Spectrum

One would think that the above spectrum is a pastel rendering, but it's a natural spectrum, the rainbow colours consisting of the three primary colours merging to secondary colours. The components of white light.
It appeared yesterday afternoon, cast by the sun rays at a given angle through the edge of a glass table top, which for about a minute, obviously acted as a prism.
I took the photograph at close range, from about twelve to fourteen cms distance, with an IPhone.

It looks like a pastel or opaque colour rendering because it was cast on the large dark grey blue tiles of the terrace. This makes it rather special, because although the projected rays of colour are naturally transparent, they completely dominate the dark surface as though the colours were opaque. If the surface were white, the colour values would be exactly the same, although they would appear less vivid.

This, for a water-colourist, seems magical. Because obviously it's impossible to obtain such total strength of primary and secondary colour using any transparent colour media on a dark surface.

This 'magic' may seem trivial to many people. Making such an allusion could be regarded as wasting time on banalities. No doubt there are experts who can, in so many words, explain how this surprising, complete, depth of projected, coloured rays that are nevertheless transparent, occurs vividly on dark surfaces.
One is also reminded of when Leonardo Da Vinci referred to the phenomenon of cast spectrums in his famous note books, ascertaining that their existence doesn't depend on human visual acknowledgment. Even the greatest of geniuses can be endearingly simple.

Yet seeing this little, momentary magic also came as another reminder of how beautiful our environment is. Is it not refreshing to gaze and ponder on such minute magic, just for a moment, and put aside the mind numbing madness of the epoch in which we live?

Text and images © Mirino. September, 2018