase contrast, reduce contrast, or make further fine adjustments. The print does not simply confirm what we already knew. It often reveals what the screen had made too easy, or too soft, or too emphatic.

In that sense, translation is part of making. Screen, mock-up and print are not later marketing stages. They are stages of seeing.

When print changes the judgement

Diorama made this concrete.

When Diorama was printed, the image came through with less strength than intended. The response was practical rather than dramatic. We adjusted exposure and contrast so that the image could remain strong in the printed work.

For us, the print simply made the requirements of the physical form visible. The work still needed to remain itself, but it also needed to work as a print.

Print judgement is therefore not only about fidelity to a screen file. It is about whether the image continues to feel complete once it becomes a material object. Colour and contrast that feel complete in one form may still need to be rebalanced for another.

Colour inside a series

The O series asked a different kind of colour question.

The works are very vibrant. They should not, however, become overly saturated. That distinction matters. Vibrance can remain purposeful. Over-saturation begins to simplify the relationships until the colour feels less considered and more forced.

What required the most fine-tuning was not one isolated circle, but the colour relationships between the three works. The feathered gradients are highly sensitive. Small shifts change not only the temperature of a single piece, but the way the three pieces speak to one another. A change that strengthens one work can begin to pull against the others. That is why the series has to be judged as a field of relationships, not as three separate colour decisions.

Each work has to stand on its own. At the same time, the three must still read as one body. So we look at them both individually and in relation to one another. A work may feel complete in isolation and still unsettle the series. Or it may sit well beside the other two and yet feel incomplete when seen alone. The colour is not finished when one version looks strong. It is closer to finished when the individual works and the series continue to work together.

This is where colour becomes a question of balance across a body of work, not only within a single frame. The relationships between the pieces become part of the composition.

We have written elsewhere about how bold colour can behave in an interior. During making, however, the question is more immediate: whether the colour relationships remain coherent as the work moves between conditions.

Painting changes the rhythm

We are also currently making painted work, and that changes the tempo of colour decisions.

With painting, the effect of different types of light is visible directly on the work. The surface responds in front of us. Shifts in daylight or artificial light do not have to be imagined through a display, then checked later in print. They can be observed as part of the making itself.

This creates a different flow in development, colour choices and decisions across bodies of work. A decision can be tested more immediately against the actual conditions in which the work is being seen. It does not make painting more authentic than digital work. It simply means the feedback arrives earlier. Digital work often requires translation through screen, mock-up and print before certain judgements become reliable. Painted work exposes light and material response more directly during the process.

The underlying judgement can be similar. The route to that judgement is different.

Knowing when colour is resolved

So when does colour feel resolved?

Not when it has been made neutral. Not when every tension has been removed. And not when it looks most persuasive in a single preferred view.

For us, colour feels closer to resolved when the relationships remain coherent as the conditions around the work change: on screen, in mock-up, in print, under shifting light, and, where relevant, across a series. Some decisions only become clear after translation. Some adjustments are small. Some affect contrast more than hue. Some are about the space between works rather than the colour inside one of them.

We have not, so far, found ourselves in meaningful disagreement about vibrance or colour choices. The work of resolution has been less about opposing tastes and more about shared attention: looking again, testing another condition, and noticing what still feels coherent.

Colour, in that sense, is less a finishing layer than a continuing judgement. It remains open for as long as the work is still moving between forms. And it begins to settle when those forms keep returning the same quiet answer: the relationships are still intact.

Continue

Explore the O collection.