Which Ones Move you?
ROYGBV, we all know it... red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Are those still the names you use today? Are you a simple color person or do you see them with a deeper expressive passion. My rainbow would be scarlet, tangerine, banana, jade, sapphire and orchid; or crimson, pumpkin, pineapple, emerald, azure and amethyst; or, well you get the point.
People are drawn to different colors. Some see the millions of shades of a color while others just see the simple pure color. There is a whole psychology to color theory. For example, purples are associated with royalty and creativity while reds are associated with passion and romanticism. Some people love the color orange and others can’t stand it. There’s no rhyme or reason, different personalities are drawn to different shades of the rainbow.
What are your favorite colors? What do they say about you? How do they make you feel? Mine are purple, teal and coral; but I have to say I really love the whole spectrum at different times for different purposes. You may love certain colors for your home amd others for clothes. I am personally drawn more to soft muted colors over bright and bold when it comes to decor. And, although I love when I see a bright turquoise or dark chocolate brown on someone’s wall, I don’t think I could be that striking in my own space. I’d like to think I could be that brave, but I always fall back on soft, neutral colors. They give me a sense of serenity, peacefulness and quiet that I like to live in. When it comes to fashion, I will definitely pick up a scarlet red sweater or a lime green necklace because they are fun and I don’t have to live in them everyday.
“Color is only color when it's next to color” was another quote I learned from a teacher back in the day. A particular shade of red will look different depending on what color it is next to or surrounded by. It wil also appear differently in different light. Color changes, color is subjective, color is beautiful, color makes a statement or can evoke a feeling. Color changes with light as well. It’s not just ROYGBV, it’s millions of colors. Nutritionists say eat your colors everyday, I say live them!
Trying to Teach My Son the Difference
I recently found this piece of writing I did over ten years ago. My son was writing an English assignment for school about this amazing sunset we witnessed on a drive. His story went something along the lines of, “It was the coolest sunset I ever saw with lots of bright colors and big clouds.” (It was longer than a sentence, but you get the point.) I told him he should try to be more creative and rework it using adjectives and feelings to describe it so that someone else could imagine seeing it. He responded, “No I’m good, I like it, it’s finished.”, so I wrote this to show him what I was talking about.
"It may have been a night in January, but it didn’t feel like it one bit. We were driving down to Princeton to attend a drum circle with our son. It was a crystal clear night and the temperature was unseasonably warm. The evening’s sky became the most beautiful canvas of color and texture I had ever seen. The old masters would have been in awe. The colors of the sky were indescribable. As the sun started to go down glowing swirls of bright cream and ivory streamed through the low dark clouds. The colors began changing to soft shades of pink and orange that looked like the colors of a slightly unripe peach and the amazing clouds added large and small fluffy white forms. The linear white streaks criss-crossing the sky from airplanes looked as if the pilots had been playing tic-tac-toe.
As the soft winds became a little stronger, the clouds started moving more intensely and the large cotton candy like puffs now had underbellies of vibrant pinks, lavenders and blues. What made the sky even more incredible was seeing it through the landscape as the sun went down. As it became darker the trees became silhouettes of thick and thin spider web meshes along the horizon. The sky turned into an electric highway of lava-like rivers streaming into and around the clouds and the colors reflected off large office building windows resembling mirrors of fire. The whole sky was so bright and vivid, even I as an artist and painter myself, could not imagine ever reproducing them on a canvas and no photograph could do them justice.
As the sunset ended and the colors began to fade into the horizon, they transformed into electric blues and violets ranging from cerulean to ultramarine. And then, just like that, it was gone. If you walked outside at that moment, you would have had no idea what you missed, there were no traces of it left in the sky.
I’ve seen many sunsets before in my lifetime, the ones where the actual sun going down along the horizon was the focal point. Tonight I never saw the sun at all, but the colors above us created by that molten ball of fire in the universe were the most beautiful I had ever seen in my life."
When my son finished reading my version, he was like, “Wow Mom that was awesome. It really explained what we saw in the sky.” Then as he walked upstairs he turned and said to me, “Thanks, but I’m going to leave mine alone, it’s fine.”
