Loadstar 208/208.d81/t.spectrum

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  N A T U R E ' S    S P E C T R U M

            by Walt Harned


    For most of us the world is a
constant spectacle of color. If you
you take a hard look around, you will
notice it is very difficult to see
anything completely void of color. If
you take a second look and make a
careful study, what you are looking at
will become a dazzling display of
splendor.

    I admit on a slushy city street in
the dead of winter, one is hard put to
find the colors that fill the heart
with joy, but with a little effort a
person can get more out of life by
looking more closely at the way things
really are. For instance, look once
again at the dreary city scene.
Nowhere in nature can the exact color
of a child's rosy nose and cheeks be
found but right there where you see it
-- IF YOU TAKE THE TIME TO LOOK.

    Hundreds of years ago artists
classified colors as hot or cold. Red
was hot and blue was cold, the
temperatures varying in that manner
across the spectrum. Years later,
after perfecting thermometers,
scientists found this to be correct.
Shine a beam of light through a glass
prism it will refract the light into
all of the individual colors of the
spectrum. Each color's temperature can
then be measured, not in degrees, but
in length.

    I give my students a name to
remind them of the order that colors
are seen in the spectrum. You've
probably heard of the famous Roy G.
Biv. His name contains the first
letter of each color of the rainbow:

       Red,
        Orange,
         Yellow,
          Green,
           Blue,
            Indigo, and
             Violet.

    When you see color, you're
actually seeing reflected light. As
light strikes an object some of it is
absorbed and some is reflected to your
eyes. If we see something as red, that
is because all [but] red is absorbed
and only light in the red range of the
spectrum is reflected. If we see white
almost all the light is reflected.
Black objects absorb almost all of the
light striking it.

    We also see light as it passes
through transparent or translucent
objects. In this case color is
filtered out as it passes through.
The red in stained glass filters out
all the light except red so we see it
as red glass. This property of light
is very handy for everyone,
especially LOADSTAR and its color-
crazy editor. It's also handy for
protecting your eyes from harmful
violet light. If you see yellow or
orange glass then you know the violet
is filtered out. That's what you
need at the pool or beach on a sunny
day.

 [DAVE'S INTERJECTION:] Especially if
the yellow in the glass is Coors...

    When I came up with the idea of
these pictures depicting some of the
colors in nature, I had in mind bright
colored birds and flowers, but before
I made a trip to the zoo or the South
Sea islands I went bass fishing in a
local stream. I had caught some
"keepers" and was about to go back to
my studio when a scrappy little
sunfish attacked and snared himself on
my lure. When I saw the colors in that
little fish I changed my mind. My
backyard and the pet store was as far
as I needed to go. Here you have a
full spectrum of color from nature you
can see most any day.

    I started these pictures with
detailed drawings in pencil and felt
markers. The largest was 8"x10" the
smallest 5"x7". I then used a video
camera and Video Byte II with Super
Snapshot to produce Advanced OCP and
Koala Paint files. I then used the
techniques demonstrated in the past on
Walt's Workshops to fill in the little
pixels and colors.

    My message has always been: The
computer is a tool for artists. Anyone
can use it just as anyone can be an
artist. The only thing different about
using a computer rather than a brush
is that with the computer it's easier.
It's like having dozens of brushes
that never need to be cleaned. Take it
from Ol' Turpentine Walt, LOADSTAR'S
premier outhouse artist, that's a BIG
plus!

 WH

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

    With this slide show we are
pleased to announce the international
debut of a new poetic art form, the
Blingfester. Invented by Tom Hall,
former Softdisk editor, and tweaked
by Jim Weiler, Softdisk's Quality
Assurance guru, this new form of
poetry seems destined to overtake the
haiku in today's no-brow culture.
Indeed, students of the future will
wonder how we got along with only the
rigid seventeen-syllabled haiku to
work with in 9th grade English.

    All of the Blingfesters in the
slide show are in the classic single
mold; namely, they have the classic
single rhyme scheme:

    A  B  A  X

where X must not only refuse to rhyme
with A or B, it must have a jangly
rhythm and be a 100% non sequitur.

    As with all art forms, there are
variations to the theme.

 (a) Classic Siamese:

   A  B  A  X   C  D  C  Y

 (b) Classic Double:

   A  B  A  xx

 (c) Siamese Double:

   A  B  A  xx    C  D  C  Y

 (d) Double Siamese Double:

   A  B  A  xx    C  D  C  yy

 (e) Constant Siamese:

   A  B  A  X    A  B  A  Y

 (f) QuadQuint:

   A B A X  C D C X  E F E X  G H G Y

     xx and yy are TWO short non
sequiturs that take the place of one
line.  Of course they must have
nothing to do with each other (or the
rest of the poem).

    Since LOADSTAR is the first
publication to feature Blingfesters,
we feel we must provide the following
disclaimer:

 Softdisk cannot take responsibility
 for any lingual injuries caused by
 the X line being read out loud by
 an unprepared reader.

    We hope you enjoy the Blingfesters
and remember where you first heard
them.  Let us close with Dugym
Qycfyl's winning entry in Softdisk's
1989 Blingfester Contest.


            D e s e r t

    O blazing orb in azure sky,
      O endless miles of sand,
   O blasted stinging caddis fly,
 Avaunt dragon!  Who took my teeth?

     O waterhole of rancid mud,
    O tortured sun-burned back,
   O camels spewing spittle cud,
  Hail Elysium, the worn blanket.


 FT


 [DAVE'S LAST WORD:] This slide show
is all about color -- but the one
thing neither Walt nor Fender
mentioned is the color limitations of
the non-IFLI C-64 palette. Anyone can
produce art (of sorts), but it takes a
Walt Harned to use the extremely
limited palette of the VIC II and show
us all the colors of the spectrum.

 Since computer art in our popular
culture is tied to the latest
commercial consumer thing-a-ma-bob on
the WalMart shelf, we find precious
little appreciation of the "haiku of
visual poetry" -- Commodore
Multi-Color graphics. As with the
haiku (and the Blingfester), the
artist works within an exacting
environment. Since only a few pixels
can be used, nothing is wasted.

 Emulator users -- take a BitMap
snapshot of any of these works of Art
and put it up as your desktop
background. People [will] comment!

 DMM