Halation is Not Magic, rather it’s…

A pile of color swatches were placed in front of us and we were told to organize them. We slid the paper color squares around on the table, trying to find relationship. As we would learn, we were ordering families of color. Each array was made up of two parent colors and their children.

Once arranged, the steps, from one color to the next is perfect step — a proportional mix or blend of the parent colors.

Color harmony, often considered intuitive, can be hacked.

A great insight occurred when my teacher held in his hand three cards.

Only two colors were visible.

The red (more of an orange-red), behind the yellow.

Two cards were visible, red (more of a “red-orange-red”) and yellow (more of an “orange-yellow”).

As if teaching the rules of a card game, my professor leaned in to show me his hand.

Then, he slowly dragged the top yellow card away, revealing an orange card in the middle, and something astounding occurred: I saw trails of color.

As the top card dragged slowly to the right to reveal the middle orange, I saw halation for the first time

I nearly jumped out of my chair.

A color gradient appeared across the middle orange— almost like it now had a depth of dimension. The middle card was a solid color, a perfect blend of the two outside parent colors. It seemed to animate, leaving a visual halo of the surrounding colors.

The color of the card couldn’t be changing. The glow was happening in my eyes.

Colors began to vibrate beyond themselves. They seemed to be aware of each other and become luminous.

How do solid colors appear three 3 dimensional? Where does this gradient come from?

Each color below is in relationship. In the animation below, the outside parent colors of magenta and green-yellow make seven equal steps of color color between them. The 7 children are solid color, but appear to be much more. That glow is halation.