Have you every thought about color as a tool? What is a tool anyway, but device used to make something happen. Well, isn't that what color is? Yet so many myths about color have been in circulation for far too
long.
COMMON MYTHS about COLOR LABELS
- Perhaps it's the ubiquitous coloring books, but too many folks regard color as just one thing and that's usually its hue. For example, "lemons are yellow", but look at the colors I found in this lemon.
- A "coke can is red", yet look how many colors I found in one coke can.
- Or "grass is green", yet I found four variations on green and at least one color that you might not label green.
Many artists call some colors muddy, but wait, these appear in nature everywhere. Here are a few colors I've seen called muddy.
BUT, every one of those colors appear in this scene.
AND THEN THERE ARE UGLY COLORS
How many times have you heard someone call a color ugly. I don't even know where to begin on this one. Why don't you fill in the blank--do you see any color
as ugly? Well, let's try three: what about these colors? Some would call them ugly--would you?
Richard Schmid used each of these several times in his painting, Diana's Maple
What's not a myth is that color is a tool, a device used to carry out a particular function. It has a hue--its name. That hue has the ability to become
several degrees of light to dark. That hue also has partner hues that can change it, including it's complement which can cause it to become several degrees of neutral, and each of those has potential for becoming several degrees of light or dark.
When we artists use the variations of this tool we call color, there are infinite possibilities for what it can do in our paintings. Look at all the variations in Schmid's painting above, and not one ugly or muddy color!
Have yourselves a spectacular weekend!
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