Sunday 18 October 2009

False Cobra, staring at clouds and Crème Brule.

Camouflage is used as a way of concealing colouration as a way for objects or organisms to go undetected in its surrounding environment. The word camouflage is thought to have come from the French camouflet, which loosely translates as “Smoke blown in someone’s face.”

Camouflage and its uses can be broken down into 4 main types, Cryptic, Disruptive, Mimicry and Countershading. As mentioned in my blog I like the idea of finding shapes and patterns amongst large blocks of colour and shapes, much like Military camouflage.

Cryptic camouflage is the most common, where an animal has the same base tones as its surroundings. Take a Great White shark for example, they have a white under belly and a blue shade for the top half meaning they are difficult to spot from both above and below.

Disruptive camouflage, unlike Cryptic is not intended to blend into the environment but usually involves bright eye catching colours, which are used to try and conceal or mask dimensions or features about the camouflaged object.

Mimicry camouflage is a when a organism wishes to appear as something different to potential pray or threats. Examples include the Titan Arum, a plant with the worlds largest unbranched inflorescence, emits the smell of rotting meat to attract Carrion flies for pollination. Also the Hooded Malpolon snake or the “False Cobra” imitates a Cobra when threatened by flaring its neck and hissing.

Countershading, also called “Thayers Law”, is the use of normally light colours on normally dark areas, and the use of normally dark colours and light areas, this removes some of the visual cues towards depth perception and can make the object appear flat.

Creating some form of camouflage pattern have it be thought out or randomised, can un earth wonderful shapes and patterns, similar to watching clouds and seeing Europe, a dog, a light bulb. I think this is an area I want to look into, creating large blocks of colour similar to camouflage and bus seats to highlighting shapes I create. With the topic being under the theme of “Food” I think that using some form of food to stain cloth or canvas is where I shall begin.

Image from:- http://godshammer.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/snake-charmer.jpg


xxx<3



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