Art-as-data
The worst nightmare of a painter is over-working paint to the point of becoming mud. When two colors are mixed the color mixture can vary from one side to the other. Too blue? Add a different color. When a third is added to the mixture of two you have two mixtures mixing at the same time. It is an impossible equation. In practice, nevertheless, it is done all the time.
The "gray area" is where three colors overlap. It is important to remember that painting is not the science of light, of the spectrum of colors produced by a crystal prism, “refraction” as scientists say. When the three primary colors of the visible spectrum are projected so as to overlap, white results, where the three combine.
Not so, when the three primary colors are combined as oil paint. Where three primary oil paint colors overlap the result is literally gray, in the sense of neutral. The maximum strength of each paint hue neutralizes that of the other. Because two of the three primary colors (of paint) are “warm,” they overrule the one “cool” color. The "gray" area, figuratively speaking, would be better described as brown.
Thus, “mud.” Mud brown. I would not be so rash, at this point, as to dismiss the matter of "mud" as artistically unworthy. Kids love primary colors. Appreciation for fine shades of meaning comes with maturity. Meaning, here, is ontological. It has an implicit order, is a moment in a series, and is all-but-forgotten in the step-by-step artistic process.
An analyst of the meaning of any given existential moment must infer the steps leading to the present state. Philosophically, the implications are unlimited. For art, the complexity can be diminished by computer programs. Artists tend to be right-brained, while computer programmers tend to be left-brained, and neither tend to mix. With the Graphic User Interface (GUI) common to all personal computers, plus a little patience, both can now meet -and mingle.
One application of computing to art is the Simple Limited Iteration Cluster program. It treats color as data, as pixels. It can find and compare two pixels of the same description in a haystack of millions and millions. A SLIC program connects the disparate dots, or pixels. Like a bell curve of any data a typical, or “standard,” cluster of data emerges.
The gray area of likeness, the statistical “mean,” is never imposing. It is neutral in both color (hue) and lightness (tone), but will tend one way or the other depending on quantity of paint used by the painter. Painters call this over-all cast the picture's “local” color. It is what a decorator will go by to pick-and-choose items of a general design theme, of how a painting will “look” over the sofa.
Over-simplifying the meaning of mud is not intended to demean the subject. Artists are typically unable, or unwilling, to articulate how (and why) they do what they do. The computer offers a tool for making the minute distinctions artists prefer to perform than talk about. It can tell artists more about their own work than they desire to know.