Narrative, Entry 2.

As the final video game I will cover on this blog for the foreseeable future, Dear Esther is a game that is positively dripping with emotional subtext, themes of loss, death and loneliness are perpetual companions throughout the game, as soon as the game starts, the barren, long abandoned lighthouse sits cold and desaturated in the fog around the jetty, a Lighthouse unable to shine its light makes for a powerful initial composition.

The lighting chosen for the game is every overcast, dreary day rolled into one. flicks of blue sky barred from breaking the gloom by thick misty clouds. There is a sorrowful quality to the image in its desaturated hues and dreary palette.

The objective of the players journey, the radio tower in the distance on the far side of the island puts emphasis on these feelings, from the abandoned buildings, we can see the solitary red light atop the tower, as lonely as the player, and the players inevitable destination. The bright red accent really stands out against the dreariness of the environment, acting to mirror the players solitary presence on the island. Through just the use of colour, the sorrowful nature of the eventually revealed story is palpable right from the second the game begins.

Narrative, Entry 1.

The mood or 'narrative' of colour composition relates to the human connotations to certain colours and how they are used by an artist to add subtext to what the audience is witnessing.

for example, a character bathed in blue light is more likely to seem sad or lonely than a character well lit by midday sun, This is because we sometimes associate the colour blue with sadness and lonliness, a solitary figure under soft blue light connects the dots in our minds for us.

Conversely, We have natural responses to colour as well as emotional responses. For example, Bright vivid accents of hue's like red or orange tend to denote danger. toxic/dangerous animals use this colour in the wild, and we are conditioned to feel alarm when we encounter these hues when used correctly. Another Association to red and orange is of course fire, a truly primal fear. A character standing alert in a corridor with red lights flashing on and off overhead obviously denotes danger or a need to defend or escape the situation (the fight or flight response.)

Complementary to these 'alert' responses to colour, human beings also have positive or calming responses to colour, for example, Green is a colour that instinctively signifies safety and calm. From our tree dwelling ancestors, we have inherited a 'calm' response to shades of green.

Artists can use these responses to colour to impart additional contextual information about the emotional state of characters or the nature and 'mood' of a newly introduced environment.

With the principle explained, it's time for some examples.

Proportion, Entry 3.

For my final entry on colour proportion, I want to examine the PSN title Outland.

In outland, the player controls a nameless man whom can utilize two separate powers to fight evil. The game's foreground is entirely silhouetted and the game has a very visually dark tone to it.

What's interesting in Outland is the use of the powers. as the player progresses, they gain the ability to embody either the blue or red power, Blue power is needed to kill red enemies, and vice versa.

It's really cool how generally only tiny, very bright amounts of colour are used, and their use is entirely functional navigation. Just as accent colours in a painting lead the eye around the image, the colour use in Outland is used to immediately impart information pertinent to your survival, info like;

There is an enemy over there (signified by the small, but very bright colour accent)
That enemy is red (signified by the hue of the enemy)
I need to use blue to kill it. (deduced from the assessment of the monsters allignment.

Thus, Outland manages to use very small accents to direct a player, just as artists direct a viewer.

Interestingly, tiny, bright accents of saturated hue are turned on their head during boss battles, massive creatures glow and fill the screen with colour energy, which after running around in the dark for so long, really impresses on the player the strength and importance of the boss character, thereby imparting some narrative components as well.

Proportion, Entry 2.

For my first study of colour proportion, I will be taking a look at a piece of work by Alphonse Mucha, Namely, 'Job Cigarettes'.

An interesting constant in much of Mucha's work are the warm, honey-like hues Mucha uses not only for skin, but also spill into the aesthetic elements of the posters construction, this can be seen in the boarder patterning and the characters hair.

This honey toned dominant colour is the focus of my initial observations on the piece, The amber yellow hue is clearly the dominant hue in the scene, and whilst it doesn't highlight a focal point in the way an accent would, it uses its large surface coverage to encourage the viewer to explore the details and intricacies of the woman's hair and face. Natural investigation of her features and form inevitably draw the viewer to the cigarette in her hand, the point of the advertisement.

