I loved the responses to last month's crusade! I found it totally interesting to learn how you respond to the season with your color choices. Some of you love to have change, and some are die-hards for their go-to palettes. Really fascinating don't you think? Thank you for contributing to the conversation with your posts. The observations and reflections on the way we think and work are part of understanding our own process. This month we are going to continue with color.
As the banner states, when messing around with paint we often end up with mixes - that can either happen on a wet page, or maybe it happens right on your palette as you blend to find the right color. Maybe it occurs when you use a dirty brush - love when THAT happens. You pick up a brush that has a little bit of this and a little bit of that on it and you dip it into a third thing and stroke it across the page for a miraculous combination you couldn't repeat if you tried. Let's look at all those gorgeous blends - and give them a name!
Here's what made me think of this one - last fall we were ready to shake off the sage walls and go for something brownish. I was sure I picked the right color and began painting a swatch on the wall. When it wasn't quite right I blamed the green - thinking it was competing with the brown. But the more I painted the worse it looked. So rather than go back to the paint store to look at the impossibly small chips of alternative color, I decided to get out some black, and some white, and some brown, and mix up my own color. Then I took that concoction to the store, and found just the right thing. The color I found was a number....so I gave it a name.
Obviously I'm not expecting you to take on your living room walls as part of the crusade. I would like you to look through your past work - you don't have to come up with new pages, just a new post that remarks on your color mixes. See what cool things have happened under your brush. Pick one or several blends and give them a name.
To get some ideas for color names: pull out a dictionary or thesaurus and look up a color. Or go to an online resource. For instance: Red. Also called scarlet, crimson, cardinal, fire engine, lust, rose,...it's a fun exercise to investigate both color names and their meanings. Visit a paint store for another experience on naming - from the clever to the ridiculous. When you choose a color name you may want to dig deep to claim something personal, or go with the first thing that comes to mind like a literal interpretation. No rules. Just another way to engage your brain when observing color.
So that's it. Look at your work. See where you have mixed or blended colors. Point it out to us and give it a name. Make a blog post that illustrates where a mix occured and what you have named your color. If you don't paint, but rather use beads or fiber or fabric, why not revisit Crusade No. 52 and name your palette - whether seasonal or default.
EDIT 7/8: In case you missed it in the comments below, fellow crusader Kimber shared a link to a fun article about color names in the New York Times, HERE. And within that article is a link to THIS SITE, about color palettes. Thanks for these Kimber!