The secret behind Andy Warhol's wonderful images is the way he plays with color. In the image above, Warhol is playing with the "camouflage" pattern. The original pattern and color can be seen in the upper left panel. When he changes the color of the original camoflouge design, a different feeling and response is evoked from the audience.
In the original design, with the green and brown colors, the intent was to have the person wearing the design blend in with a natural environment, so that people and animals do not see the person. So the colors chosen for this specific camouflage reflects colors one would normally see in nature; for example, green for trees, brown for dirt. But once Warhol changes the colors to blue, green, and pale yellow, the image that is produced in the viewer's mind is no longer one of forestry nature, but rather, a cold wintry one. Therefore, if someone was to wear this camouflage, it would not be in a forest of any type, but probably in a snowy place.
But if Warhol changed the colors even more, for example, using the bright pink and yellow colors he chose for the bottom left one, the camouflage design becomes useless for anything related to the environment. Bright pink is not a casual nature color. Therefore, this design would probably work more as a decorative design.
One of the tricks with color that Warhol manipulates in design (as so does the original camouflage design) is the optical mixture concept. This concept asserts that when colors are places closely together multiple times, our perception blurs the two colors together, causing us to process that mixed color, rather than perceiving each color individually. With the creation of the original camouflage, that was the intention. If soldiers were to wear the camouflage design in the forest, hopefully the enemy's eyes would fall into that trick and not see the soldier.
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