To make the cigarette a focal point, one way to do so may have been to desaturate the whole image, and have the cigarette glow a saturate red colour, or perhaps darken the scene and make the cigarette the light source. Mucha does neither, instead, his subtle method of 'leading' the viewer around the scene bring the message home when Mucha decides you're ready for it.

Mucha has accomplished half his job by now, he has established the cigarette as the theme and motif of the advertisement, all we need to know now is the brand. Mucha accomplishes this simply by using a green font, complementary to the purple hue of the background. Interestingly, Mucha leaves nothing to chance here either, as if you saw the cigarette in the woman's hand, you saw the trail of smoke winding its way up to the lettering for Job's cigarettes, leading you home and earning Mucha his very well deserved pay.

This piece is interesting as it doesn't use accent's to grab the viewer right away, it instead uses the vastness of the dominant hues to lead you to the focal point. I find it interesting that there are so many different (and very well thought out) ways to direct the audiences attention around your image.

Colour Proportion, Entry 1.

Colour proportion refers to the amounts of each hue from the colour palette is used in the overall composition. Generally, there are three defined applications for colour in relation to proportion, These are;

1. Dominant colours
2.Sub Dominant Colours
3. Accent colours.

In this order. Usually, an image has a Dominant colour that has the majority coverage within the piece. (A good example is the red room in The Dessert: Harmony in Red by Matisse, which I covered previously here)

The dominant colour helps to control the overall effect of the image, for example, a nighttime scene may have a dark blue dominant colour, to keep the scene's night time setting consistent. Whilst other colour will occur in the scene, even potentially very bright colour, the dominant colour will maintain the setting or 'mood' of the scene overall.

Sub dominant colours are now introduced into an image primarily to describe areas of interest. Sub dominant colours tend to still hold a sizable amount of area coverage within the image, but are always a decent amount smaller than the dominant colours. Their smaller quantity makes sub dominant colours good for highlighting areas of interest for the viewer. For example, our night time setting of dark blue hues may have a small town bathed in yellow light, the area is considerably smaller than the large amount of blue hues in the scene, but the fact it is smaller and different from the blue hues makes it an area of interest and attention.

Finally, Accent colours are colours with vastly contrasting aspects to the colours already present in the image. Be it a saturation contrast, a value contrast, or simply a contrast of hue. These areas of colour are very small, designed to jump out of the image and grab the viewers attention first. The viewer is drawn the the area of highest visual contrast, the accent is designed to fill that role and control the most important focal points and the order they are perceived and read by the audience. Going back to our imaginary image of the small town at night, this could be a lone tree in the town center, with a small, well light shot of bright green leaves, contrasting the blue hues of night around the outside of town, and the yellows of the town itself.

Without well considered Colour proportion, a composition runs the risk of being boring, or bombarding the viewer with too much information at once.

it is especially important in images using Triadic or Tetradic colour palettes, as the large number of strong complimentary hues can cause undesirable clashes in the image, or produce a jumbled mess of colours without proper consideration of which of the strong hues should be dominant.

With the principle of colour proportion explained, let's look at some examples in the next couple of posts.

Saturation, Entry 3.

In my final post on saturation, I want to examine some screenshots from a game called 'Flower', it is by Thatgamecompany.

Flower is an exploration typed game, although very open ended and dreamlike in nature. the player controls a single flower petal, and through tilting the ps3 controller, the player is able to exert wind force on the petal, blowing it around. As you navigate the area, the petal coming in contact with other flowers and grass has an effect on the landscape, it is this transitional effect that I want to highlight.

Here, we can see the path of the petal, followed by petals from other flowers the player has encountered. We can see the grey and desaturate surroundings untouched by the petal's influence, also. Through travelling through the world, the player brings saturation and visual interest to an environment that originally has next to none.

