Hot Spot, Cold Spot
Playing with Color
DESIGN 60 | Winter 2024
Overview
A pair of mosaic compositions, each comprised of 100 distinctly colored tiles.
Both panels contain the same 100 colors and differ only in their arrangement.
Hot: tiles are arranged radially outwards from most saturated to least saturated.
Cold: tiles are arranged radially outwards from lightest to darkest value.
MATERIALS: Acrylic paint, paper, double sided tape
TOOLS: Scissors, circle cutter, ruler, box cutter, brushes
TIMELINE: 1 week
Color Mixing
All 100 colors were mixed from 8 colors out of the tube:
Permanent Rose
Cadmium Red
Cadmium Yellow
Lemon Yellow
Cerulean Blue
Ultramarine
Titanium White
Mars Black
Process of creating color strips of various swatches.
Cutting Tiles
To cut the paint swatches into uniform tiles, I first used a 1.5” hole puncher to create circular tiles, then used scissors to cut each circle into quarters.
100 colors arranged by hue, from lightest to darkest.
Arranging Tiles
Next, I categorized the tiles into groups based on their relative value and intensity.
Tiles arranged into six main value categories, from light to dark. Converting the image to grayscale shows the relative lightness / darkness of each grouping.
I tested different tile arrangements but settled on creating 16 tangent circles, which showed the radial change in value / intensity better than other patterns.
Testing possible tile arrangements on a base grid.
