Real quick:
This part of the site has no colours in it. But it is NOT black and white. It is greyscale. Black and white art contains only two levels of intensity, and creates the illusion of variance through dithering techniques. Greyscale art, on the other hand, has three or more levels of intensity and acheives variance through shading. Pen art is black and white, pencil and chalk art is greyscale.
This is also different from monochrome. Monochrome means only luminance (brightness) values change, while chrominance (colouration) stays the same. Both black and white and greyscale are monochrome, but so's sepia (brown to amber), as well as old computer monitors that were black and green or black and orange, or the screen on a VirtualBoy which was black and red, a deadly combination.
Incidentally, there's no black at all on this site...the darkest colour is hex #1a1a1a, which may look black but has about 10% more luminance. I didn't want it to be bleak, just dim. I didn't want it to be evilskull. I brighten the shadows of photographs to bring them up to #1a1a1a before posting them, to match the site as close as possible. Pure white, #ffffff on your hexadecimal dial, I'll allow because there's always room for hope.
Posted by das at April 27, 2004 10:23 AM | TrackBack