This is interesting, as the creation of saturate areas becomes an objective and reward for the player, in and of itself.

The saturation, as it is restored to the scene, gives the visuals a feel of familiarity to the player, Nature is 'not' desaturate, it is colourful and vivid, even in simple green plant life, the shades and hues of green are myriad and varied. The desaturate world, before the petal begins its work of transforming it, is a somewhat uncanny representation of nature, we know the shapes and forms, but the lack of saturation seperates the world of 'Flower' from what we know nature should be.

Interestingly, as the game advances, we begin to see more and more of another kind of world, namely, the human world.

A visual theme is made as nature encounters civilization. even when touched by the petal's influence, the man made environs change little, they become a little brighter and cleaner, but really, the mundane is inseperable from the structures. The player works around this, weaving colour and nature amongst the man made structures.

It's very impressive that the game is able to tell a story just through the use of saturation, and in tandem, the lack of saturation. Just as images use contrasting saturation levels to impart information and draw our attention to various parts of its composition. 'Flower' uses this same device to draw its open ended narrative to a close. 'Flower' is in my opinion, the embodiment of the power of colour and the understanding of it, and what we are able to do when we fully understand its application and implementation.

Saturation, Entry 2.

Taking a break from 'professional' works and AAA video game's for this entry, I want to focus on a free, independently made game by a internet user known only as 'Mortis Ghost'. The game, originally released only in French, has garnered much acclaim for its atmospheric style and intriguing art direction.

The game's name is 'Off'.

Here we can see a screenshot of the battle screen. The player controls a mysterious character called 'the batter', and is accompanied by an even more enigmatic, apparently somewhat sentient object known as 'Alpha' (the spherical ring, also pictured right.)

Across from the players team, on the left we see some randomly encountered enemies. What is interesting in this screen, and in the game overall, is the use of saturation for the purpose of representation. The batter is dropped into this world with the task of 'purifying' it. Of particular note is that the player character is completely desaturated and monochromatic. As he succeeds in purifying each zone of the games world, the zones lose their colour entirely, and become white too.

With this in mind, it is curious to see that the enemies in this world are also monochromatic. This brings up contradictions and questions in the viewer as they play. Is your character somehow affiliated with the strange monsters he battles?

Colour is treated as the overarching enemy of the batter, He seeks to purify the world and remove that colour, however the enemies he faces are not colourful themselves. this draws questions on the Batters real motivations.

As the game draws towards the end, it is revealed that the batter is somehow connected to the controlling inhabitant of the world. 'The Queen' of all he has fought is his wife, after defeating her, he ventures to the core of the world, where he finds what is implied to be his infant son. the player is then forced into a combat screen and must fight the child, it offers no resistance and is killed. The official ending has the batter heading to the back of the room, and despite his guides insistence that what is happening is wrong, the batter flips a switch, turning off the light. The game then ends.

It becomes apparent that the batter chose to eliminate everything in the world, the people in it, the colour, even the light, and shut everything down. The story seems to indicate the breakdown of a marriage through its diologues, but that is largely unimportant in this post.

The use of colour is interesting in 'Off' because the symbolism of saturate colour changes as you play, 'purification' initially sounding to be a noble goal, is in fact the annihiliation of all, good or bad. Saturation starts to seem less of a bad thing or something to defeat.

Another interesting theme in terms of the desaturation of the purification process, is that purified zones are not free from enemies. if anything, the enemies that inhabit areas the batter has already purified are even more grotesque than those in the regions of colour.

Enemies encountered in a 'purified zone'.

I find it interesting that different saturation values become 'characters' themselves in 'Off', and are symbolic of a powerful emotional journey that often takes reams of dialogue to tell.

Saturation, Entry 1.

Saturation.

Saturation is essentially the measurement of vividness of a hue. The range of saturation runs from the absolute 'pure' Hue all the way down to neutral grey, which is fully desaturated.

Saturation is often used to create contrast in a manner similar to the application of value (covered in Value, Entries 1 to 3) in that a very saturated colour is placed adjacent to a very desaturated colour.

