The Thing About Color

Doing the color series had been a lot of fun. It has been a challenge at times, but still fun. I want to do a few more, slightly different parts, but I wanted to dig in a little and share how my artist brain works when it comes to color.

If I were to guess, I’d have to say that at least 50% of the time, if not a lot more, when someone were to ask me to name the color of something, I wouldn’t just say “red” or “blue” or whatever the basic color might be. I’d probably have to add a qualifier to that and say that it was a red-orange or that the blue has a purple tone to it.

Then you have colors like peach that really are a true blend of other colors and is kind of it’s own color. It could be seen as a pink or an orange depending on shade, but this sits squarely in the middle of those for me so I wouldn’t put it with either one.

For me, I almost always see the blend of colors as so few colors hit a pure enough tone for me to be able to just say the one color. Sure, there are obvious ones and I don’t always have to be really specific, but if I’m trying to classify a color, I find just as many colors that fall in between as I do ones that I could say definitively fit into a color group.

When doing this series, I had so many photos I would have shared, but I didn’t feel they really fit the color. When I was working with the pink series, I couldn’t bring myself to put a dark magenta flower photo in that mix because it was just a bit too close  to red. The orange series had a lot of things that leaned a bit too far into the browns. For the series, I really wanted something that you could look at and say, without a doubt that, yes, that is definitely that color and I struggled with that at times.

That is part of what has made this series so challenging for me, the way I view colors. I love the idea sharing some of those that I consider in between, but I didn’t have enough of any one color to do an entire week on them.

And then you have black and white. Now that is a whole other ball of wax. Do I do only color photos that showcase black or white or do I use color that has been converted into a black and white photo, because that is a completely different thing all together. I adore black and white photos and could probably do a full month or more in just that, but I wouldn’t say they would fit in a color series where the focus is actual black or white. And like the in between colors, I don’t think I have enough to do a full week on either, though maybe white if I’m willing to post a lot of snow photos (I may have to do that one anyway).

So, I’m not quite done with the color series. I just have to figure out where I want to go next.