A good (if slightly obvious) example of saturation contrast is the infamous use of red in 'Schindler's List.'

Here we see a little girl wearing a red coat, against an otherwise completely desaturated background. The film is about the holocaust and there are very in depth analysis of the film out there online, I'm not going to make a massive post detailing the use of colour and its meaning here, I simply want to show how drastic the use of saturation as contrast can be.

The above image of course is a clear example of both major uses of saturation, in that not only does it show how saturation levels can contrast themselves for effect, it also shows how saturation is used to create focal points within a scene.

Here's an example.

This is from the video game 'De Blob'. We our attention is immediately commondeered by the only colourful aspect of the scene, the character of blob himself. The game itself happens to be entirely about a colourful character restoring vibrancy and saturated colour to an otherwise grey world. Interestingly, this can also be turned on its head.

(Forgive my hokey Photoshop)

We can see that the effect is the same with a singular or small use of desaturation in an otherwise colourful composition, the item that does not conform stands out clearly.

With the concept of saturation and how it is used summarized, I can begin some entries to study the usage of saturation in composition by some professionals.

Value, Entry 3.

For my third and final value entry, I want to look at a piece of concept art from the game Batman: Arkham City. It's a personal favorite game of mine, both for its immersive atmosphere and its stunning visuals.

Here we can see a couple of interesting approaches to the use of value as a descriptive device. initially, of course, we can see that physical details of the scene are described entirely in dark shades. Our key focal point of course being batman himself. He stands silhouetted by a lighter background, with a tiny amount of bounce light on the semi glossy material of his cowl. He's very much embodying his mantle of 'dark knight' in this scene, and this of course is important when conveying the mood of not only the setting and environment, but the character himself, as well.

We can also see various buildings and features like chimneys dotted around, each placed to be explored by the viewer as they digest the scene.

In tandem with these dark shades, we can see the artist has used light tints of colour to create the 'atmosphere' of the scene. rather than use dark negative space (as Degas did in my previous post), it is evident that despite being a night time scene, the expected value system has been flipped on its head, the night sky described in murky orange light pollution.

This leads in to the other interesting use of value here, the almost emissive glows found in the air. The artist is using tints to express atmospheric effects like rain and smog. This is excellent for building the muggy, murky scene we can see and a thematic placement to describe the nature of the city itself. Gotham being a notoriously crime infested city of polluted morals. Dotted about, we can see various tinted focal points, like fires atop chimneys, and the search lights from the lurking airships, the symbol of an onlooking authority with an air of powerlessness. The ships are not down amungst the chaos, they simply watch from afar, echoing the lack of control Gotham cities police force seems to have. Finally, our other major focal point. From batman being one of the darkest features of the scene and our main point of interest, the secondary focal point is the large beacon atop the police station. the usual means of calling Batman, and an interesting contrast being a device associated entirely with light, being used to summon a character exclusive to the darkness.

Value, Entry 2.

For my second assessment of value, I have chosen to take a look at a piece by the impressionist painter Edgar Degas, 'The Millinery Shop'.

We are presented with a scene that is almost entirely described with value. Very little of the pure hue's can be found, save for the brim of a hat and a little on the blue bow on the lower hat at the center bottom of the screen. It is clear Degas has used value to express dimension and depth within the scene, with the dark background cast heavily in shadow, with a bight column to break the dark sector of the image and add tertiary interest. It is also clear that Degas has used this heavily shadowed background area as the framing device for his first focal point. The darkness spills out just enough to create a clear black boarder around the shape of the women's face. Her pale skin creating an area of high value contrast between the dark and light tones. A similar framing device is used on the hat to the farthest left, where we have very bright tints on the lit side of the hat, and significantly darker shades of the base hue to express the light occluded surfaces of the hat and its decoration.

It is easy to see that the light source in this image is to the far right, apparently off screen. What is interesting is the light seems to be lower on the horizon line as the brightest area seems to be the corner of the desk. Moving from this point up to the pure black shades at the top of the room, notably the top left, with nothing to break that region of shade, We can see that the light direction forms a neat gradient, giving the appearance of a scene with strong tonal values, yet evenly lit enough to make out everything Degas wishes us to see. To further this notion of a diagonal lighting gradient, from bottom right to top left, The woman's form is assisting the elevated hats in casting soft shadows across the table, steadily getting darker as the hats come together to obscure more light, keeping the tonal gradient I have identified consistent.

Also interesting to note is that only objects of importance are given the benefit of both sufficient lighting, and sufficient detail and attention from the artist. The hats in the light are meticulously labored over, with the light on the bows and decorations of particular note and effort on Degas part. However, we see that the hats entirely cast in shadow are shown almost no attention at all, one having just a few lines to express form and the other, more shadowed hat being little more than a muddy reddish sphere.

The scene seems to be a study of value itself, to Degas, only that which is visible with sufficient light is relevant to the overall aesthetic of the image, and all that really needs labored representation.

Value, Entry 1.

Value, Tint's and Shades.

Value, or tone is essentially the modification of pure hues by mixing either black or white with that hue. This will creates 'tints' in cases where increments of white are mixed with the pure hue, and 'Shades' when increments of black are mixed with the pure hue.

This is done to create tonal variance. Tonal variances are used to express many things in a composition, but practically speaking, they are most commonly used to denote where light and shadow occur within a scene.

A good example of value is this piece of work by Daniel Graffenberger, sourced from the website conceptships.blogspot.co.uk

We can see that the artist has used value to define the forms of his structures in this piece. Dark shades are used to occlude areas from light, for example the tight seam lines between metal panels on the ships in the foreground. We also see that light is not able to directly reach the underside of the ships hull for the most part, so darker shades of the base colours are used there, too. Still examining the ships, we see that tints are used rather sparingly, picking out little more than the odd highlight on the metal surfaces, notably the cockpit. Other than that, we can see small lights and painted symbols stand out due to light tints.

What's really interesting about the piece is also the fact that the background is well lit, bathed in light, whilst the foreground is shadowed somewhat. This changes up the standard formula for staging a scene like this and really brings interest to the layout. the piece encourages your eyes to explore the shadowed areas for all their little details, whilst the bright background neatly outlines the focal points, the ships, in a scene that would otherwise be a metal against metal mess of greeble details,

Hue, Entry 5.

Triadic colour composition.

Triadic compositions tend to be very vivid, even if the colours are heavily shaded or desaturated, the clash of the 3 equidistant hues is very difficult to subdue. With that in mind, I thought it would be best to examine a piece that celebrates that vivid nature.

This is 'The Dessert: Harmony in Red' by Henri Matisse.

This particular work is a bit of a brain buster for me. We're trained to dissect images in a way as to ascertain what the aim of the artist was in the making of it. To find the focal points and understand how the artist made them so. Matisse's image defies me here in that regard. There is no clear focal point. We have a character, whom has a unique colour palette to the rest of the scene, but her flat hues identical to the world she inhabits makes her very much a part of the wallpaper than anything.

With no clear motive to be found just yet, I look at the colours themselves for help. We have our Triadic cohorts all in place, A dominant colour taking control of the image, just as theory suggests. Red has a complete stranglehold on the image, it's very hard to get away from. off to the left we find a sizable quadrant of green, which we know to be complementary to red. Then, finally, a much leaner strip of blue takes the top section of the left hand window. However, blue is apparently not contained to the 'outside world' of this scene, The wallpaper and tablecloth both have the same pattern, and use it in large amounts when all is added together.

It now dawns on me that although I have no focal point, nor much of any visual direction at all, That perhaps colour 'itself' could be the point of the work. it is apparent there is next to no tone, value or changes in saturation whatsoever. The entire image is a garish celebration of colour, and to a similar extent, pattern.  The whole world of this image is built of hue, shape, and little else. The living character in the scene is nothing but shapes herself, and is as inconsequential to the world she exists in as one of the pieces of fruit on the table.

What is also interesting is the correlation between the two environments of the settings and their pattern based connotations. We see cool shades of green and blue outside, and hot reds and yellows inside. The patterns on the walls and tablecloth is inspired by natural forms, namely vines and leaves. the pattern shares its hue with the natural shades and colour temperature of the outside world, the subject matter it imitates. This is done despite the obvious clash of red and blue for an interior.

In the distance, out of the window, we can see another building, this one a slightly pinkish shade of red, again, the warm colours seem to reside in spaces of civilization or human habitation. The cool colours are colours of nature in this instance, and stay in their place.

This draws us to the common element between the two 'worlds'; The fruit.

The fruit is a bright yellow, attention grabbing even against the tide of red paint. We see fruit scattered on the table, apparently being placed there by the maid. But we also see fruit out of the window, scattered on the ground in a disorganized manner.

From this, we find that fruit is a connection between human beings, and nature. it is present in both environments.

The fruits bright yellow grabs attention in the scene, but not before everything else. The scene upon first viewing is a big multi colour slap in the face, hitting you with everything at once and not giving the chance to 'read' it clearly. This I feel was Matisse's intention.

The fruit connecting both worlds has another interesting link. Another entirely yellow form in the scene happens to be the window frame of the room.

It could be argued that a window also serves as a link or portal to that other world. The window allows mankind to see out and experience nature, whilst safe in their artificial environment. In the same way fruit connects them to its source, the window brings man back to the outside world.

I believe Matisse intends to send the audience on a journey when reading this piece, and rather than as modern works often do, simply ask you to follow the order of significance or connect the dots, Matisse wants the viewer to take in and inspect every element of the work before the answer is revealed to you.

I don't know if my answer is right, but I do 'have' an answer, now. Without value, tone, or saturation, I have been lead through an image and had the meaning made clear to me, and with pure hue alone, I find that truly masterful.

Hue, Entry 4.

Analogous colours.

The next colour configuration I need to cover is analogous colours.

Analogous hues are essentially neighboring hues on the colour wheel, so for example, Red, Orange and Yellow, or Blue, Blue-Green and Green.

The example I want to assess for this topic is not a piece of traditional art, but is rather the title screen from a favorite game of mine, one I have recently replayed.

This is the title screen from the independent video game 'Braid'. Here, we see analogous hues used together to create an initially harmonious image. The analogous hues sit together and use their interstitial hues to merge in and out of each other, creating a soft, almost dream like vision. We can clearly see of course, that the scene is far from harmonious, however, but this is caused by the ominous presence of thick black used to add mystery and a primal sense of the unknown to the image. This I found interesting, as the usual application of the analogous palette is for creating calm, serene images that're very soft on the eye. This softness is from the lack of complimentary hues that battle for focus, or the strong focal point control of a split complementary colour layout. However, the artist has used black and a high contrast to create that conflict, allowing for the re-purposing of a serene, dream like colour set up to create danger or at the very least, unease.

Another interesting note on the usage of the heavy set black tones in the image is that they transform the composition itself. were the background of the scene consistant in their tonal values and hue, the scene would appear to be an idyllic, golden sunset or afternoon scene, however, the black cloud like strokes bearing down on the background from the top of the image give the city and its amber tints an emissive quality, as if the golden hues do not saturate the setting, but are projected FROM the scene. The logical assumption from this interpretation are not that the scene is a glorious golden sun illuminating the buildings, but rather that the buildings themselves illuminate the scene, the oranges and reds bring us to a final, more grim conclusion, that the city itself is on fire.

These final observations deviate from the subject of pure hue somewhat, and are evidence that to assess the colour composition of an image, I need to move on to my next subject, 'Value'. This shall be posted after a somewhat lengthy post on a triadic composition.

Hue, entry 3.

This will be my third entry on the use of hue in composition.

In my last entry, I attempted to glean the intent behind the use of hue in Pablo Picasso's 'The Old Guitarist'.
as mentioned, the piece features a simple blue-orange complementary colour composition, However, the power of the use of hue, even with an apparently simple combination, is undeniable.

With the use of basic complementary colour schemes established, I will now cover Spit complementary schemes, use of only analogous colours in building a composition, and finally triadic colour palettes.

Split complementary schemes are a very effective way of limiting your usage of hue (to control focal points and increase scene readability),Whilst keeping a third, highly contrasting hue reserved for picking out certain key features and details of your image.

Today, the first image I would like to discuss is a piece of cartoon work from Hanna-Barbera's 'Yogi Bear'.

It takes little work to assess the split complementary hues in this image. The green within the shade is abundant, and the dominant hue. Sitting across from green on the colour wheel is red, which we see most vividly in the small flowers dotted about the base of the large tree in the background. Sitting between red and green on the colour wheel, are increment hues that are represented in many places throughout the scene, We see the large tree is a very desaturated and tinted reddish pink, we see darker areas of green that tilt towards red and red-orange, a good example being the small smattering of wild grass beneath the character on screen, and some of the leaves in the tree at the top right.

With the complementary hues identified, and their range spoken for, we can turn out attention to the product of the split complementary, in this case, green has been split to provide us a final hue to work with, we find the central character and focal point of the scene is blue, a hue sharing its cool temperature with the green it was split from.

The 'complementary range' as I've found myself calling it, (namely the complementary hues and their increments of combination to produce the varied greens and reds in the scene) all work to provide depth and atmosphere in the scene, establishing forms, scene depth (even in simplified cartoon space) and items of tertiary interest (the tree and little flowers particularly). All of this is staging for the character and focal point of the scene, whom is constructed primarily from various shades of blue, some dipping slightly into green a little for variety.

Hue. Entry 2.

With the basics of hue's properties explained, the next step is to establish how these base colours are implemented and combined in a composition.

To begin my study of professional usage of colour, I have chosen to examine a work by Pablo Picasso. The work is called 'The Old Guitarist', It is a classic example of his 'blue period' works.

To begin with, we can see that the composition is a classic blue/orange composition, blue and orange being opposites on the colour wheel, we know that this image is a standard complimentary composition.. the sea of blue permeating the image sedates the details and layout of the scenes architecture, Whilst the powerful orange of the guitar draws the eye to the only truly warm colour available to the viewer. The complimentary colours push against each other creating a very clear focal point in the body of the guitar itself. Despite the fact the hierarchy of human attention puts areas of high contrast far above simple hue variations, the bright highlights of the old mans head and arms seem almost secondary for attention to the warm orange hues of the guitar.

Also of note is the ground, pictured in the scene as a muddy mixture of the blue's and oranges that comprise the majority of the scene. The ground also appears to be orange, however the cold blue of the scene spills into it, producing a murky, greenish orange shade that does little to offer the scene more warmth, a clear intention in achieving the melancholy composition Picasso was fixated with at the time.

Also interesting are the greenish tones found in the old man's skin. I assume this is done to show that the warmth of the guitar's orange was once present in some form in the mans skin, but is now all but extinguished  by the blue.

This seems to me to be a form of telling story exclusively with colour. The guitar could represent many things,  warmth, love, life... a myriad of comforting and hopeful aspects of the mans life, it seems however, that the blue bleeding through everything in the image is telling the story of a man whom has lost these things. He seems cold, and hopeless, the orange glow of warmth and light dying away from his skin, and even the ground he sits upon. The man is becoming a part of the background. All that retains its colour is the lasting symbol of those things he has lost, the guitar, which is impervious to these changes, being inanimate.

The deduction that the man is sad and has seen better days doesn't take an academic to reach, the pose of the character and his appearance and attire can tell something of this story, but to me, a lot of the context and 'back story' of the image and character would be utterly lost should the hue be removed.